Noon Report:

• Location: S 41° 41.77′, E 170° 52.85′
• Speed: 15.4 Knots
• Course: 221º

This morning the wind was so fierce out on deck 2 that I started doing my laps inside. Sorry, it’s just too sedate. So as soon as I saw that other people were fool enough to brave the wind and ocean spray I joined them for an invigorating few miles. We all survived.

The first event was at 10:00 so after breakfast we worked on yesterday’s post.

At 10:00 we were in the Theatre for an introduction of our new Capitan (Remind me to talk about how contracts work) and a Q&A with him, the Chief Engineer, and the Hotel Manager. Lots of questions. Some challenging (like: “Tell me about the internet on board.”) others supporting (like: “What kinds of training do you use to support such a great staff?”). It was an informative and enjoyable time.

It was followed at 11:00 by:

After lunch it was back to the room to do a bit of business and finish yesterday’s post before the 3:00 choir rehearsal.

4:00 saw us up in the Explorer’s lounge for a meeting of the Stargazers – sharing information about tomorrow night’s star gazing event (where they turn off the exterior lights so we can see lots of stars). the moon is rising fairly late so we should get a decent view of stars (clouds permitting). There’s also a chance that we can see the green smudge of the comet in the far north (the green comet on it’s 50,000 year orbit).

At 4:30 we were introduced to our new enrichment speaker – Australian Astronaut Dr. Paul Scully-Power who talked about:

He made some rather interesting predictions:

• Starlink has approval to launch a total of 42,000 satellites – enough to create a web covering the whole world.
• This web will provide high speed internet service anywhere in the world.
• Solar collecting satellites are being developed to gather power from the sun, convert it to microwaves, and beam the waves to earth where they are reconverted to electricity. (England and Australia are participating in this development)
• Technology is being developed to ‘refuel’ satellites already in space (hydrazine).
• Technology is being developed to ‘lift’ a satellite from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to higher Geosynchronous orbit. (It’s a whole lot cheaper to put a satellite in LEO and lift it to the higher orbit (GEO) than it is to launch it to the high orbit to begin with)
• In answer to a question about how these assets in space will be protected, he responded; “That’s why President Trump created the Space Force. That’s why Australia has a Space Force. That’s why other countries are establishing a Space Force.”

Hmmmm.

At 6:30 our Cetacean guy gave an overview of marine migrations (whales, sharks, turtles, birds) from the daily vertical migration of the smallest creatures who rise to the surface every morning to feed and descend to the oxygen-rich depths every evening, to the 12,000 mile annual migration of the Arctic Turn (from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back yearly).

BBB tonight was about normal. 12/23. We spent some time licking our wounds and chatting before returning to the stateroom to write this up, read for a bit, and sleep.

Tomorrow is a “scenic sailing” day as we venture into 2 large sounds. Photos should be cool.

Till then, TTFN, R

Cheryl’s factoids:

• New Zealand was the first nation to allow women to vote and hold a position in the government.
• The International Space Station orbits the entire earth so fast that you see BOTH a sunrise AND a sunset every 90 minutes!