Fenceposts, flying penguins, and other randomness

Heidi driving.

All continues well aboard the WT. We've just had our daily "how many days have we been traveling, anyway?" discussion (we left on a Wednesday at noon; it's Tuesday, so we're in our 14th day of travel; not everyone agrees when this 14th day started. Anne maintains that it started at noon, Oisin disagrees and says it started when Tuesday started, i.e., midnight, and the rest of the crew mostly elect to stay out of the fencepost/counting argument, except for Casey, who keeps asking "so, is it 15?") This is almost as complicated as the "what time is it, anyway?" discussion, which also happens regularly.

We're testing out the second autopilot on the boat - a nifty hydraulic (i.e. very strong) system that should work in heavy seas, and have it tuned well for the current conditions, so we're getting a bit of a break from helming (and everyone got to sit down for lunch, and dinner last night, at once. Very cool.)

We've nicknamed the seabirds that continue to visit us the "flying penguins" since, really, they look surprisingly like penguins - except for the long wings and the flying bit, of course.

We had a record showing of suicidal flying fish, with 5 little carcasses on deck this morning. It's been windy and rolling enough that we haven't been fishing much the past few days, so we couldn't even make use of them as bait, sadly.

The conditions continue to be excellent, and we're chewing up the miles, with a current estimate of 366 nm to go.

Video of sunset at sea - hoping to see another green flash, spoiled by a big wave at exactly the wrong time.

8 Dec 2009 19:25 UTC 13 10.139 N 54 43.971 W

- Anne, for WT