En Route to Mayaguana

We heard on the news that it snowed a foot in Tucson. Brrr! Hope everyone back in AZ is managing to stay warm. We are putting miles and miles under our keels on our way to Mayaguana. So far doing this leg in one long passage is really working out well. The wind is very light and the seas are so calm that we are each able to grab some solid hours of shut-eye on our off-watches. For us, three hours on and three hours off seems to be about right. Any longer and you start to get fatigued when you're on watch, and any shorter you don't get any sleep.

You may wonder what it's like to be at the helm in the middle of the night. Well picture this: you have nothing beneath you except miles of empty ocean and nothing above you but a billion light-years of cosmic history. You start to think about big questions such as: is this clod of dirt the only planet in the universe that supports sentient beings? And if not, how can we possibly contact some other civilization if all the stuff we see in the sky is so old it may not even exist anymore? Deep, huh? Your thoughts wander all over the place but that's pretty much the kind of thing you think about when you are alone on watch at 2 a.m. That, and "yo quiero Taco Bell". Sadly, there are no drive-thrus in this neck of the woods.

It was cloudy earlier but the skies just cleared and I think I can pretty much see every star there is (or "was". Whatever...my brain hurts). I wish I knew more about astronomy; the only constellations I recognize are Orion and the Big and Little Dippers. It is strange to me that the ancients had to resort to naming constellations after make-believe monsters like Capricorn and Sagittarius. When I look at the stars, I see shapes that take a lot less imagination to envision: Tabla Ikea (crooked table), Serpento Twisticus (long twisty snake), and Pasta Farfalle Major/Minor (big and little bow ties). Give it a try sometime. Poke your head outside on a clear night and see if you think you're looking at a creature with a fish body and a goat's head or something that more resembles an unbent paperclip (can't think of a good latin name for that one).

Where we are:
Location=Passage to Mayaguana
Lat=22 45.135
Lon=73 39.142