BSAI and Somebody Else?

One of the first things I did when I got back to Horta was check the door with the BSAI sign. Still nobody home. But I caught a glimpse of the guy I thought was following me last week. He didn't see me -- I guess he didn't know I was back -- and I played spy for a while and followed him. I got a huge surprise. I was thinking maybe he was with BSAI, but he's staking them out! I used Google Maps to make this picture. I wonder what the heck is going on.

Whatever's going on probably doesn't have anything to do with me, and it won't as soon as I leave. I'm heading southwest, for Recife. It's on the Atlantic coast of Brazil. It's not the destination I originally planned -- that was Cayenne, in French Guiana -- but I'm going to meet somebody on Foundation work. They haven't told me much about the meeting yet, but it's probably about setting up an archeological site on Sao Jorge. I think it's because they speak Portugese in Brazil.

I'm stoked to be heading out to sea again. I'll be crossing the Atlantic and the Equator. I leave tomorrow, early.

Back to Horta

I'm back in Port Horta on Faial after a few days exploring Sao Jorge. I eventually got to the coordinates they sent me, but it was a pretty tough hike. And climb, for that matter. There were some volcanic caves in both locations, and one of them was big enough to explore.

In the historical library before I left Horta, I found some of the oldest records they have, showing that people were here as early as the 1500s. But I guess there was somebody here long before that, because there were some prehistoric paintings in the cave on Sao Jorge. They asked me not to post my photos of the cave paintings, but I can tell you about them. Usually cave paintings show animals, but these only showed people. I found three separate paintings that showed people facing each other -- either two people two groups of people. It looked to me like they were in two different tribes or something.

In each picture the tribe shown on the left was taller, and one of the taller figures was always reaching out to the figures on the right. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a fight or a bargain or what, but the taller figure was holding something shown as a kind of stylized "x". I thought it might be a weapon or something; couldn't really tell. In one there might the painter might have been trying to show that the "x" thing was important with dabs of lighter color pigment around it. Like we would use lines to show a light bulb when it's lit up.

It was cool to be the first person in probably centuries to see the paintings. I guess my parents are going to send a real research team here soon to find out more, but I'm still the one who found them! I know, they told me exactly where to look, but at least I was the one doing the looking. I'll have to ask how they knew there were caves there.

Definitely

There's definitely somebody trying to get aboard the Argo II. I got access to the historical library today and spent most of the day there. When I left I turned the in-port alarm system back on. It beeps me on a little key-fob receiver if there's an alarm. It went off twice.

I'm not that worried about the vessel; it locks up pretty tightly, and the harbormaster (who speaks English, thankfully) promised to keep an eye on it. I called him after each alarm and he said he'd check it out.

I didn't see anybody following me today, at least. Probably because they were trying to get aboard my boat. I'm feeling pretty alone here right now. And there's still nobody answering the door at BSAI.

On the bright side, I found some old documents that I think might be important. I can't read a word of them, but the librarian said they were from the 1500s and talked about the earliest settlers recorded here, and what they experienced. I don't know exactly what's significant about this -- probably not that much, because my parents just said "if I had a chance" I should see what I could find. Anyway, I took some hi-res photos of the pages that I emailed back to Greenland. I hope somebody can read archaic Portugese.

This is the end of my stay in Horta; tomorrow I'm taking the Argo II on a short hop to Sao Jorge. It's a long, narrow island about 30 km away, and it's supposed to have a very mysterious early history. My dad sent me two sets of coordinates I'm supposed to check out.

Is somebody following me?

This is...I dunno what it is. I spent another day looking around Port Horta and some of Faial. I tried the BSAI door again; still nobody home. I found the historical library, and submitted my credentials (you can't get in if you're just anybody).

About the middle of the day I started having the feeling that somebody was watching me. I didn't see anything for sure, but there was this guy I think I saw about three or four times. He was never very close, but I kept seeing him just for a moment at a time. At the end of a street or across a square. He was never looking right at me, as far as I could tell.

It's probably nothing, Port Horta doesn't have that many people and you're going to see the same ones, right? It's just this feeling I kept having.

I turned on the Argo II's in-port alarm system just to make myself feel better. It's a pretty powerful system with some custom features I'm not supposed to talk about. When it's turned on, though, you're not going to get near the vessel without being noticed. Even underwater.

I'm probably just having a case of nerves because it's my first real solo voyage.

Tourist for a Day

I played tourist for the day today in Horta. It's a pretty small town, but a good size for me. I'm not much used to towns or cities.

I had a fun day exploring streets and alleys and things. I don't speak any Portugese, which is a problem here, but with a combination of Spanish, English, and sign language I found everything I needed to. The people are really friendly.

I had a huge surprise when I found this sign on an out-of-the-way door. These are the folks I wrote to about getting a job. They're Antarctic explorers, but look at this!

I haven't heard from them yet about the job, so I knocked on the door for about five minutes. I guess they were closed, though. Anyway it was locked and nobody was there.

I can't figure out why they'd have an office in Horta on Faial island. Nothing at all to do with Antarctica. There must be some other projects they're working on, even though "Antarctica" is right in their name. Or something.

Anyway, I'm going to stop by again tomorrow to see if there's somebody around. I'd be stoked to get a job on an Antarctic expedition.

But what are they doing here?

Port Horta

I've arrived in the Azores, at Port Horta. I'm going to take a few days to explore the island of Faial, and I'm even considering visiting some of the other islands in the archipelago, especially Sao Miguel. Horta has a beautiful, old-fashioned look as you arrive from the sea.

I don't know what these buildings are, at least not yet. One of the things I plan to do here is some research.

One of the things the Macker Foundation does is historical research, and the history here goes

back as far as the 1400's, at least as far as anybody knows. We tend to focus on history much older than that, like the preglacial civilization we're studying in Greenland, and some of the other things we've found around the world. The last five hundred years of the Azores is pretty interesting, though.

And the Azores are volcanic, which is always something we seem to hang around. So I'm going to be doing some historical research, some geological stuff, and maybe even some

archeology. Not a lot; those are really not my specialties so I'm just helping out my parents and the other Macker Foundation researchers who have some things they wanted me to check out while I'm here. Now that I think of it, I don't really have any specialties!

Speaking of checking things out, I still need to locate an airfreight office. I've been emailing my Mom about her screwy gravimeter; I think she needs to ship me one that works. The readings I got on my voyage here look like they're buggy.

There's a correlation if you look at a scatterplot, but it's not a correlation of anything real. There's no undersea mountain range in that location, and I don't know of anything else that would produce readings like that.

It probably has something to do with interference of some kind; the readings point straight toward the Azores, which makes me think they're probably produced by my voyage itself. Whichever way I was going, the fake readings would probably point that way.

Of course, they did have me zigzag back and forth across my course as I sailed southeast, but there's probably something that explains that, too. Anyway, I think the thing is broken.

Nearly There

I'm just a day out of Horta, the port I'm making for in the Azores. It's on the island of Faial, the westernmost island. There's a bigger port on Sao Miguel, but it's at the opposite end of the island chain.

It's been a busy voyage, but just routine business. I've been practicing my celestial navigation and keeping the Argo II shipshape. Everything is running great, except I've been getting weird readings from Mom's gravimeter. I think it's just buggy; I told her I think it needs a major software upgrade. The problem is it keeps reading different gravity levels.

I even sailed a zigzag course for 18 hours, back and forth while still making headway forward. The stupid thing keeps reading higher gravity along a straight line heading northwest-southeast. Mom says it can register the gravity of a seamount, but for these readings to make any sense there would have to be a neutronium pipe five hundred klicks long sitting on the ocean floor. I'm going to see if I can airfreight it back to her for repairs when I get to Horta.

My other pastime at sea has been the puzzle posted here. Something to do with Antarctica, where I'm going. Haven't figured it out yet.