Just a little about the navigation system I getting the coordinates from. The ship is lucky to have a p class GPS system. This is the military version of GPS which removes the purposeful distortion added to the signal from the satellites. It differs from the civilian kind in that we are accurate to within a foot or less, not the 300-500 feet on the GPS units we can buy. Monitors throughout the ship display lat/long, speed, and a number of other factors being constantly measured. There is even a monitor in each bedroom so you can see where you are if your good with lat/long in your head.

An interesting thing I learned was that the 200 mile limit around most countries applies to data collection as well. We have had to have all our bottom profiling equipment turned off until we were outside the Chilian 200 mile limit. Since we sailed down the coast and then started south we had a ways to go to reach the 200 mile limit. Apparently permission to collect data within 200 miles of shore is very difficult to get.

Guess that's about it for now. We are well out of sight of land so all around is water to the horizon. Sunset was pretty tonight, no green flash though. I'll have to get a sense from the crew how often it is seen at sea.

Nice rocking motion of the boat for sleeping tonight.

Cheers, Dave Tewksbury