At Sea

My expedition's first full day at sea. I've been busy; I do a regular check of all the shipboard systems every four hours, and I've been working on my celestial navigation. I think I'm beginning to get it. I've managed to calculate my position several times, and when I check it with the electronics I'm usually pretty close. One of my calculated positions put me somewhere in Kenya, but I think I found my mistake. This is a good site about celestial navigation if you're curious.

The only anomaly is with the new piece of equipment aboard; it's some kind of gravimeter my Mom wanted to get data from. It's supposed to check gravity, if that makes any sense. Something to do with the GOCE satellite and a project she's working on. I think it's screwed up; when I checked its data log it wasn't giving a constant reading. I emailed my Mom about it but she hasn't replied.

I have a pretty good internet connection aboard; it's a two-way satellite link. I get about 50mbps both up and down. That lets me keep in touch, do some studying when I need to, and even watch TV and movies. Really heavy weather can bring it down because the boat bounces around too much, but the seas have been gentle so far.

I saw some walruses earlier; the ancient lore of ...well, me... says that's good luck!