90 West

29 april 2016

I suppose we have all had those unexpected moments when suddenly there is a big round number in front of you, like when the clock shows 100,000 kilometres whilst driving your car. Expecting to see random numbers we somehow think that round numbers do not belong in that category. This morning I sauntered onto the bridge after breakfast to find on the gps 090.00.000 West, of course only for a moment. We discussed how far west we still are, in fact far more to the west than the whole of South America. We started in Galveston at almost 095 West. If you go north from there you divide the United States in two.  We are still more than a quarter of the earth in longitude away from home, Rotterdam is at 004 degrees East.
We continue to motor sail across an empty Gulf towards Key West, with light winds from the southeast and partly overcast skies. The Enkhuizen Seafaring School will be happy to learn that our astronomical navigation is making leaps forward and in the middle of the night last night we even took a Polaris thanks to a well-lit horizon by the moon which is in Scorpio. This reminds me that watching the skies at night is a wonder as always. We have at the moment a conjunction of the moon, Mars, Saturn, Antares and the other stars of Scorpio, an amazing display. Further to the east at the same time we have Jupiter hanging under Leo as if he is about to be dropped upon us.
The atmosphere on board is excellent. There are a number of old timers, his roundness King Neptune of previous voyages is here to dispense freely unwanted opinions, we even have a number of token Americans (one a veteran of the ‘Oosterschelde’, the other a novice at age 75), whose company we enjoy even if their politics are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan (however we do count on them to bail us out when we screw things up once more) and we have Seafaring School graduates full of untested opinions and a lot of buoyant youth who seem to have taken up permanent residence in the schooner mast. A great mix and so we sail on. The wind is supposed to veer south soon, hopefully clearing the path to the Keys.