Showing posts with label walrus sighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walrus sighting. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

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!