A Message from position 57.55.08S, 064.58.11W

After noth­ing for a few days, I was pleased to get a mes­sage this morn­ing from Pam, onboard the Explor­er II. Here are some per­ti­nent excerpts:

Thank you for the “Wel­come aboard” email. It was hand deliv­ered in an air mail enve­lope when I arrived.

My inter­nal clock has no clue about the day or time. I decid­ed to sleep until I was ready to get up around 10:30 ship’s time.

Here we are, in the mid­dle of the Atlantic/Pacific com­ing up to the con­ver­gence. I already feel it in my being, not in a sea sick way, just a con­stant reminder that these 2 oceans have met. The cap­tain referred to this as small swells. Kin­da nice being lulled to sleep last night.

The room is com­fy. Again I took pics before mak­ing a mess of it. The cur­tains are tilt­ing about 15degrees. Did­n’t try show­er­ing today. I’ve used the tub to anchor loose things. Okay, we’re real­ly heav­ing now.…

I bought 1 hr of inter­net time ($27US) which I’ll use for the next 10 days onboard. Oh, how I wish I could send you some pics. There’s a very hap­py one of me as we head thru the Bea­gle Chan­nel. I’ve met a pic­ture tak­ing bud­dy, a busi­ness ana­lyst from Chica­go. She wants a pic of her in her U of I sweat­shirt with a pen­guin for her alum­ni mag. We are get­ting to know each oth­er’s cam­eras as well as our own for such doc­u­men­tary shots.

Today there were sev­er­al alba­tross sight­ings. Since I don’t know exact­ly what they look like I’m not sure I could claim see­ing them. There are some gull type birds fol­low­ing the ship’s wake. Long wings but small­er bod­ies than all the seag­ulls we see at Granville Mkt.

I’ve saved this msg as a draft and now will make my way to the library to mail it. The Library has pub­lic ter­mi­nals and WiFi.

It sounds like pret­ty rough seas to me. It’s a good thing she took some Bonine (like Dra­mamine, but with less drowsi­ness) with her, just in case it gets any rockier.

As near as I can fig­ure out, here’s where that Lon­gi­tude and Lat­i­tude posi­tion is (rough­ly) on Google Maps (I think it’s the white dot at the cen­tre of the map):