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!

Departure Day

Super exciting day; I left Greenland on the first leg of my voyage! I'm headed to the Azores, mostly because I just wanted to visit the islands again. It's about 1700 nautical miles, which is about 3200 kilometers. The weather over the north Atlantic looks pretty good for the passage, and I expect it to take a little more than a week. Maybe a week and a half, depending on weather and currents, and of course if nothing breaks. :-)

Here are some photos leaving Nuuk.

Ice probably wouldn't hurt the Argo II, but I stay safely away from it. Bergs can sometimes flip without warning, and some of them are big enough to damage or even capsize a vessel this size.

This vessel has been at the wharf for a few days. I don't really know much about it, but it's a nice-looking ship. It's a working ship of some sort, as you can see by the derrick on the back. Its lines are a little like the Deception's, although of course the Deception isn't painted red. Or white, for that matter.

Entering or leaving a harbor area is always the most dangerous and difficult piloting there is. There's often a lot of traffic, even in a place as out-of-the-way as Greenland. There have been rules for who has the right of way on the sea, and most captains know them and follow them, but there's always the chance that somebody doesn't know them, or interprets them differently, or even that their ship might be partially damaged and unable to steer. I didn't have any problems at all. Red hulls are pretty attractive, I think.

Shipboard Systems

When you live on board ship, you need to know how your ship works. Not quite so much when you're just one of the crew, but on a solo voyage I have to know everything about my ship.

There's something interesting about almost all of the Macker Foundation vessels; they all have incredible range. The Scopritore IV can make it around the world without refueling, and I think the Deception could probably do that two or three times. The Argo II has a little shorter range, but I won't have to refuel just to get from Greenland to Antarctica. Also none of our ships are very noisy, and they hardly pollute.

You're probably thinking they must have nuclear power or something. No way! That would be too expensive even for us (I guess) and it's super-complicated. And nuclear reactors are really big; there's no way one would fit in anything smaller than the Deception.

Most of our ships use Stirling engines. These aren't new at all; they were invented almost 200

years ago, and they're really clever. They're also simple; all you need is something that produces heat and something else that stays cold. Stirling engines are just piston engines, where you heat up a gas, and that expands and moves a piston, then you cool off the gas, and it contracts and moves another piston. We use alpha-type engines, which means the pistons are in separate cylinders. This illustration from Wikipedia shows it really well.

On board ship we have something that stays cool all the time: ocean water. There are a bunch of ways to produce heat; solar power, an alcohol flame, and more.

The biggest problem with Stirling engines is the material they're made from; it has to get both hot and cold without changing too much, and has to be able to keep a gas (we use helium) under pressure. The more pressure there is, the more powerful the engine. In one of my older posts I mentioned our submersible, and how it can go deeper than anything? That's because of what it's made of; a material that's stronger than anything else (at least as far as I know). And that's what we make our Stirling engines out of, too. It can get incredibly hot -- you have no idea -- and it doesn't really expand. And it doesn't corrode in sea water, either. It's perfect.

When I first found out about this stuff I asked my Dad why we didn't just make Stirling engines for everybody, since it would solve a lot of problems in the world. He said there just wasn't enough of the stuff and they don't know how to make more. At least not yet. We didn't make what we have; my Mom found it. Ever since, she's been trying to find out who did make it, and if there's more (she has found some more, but not a huge lot). That's why it seems like we're near volcanoes so often; she says she first found the stuff in a volcano (I told you it can get really hot!) and every time she's found some more, it's around a volcano.

I tried to tell her I thought it was probably because whoever made the stuff probably needed to use it around volcanoes because they needed something that wouldn't melt. But I was just a kid at the time and I don't think she thought much about my idea. I still think I was right though!

My own sextant!

This is so cool; Mom and Dad just gave me a sextant! It's made by Cassens & Plath, and what I thought right off was that it looks pretty complicated. I'm good at math and at handling equipment though, so I think I'll be able to figure it out.

I already tried some sightings. The reason it's called a sextant is that it's one-sixth of a circle, and you line it up with the horizon, to make sure it's level, then you take a sighting of a star. That gives you enough information to imagine a huge triangle, and if you know two angles you can calculate the third. The key is that you know exactly what time it is and what star you're looking at, and then you can triangulate your position. It might not be so easy when I'm standing on a moving deck instead of land. :-)

Preparations

I'm really getting into the preparations for my voyage. This part is all just planning, of course, since the Argo II hasn't even arrived in Greenland yet. Joe Slocum is sailing her here from our home port in Portsmouth. Joe is a good guy; he worked on the Scopritore IV sometimes, and was kind of like an uncle. He always said he was named after Joshua Slocum, who was the first person to sail around the world by himself (he wrote a book about it, Sailing Alone Around the World).

It's going to be a lot easier for me, of course, because the Argo isn't a sailboat. I've been sailing, but just for fun, and not that often. My favorite kind of sailing is windsurfing, which I first tried in Madagascar. I got pretty good at it when were were in the Mediterranean for a year. It's not much fun when you have to avoid icebergs, though.

I sent Joe some lists of what I'd like the Argo stocked with in the way of favorite foods and books. He said he would take care of that before he left Portsmouth. I'll have an internet connection the whole way, so I'll be able to update this blog and keep up on things.

I wish I could go diving on this trip, but it's too risky to do that alone. I thought maybe I'd study astronomy and see if I could learn celestial navigation. I'll probably never need it, with all the GPS, LORAN, and inertial systems installed on all our vessels, but it would be fun. The original Joshua Slocum didn't really do that much of it, according to his book, but the real sea captains from the old days sure did. I love reading about them; those are some of the books I asked Joe to stock the Argo's library with. I should dig up my list and post it here.

My first cut at charting my voyage

A Solo Voyage

I've started planning for my solo voyage to Sturge Island. My Dad says I can take the Argo II, one of the small vessels our foundation owns. It's perfect for a solo voyage; small enough for one person to handle, but big and rugged enough to make the trip. It's also pretty fast, so it won't take me forever. This isn't actually the Argo II (no pictures allowed of Macker Foundation vessels) but it's a trawler yacht by Mirage that's pretty close. Actually I think the Mirage yacht is probably a little nicer. But the Argo II is proven; it's been around the world twice already.

For such a long voyage -- Greenland to Antarctica and probably back -- I'm going to have to plan on some resupply and refitting stops. That's what I'm working on now. Sometimes on the Scopritore IV we get resupplied by the Deception, but I'd rather plan on visiting some interesting places along the way. The Azores, for example. And I have to decide whether to head for the east coast of South America and go through the Strait of Magellan, or for west Africa and Cape Horn.

This is pretty fun. It makes me wonder how much I really want that job. Which I still haven't heard about, by the way. I just thought, though; maybe they're worried that I'm so far away in Greenland that I wouldn't be able to join them. If I don't hear back, I'll just contact them when I'm closer. They said their expedition is scheduled for 2010, so the timing seems like it might work.