Captain’s Log

May 3, 2006

 

 Wednesday May 3, will be remembered as the day that the weather started to improve on the first cruise in 2006.  When we awoke in the morning, you could see corpuscular rays of the sun shinning through the clouds over the mountains of Baja California, about 30 miles to the east.  By noon, we had sun at the ship. 

 

We continue to move south at a slow rate of speed, conserving our valuable fuel as long as we can.  At our current speed of 10 knots, one engine operation at 60 RPMS, we burn about 14 tons of fuel a day.  About one half of that is necessary to keep the generators and the boiler going so it only takes about 7 tones a day to move about 240 miles.  Seven tons is about 2100 gals., so we are getting about 9 gals. per mile.  If we want to go at Maximum speed of 19 knots, we will burn about 50 tons a day, or 43 tons for the engine and go about 456 miles. At that speed, we get about 29 gals. per mile.  Thus it is easy to see why we try to progress at economical speed.

 

With the sky clear, we can finally start our celestial navigation program and I am sure that a lot of sextants will be on deck tonight.  It has always been somewhat amazing to me that one can look up at the stars and take a few simple measurements, and figure out where you are on the earth.  And to think that an astronomer sitting on a rock over 2000 years ago, conceived the process before we even had proof that the earth was round. 

 

Friday morning we will be crossing the tip of Baja and moving along the Mexico Mainland.