Day 59

Light winds again today, but I made reasonably good progress with what I had, though it came at a price as I had to pick the boat up on every stroke, which make for some grueling hours on the oars. Crossed 47W about an hour before nightfall, which at this point comes a little before 10PM GMT.

I'll be happy to get this quarter of the trip behind me when I cross 50W in a few days' time. The let-down after hitting halfway at 40W was much more troubling than I expected, and I've since had to readjust mentally to return to the outlook that "I'm moving in the right direction, but I still have a long way to go." I'll try to wait to think about Antigua until I cross 60W, which is just about 100 miles from the finish.

OK, on to the stars. I've thought a lot about how to describe them for you, but I'm still not sure I'll be able to do them justice. As many of you know, I probably spend more time than most staring at the night sky (and have since I was a kid) so the landscape is reasonably familiar. With that said, the views I see out here feel like I'm looking at a completely different sky compared to what I've seen at home, even on the darkest nights.

Imagine walking around a familiar room with the lights off. You know your way around, can make out the general shapes of the furniture, and won't bump into things. Then one day as you're feeling your way around someone flicks on the lights and WOW! Amazing! Incredible! All of a sudden you can see the color of the couch, the books on the shelves, and the pattern on the rug. Who knew this room was full of so much stuff?

Well, if that analogy makes sense to anyone but me, that's what it's like looking at the stars out here. The stars blanket the sky completely--enough to convince me that there isn't an inch of sky that doesn't contain at least one dim star.

The constellations are dramatic and dominating. You don't have to look for Orion. He dominates the scene from the very center of the night sky, his arrow pointing West just after nightfall. The big dipper is enormous and swings a wide arc around the north star, which at this latitude is lower on the horizon than I'm used to, having lived in the 40N latitudes all of my life. I find it impossible to look at one star or one constellation without immediately being distracted and drawn to another one nearby--a process that is repeated until I have to give up trying to look at them all.

Hopefully this gives you some sense of the night sky out here. It's really one of the highlights of the trip for me, and a real treat after a long day of rowing.

Quick shout-out to the brothers of Theta Chi Fraternity at Colgate University, who are throwing a fundraiser/party on behalf of Row for Hope, complete with rowing machine races by the brothers, which will be entertaining for sure. For anyone betting on the outcome of these races, my advice is that, no matter the relative size of the competitors, always bet on the experienced rower.

Wow, longest update ever. I might have earned myself a day off with this one. Bed time!

Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Paul

Day 58

Unusual day today - here's what went down:

Started by scraping for barnacles first thing in the morning. Wind and seas were bigger than I would have liked, but it will suffice to say that there was no way Liv was going to blow away from me (I was also tied on with a 50 ft rope) with the death-grip I kept on the grab lines running the length of the hull. In mid-swim I stopped to look around for Atlantic White-tipped sharks. Thanks to my roommate Zack for the heads up. Didn't see any. If I did spot one, the plan was to go with the "barnacle-scraper-between-the-eyes" approach. Actually I probably would have screamed like a schoolgirl...then who knows what.

After scraping I got on the oars around 11AM and rowed for an hour through the first half of the heaviest squall I've seen so far. As I've made my way across the Atlantic, the squalls have become wetter and more numerous, I suppose because the clouds have more time to accumulate water as they too cross the ocean. I finally called it quits around 12:15, soaked and chilled to the bone. I decided to wait the rest of it out and made lunch and did emails early.

By 1 PM the rain had stopped (for the moment), and I hit the oars for what turned out the be a 9-hour shift - my longest to date. Surprisingly, the extra four hours didn't really seem any different from a normal 5-hour shift. I'm not sure what that means. Maybe that I've lost my mind?

The rationale for the long shift was a combination of my morning shift getting cut short and the slow progress of yesterday, which I wanted to at least avoid repeating. Though winds today were light and are forecast to stay light for the foreseeable future, I still did 27.5 nautical miles west today, which is close to what I was making during my stretch of 50-mile days. I won't get as much nighttime mileage with the wind I have now, but at least I've made the most of the day.

That's enough for now. Sorry, but I will have to postpone writing about the stars until tomorrow.

Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Paul

Day 57

Yup, I'm still out here!

Day 57 was a slow one in mileage terms, probably more like 30-35 rather than the 50 I've bee putting up for the last week or so. Not a big deal on its own, but I'm obviously hoping that I can avoid putting together a string of slow days that would put my goal of landing in less than 80 days all but out of reach.

Winds were light all day and I took the opportunity to rearrange some of my food and equipment around the boat in hopes of maintaining the optimal ballast arrangement for both stability/safety and speed. I'm not sure how I did, and hopefully today's mileage isn't an indication. I did claw back some room in the cabin so I'll have a little bit more space to lie down. At the rate I'm going I'll be comfortable (as comfortable as I can get with bedding that's constantly damp) by the time I get to Antigua.

The bad news is that my favorite iPod, an 8 gigabyte nano that I've been using for the whole expedition and all of my training leading up to it, went for a swim around lunchtime today. The battery had died mid-shift and I dropped it onto the deck after taking it out of the waterproof case so I could plug it in. That wouldn't have been a problem except that as usual the deck was awash in more than an inch of water that flows in and out of the scuppers. Luckily I have two remaining backups with the exact same stuff on them, for better or worse.

Will write about the stars tomorrow -- a preview of what I'm going to say...they're spectacular!

Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Paul

Day 56

A short update today, as a poor night's sleep last night has had me exhausted all day. The good news is that I crossed 45W just before lunch, and I'm now in the fourth time zone of the trip, only two hours ahead of the East Coast and one hour ahead of Antigua.

My mileage today was solid and the seas in the evening were mercifully on the smaller side -- a good thing, as in my current state it was possible that one soaking too many would have dislodged my last strand of precious composure.

Hoping for a better night's sleep tonight than last. I'm starting to get the message from my body that it is not pleased with what I'm doing to it. Salt sores are multiplying in general, not just in areas that I sit on all day. More are opening and I'm developing some skin irritation (in places that need not be described in detail) that keep me awake at night.

Back tomorrow with more energy,

Paul

P.S. Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Day 55

Day 55...more rowing! Much better day today with mostly clear skies, cooler air, and some scattered clouds. Winds were consistently just a little south of west, which still allowed me to pick up 3 miles back to the north, and as I write this I'm about 2 miles south of English Harbor's latitude. Happily, I also checked my distance to English Harbor as I was going back out for my evening shift and it read...

...drum roll...

....999.9 nautical miles!

I haven't been less than a thousand miles from anything in a while, so it's a good feeling to be down to triple digits. Not that 999 nm is a distance I can really get my head around, but still...at least it's a number I can count to!

I was wondering during my last shift -- if I were in the water scraping barnacles and a shark came (whatever kind of shark lives out here), would it actually eat me? I mean, scuba divers and snorkelers must see sharks all the time and they don't get eaten all that regularly (do they?), so I bet I'd have time to climb back in the boat (trust me, it wouldn't take long) and write a good post about it.

Other that that, another day at sea and another day closer to the finish line.

Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Paul

P.S. Can someone in my Colgate/Theta Chi fantasy baseball league e-mail my roster to me at paul@rowforhope.com ? I'll get keepers to you by satellite phone. Also, please remind me how many, etc... Thanks!

Day 54

Tough day today, as heavy and shifting winds kept me fighting to keep on as westerly a course as possible while winds were blowing me almost directly south-west. The result was a good day in terms of mileage, but I expended massive amounts of effort and got regularly soaked in the process, which did anything but help to build morale.

Below is a picture taken at sunrise yesterday of a squall that passed to the south of me. Sights like this always make me get out the soap and shampoo in hopes of a fresh water shower, but I've yet to catch a one. With that said, I did take my first real "bath" of the trip yesterday, which was great. After the water maker issues that I had early in the trip (it's been fine for the last 30+ days), I had been hesitating to use much fresh water for hygiene, other than to wash "problem areas." Anyway, the shower was great, though I'm officially covered in salt again from head to toe after today's soakings. Can't wait for that first real shower in Antigua!!!

Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Paul

Day 53

A good day out here today, with reasonably strong wind and seas but both in the very narrow range that is both good for mileage and comfortable to row in. I didn't think seas and wind existed that I wouldn't be hoping were bigger/smaller/heavier/lighter, but today was pretty close.

I crossed 43W toward the end of my PM shift and am almost a third of the way through my march toward 50W. I'm not sure what happens at 50W, after all of the fanfare around crossing 40W, but every degree is one step closer to home, so it will be celebrated in one way or another. So far I also am still on or ahead of the pace I set to finish by Day 79.

Below is a picture of a big bird that I see almost every day, usually in the afternoon and evening. Maybe someone can help me identify it? Its significantly bigger than a seagull w/a wing span of 3-4 feet, I would guess. Brown everywhere but the underside, which is white. This bird is always seen swooping around really quickly, not far off of the water -- apparently hunting, among other things, flying fish.

A couple of days ago I saw this bird almost pick a flying fish out of mid-air, only to have it fall into the water, where a dorado was apparently waiting. As the big bird went to do another loop around, the flying fish took off again, this time with the dorado close behind leaping out of the water after it with a good three seconds of air time. By this time the bird had circled back around, dodged the dorado, grabbed the flying fish in mid-air, and took off victorious. Amazing!

Thanks to all who have supported this expedition and important research at Yale Cancer Center with a donation to Row for Hope. If you haven't donated, or if you would consider donating again, it would be much appreciated. To donate online use the link in the upper right-hand corner of this page or visit www.rowforhope.com.

Paul