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March 4, 2010 – Callao, Peru
By Herb McCormick

For the longest time imaginable, Peru would not reveal itself. We’d been closing on the coast all evening long, and it was there on the chart-plotter, and even on radar, so we knew it was lurking in the darkness and the haze. But the actual shape of the thing, the form and coastline, never quite materialized. It was a rumor in the night.

That’s not to say we didn’t have visuals, or company. As midnight passed on Wednesday, and Thursday begin to gain momentum (and morning light), there were dolphins leaping, sea birds swooping, sea lions bobbing, and even a couple of small fishing boats plying the coastal waters. The only thing we couldn’t see was South America.

When Peru finally did appear, sometime in the mid-morning, it wasn’t at all what we expected. Before the mainland actually appeared, the island of San Lorenzo loomed into view. The southern flank was sandy, desolate and utterly uninhabited. We were only miles from one of the continent’s major population centers – Lima, home to eight million people, and just a few kilometers away from our actual destination, the Yacht Club Peruano in the adjacent, working seaport of Callao – but we might’ve well as been on Mars.

“Welcome to Dubai,” said skipper Mark Schrader.

“Very desert-y,” said mate Dave Logan.

“It looks like the Sahara,” said photographer David Thoreson.

The temperature matched the milieu. It had been a humid night, the decks damp with condensation, and the morning had been thick and hazy. But as San Lorenzo grew bold off to starboard, and the isle grew in length and altitude – all bluffs and dunes with a touch of Santa Fe-like striation – the sun broke through the milky sky and the air became stifling and steamy. The fresh, open air of the vast, blue Pacific was behind us; now, just a little over 700 miles south of the Equator, we’d returned to the South America of our travels last fall, of nuclear French Guyana and the toasty bulge of Brazil.

Boobies, pelicans, petrels and all other varieties of seabirds splashed and soared all around us. “It’s a ‘birdy’ place,” said Logan, enjoying every opportunity to add a ‘y’ to each word possible. It was a birdy spot all right. That certainly wasn’t snow on San Lorenzo; it was Olympic-sized piles of guano.

Then, we popped around the corner and everything changed. There were people on the beach, a cruising sailboat tucked up under the lee, little bowls of sand perfect for sand-surfing. There were palm trees and buildings, a fish farm, radio towers. The headland on the northern flank looked like the Dune of Gibraltar. Sam Treadway, our guest crew for this leg, has been reading Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic – yes, Dune – on our way north. The island would’ve been a perfect location for the movie.

Even more strikingly, as far as the eye could see, were dozens and dozens of ships and freighters of every description, a testimony to waterborne commerce, at least 70 or 80 big boats in all. We knew our berth was in there somewhere, but it was hard to gauge our bearings, and impossible to know exactly where we were supposed to park.

“Wild,” said David T, alluding to the instant transformation from a lone boat at sea to part of a vast, pulsing fleet. “Absolutely bizarre.”

Suddenly, a launch appeared out of the chaos. They pointed us to a mooring. We picked it up. Five guys scrambled onto Ocean Watch. “We’ve been boarded,” said David. There was a flurry of Spanish, a blizzard of Spanish. Suddenly, one of the guys, tongue in cheek, said, “Hey, does anyone here speak English?” Everyone cracked up. Skipper Mark Schrader picks up the story here:

“I started getting pretty worried about customs/immigration/inspection/practique procedures for our Lima arrival a few days ago, after reading about the unhappy experiences of several south-bound boat travelers when they arrived in this port city.

The fees, paperwork requirements and inspections—all requiring many signatures, time and money—made me almost want to give Lima a pass.  Mind you, I’ve spent a few days on this trip doing paperwork while smiling all the while, letting my mind wander way beyond the task at hand while the ‘ca-chunk’ of a mechanical date stamp is busy turning a ream or two of paper into an ‘official’ document.  You’ve heard enough about this from time to time.  I’m not pretending to be an expert with officialdom, just a graduate student of the discipline, and from what I’d heard and read, Peru was in a league of its own.

“Lima, for those of you still with this conversation, has now set the standard . . . . for courtesy, efficiency and friendliness.   Because of Dan McConnell’s association with Holland America in Seattle and Bryan Reeve’s attention to the practical details, the best shipping agents in Callao (and maybe elsewhere) were made available for the entry/exit procedures involving the good ship Ocean Watch.  Bill Sharp, Vice President of Port Operations and Fleet Security for Holland America, asked their local agents, a company called Inchcape, to embrace our mission and provide some assistance with officialdom.  I made email contact with the General Manager of Inchcape Shipping Services, Jorge Contreras, and his Boarding Officer, Daniel Rocca, two days ago.  They asked me to forward documents you’ve previously heard about, including some I didn’t mention, and then I didn’t hear from them until this morning.

“I’ve been dutifully sending position reports twice a day to the Peruvian Naval authorities, worried that if I missed this project would end up with a quickly levied $10,000 fine and some free cell-time (I’m talking jail, not phone) for the skipper. So, with some fear and trepidation I made the required but unanswered radio reports, same with the email reports and we boldly made our way into the port, ready for another frustrating and time consuming experience with papers.

“As we approached the appointed mooring area a launch with a boatload of relaxed looking persons greeted us, motioned for us to tie up to a convenient mooring, waited for use to secure ourselves, and then came alongside and boarded Ocean Watch, five in all.  I wasn’t sure at first, because everyone seemed so relaxed, but sure enough – customs, immigration, agriculture and port operations were represented – all collected and led aboard by Daniel Rocca R., our Inchcape agent.

“They occupied all available space around Ocean Watch’s saloon table, opened their respective brief cases and began organizing, completing, stapling and sorting forms.

Daniel asked me for two or three things I hadn’t supplied but had easily at hand, and then bartender Sam and I served cold drinks to all.  About the time the drinks were finished Daniel presented a stack of forms for me to sign.  After thirty-four signatures I lost count, and I’d stopped reading what it was I was signing.  Exactly twenty-minutes, six coca-colas with ice and maybe forty signatures later I was handed back the passports, thanked for the hospitality and told we were now free to move about the country.  Twenty-minutes!  When I mentioned this same exercise used up all of one and one-half days in Puerto Williams, the immigration gentleman just shrugged and said, ‘that was Chile.’

“Did I mention that Jorge and a very generous and helpful friend of his, Alberto Landazuri, came aboard during this time, greeted us and all of the officials, offered all kinds of helpful hints about where to go, where not to go, where to eat and how to have fun, and then left with the group – less than an hour from when we secured ourselves to the complimentary buoy?

“Halfway through this story the Operations Manager for the Yacht Club Peruano, Jaime Ackermann, hailed us from the club launch and came aboard, another sincere welcome from a well connected and helpful example of Peru’s impressive hospitality.  He suggested tonight we relax and sample the cuisine at the Club’s restaurant.  Thank you Jaime, the club launch will pick us up at 1830 and deliver us back to OW when the moon is directly overhead.

“In Callao, four days earlier than scheduled and secure on a mooring surrounded by interesting vistas with friendly officials at the ready, I’m happy to report all are well aboard Ocean Watch.”

-Herb McCormick and Mark Schrader with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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March 3, 2010 – At Sea, 14º 036’S, 076º 29’W
By Herb McCormick

The other day here on Ocean Watch, I picked up a copy of a book called Education of a Wandering Man by the late, prolific western writer, Louis L’Amour. I haven’t managed to put it back down. The memoir is an account of the author’s youthful ramblings, when he set off on his own before the Great Depression to ride the rails through the western states. Eventually he hopped a series of ships bound for the Far East, and later he served in World War II. It’s the tale of those travels, and it’s extremely well told.

L’Amour had dropped out of school early, bored and disengaged, in search of meaning and adventure. In the back of his mind, he knew he wanted to write, but he was smart enough to know he wasn’t ready. Wherever he went, he carried a few books with him, and in each town he landed, the first place he sought out was a library. L’Amour spent lots of time in libraries, none of it idle. The education to which he refers was self-taught and it never ended. Our good friend John Osberg left a pile of books on board, and this is one of them. He even inscribed it: “If you think you’re well read – think again!”

Today on Ocean Watch, we’re of course in the midst of our own wanderings, now less than a day out of Lima, Peru. Following up on yesterday’s log, we have good news to report from Jenny Pyles Cairncross regarding her parents, cruising sailors Knick and Lyn Pyles. Jenny writes:
“A Chilean humanitarian service called my sister via satellite phone to tell her that she had seen our parents and they were okay. Our parents asked her to tell us that they would try to call us as soon as communication lines were open again. I had seen on CNN Chile the helicopters in Dichato and bringing supplies so I was hoping that they would be reaching Coliumo as well.”

Back aboard a much-relieved Ocean Watch en route to Lima, the wind has been up and down, we’ve sailed when we could, and motored when we couldn’t. It’s been a good passage to get some reading done, and everyone has had a book going, as we always do. One of the great luxuries of going to sea is the time it affords to read, something none of us find enough of when we’re back on land. We can relate to the gist of Louis L’Amour’s treatise, for in many ways, the Around the Americas expedition has been The Education of Some Wandering Men.

We have a ton of textbooks and reference works onboard, and we refer to them often. We’ve also discovered a few science books that are as enlightening and as readable as they are interesting. Aussie scientist Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers addresses the climate-change issue in a forthright, powerful manner even skeptics might find inarguable. Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano’s Flotsametrics and the Floating World addresses the grand interaction of ocean currents in a narrative that has the pace of a detective story. I’ve only just thumbed through Deborah Cramer’s Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage, but I’m looking forward to getting into it; evocative and even poetic, it looks like it belongs in the same discussion as The Weather Makers and Flotsametrics.

As L’Amour attests, you can learn a lot from more entertaining fare as well. Having spent almost my entire professional life writing about boats and sailing, a lot of folks might be surprised that I’ve just now read a few books by authors whose mighty reputation were totally built on tales of the sea. To be honest, getting through Herman Melville’s Moby Dick – on my third attempt! – was a mighty effort, but in the end a hugely satisfying one.

For years, people whose taste I admire and opinion I respect have been urging me to read the Captain Jack Aubrey series of swashbuckling British Navy historical novels by Patrick O’Brian, and we just happened to have a copy of his book, Desolation Sound, aboard, which I tore through in a couple days. Great stuff: I’ll definitely be seeking out further Captain Jack adventures. Luckily, there are 21 more to go.

Then there’s the celebrated Welsh writer, Tristan Jones. If you ever see me on the street ask me to share my personal Tristan Jones story – it’s a doozy, and completely inappropriate for any school kids who might be reading this. A couple of times in the midst of reading Ocean Watch’s copy of Jones’s ICE! – for instance, when he was getting the better of a polar bear, or reinserting the eye dangling from his own socket – I thought to myself, I’ve never heard more unadulterated bull crap in my entire life. (After his death, a well-researched Jones biography revealed what many had always expected; at times he was a fabulist, if not an outright liar.) Even so, I finished the book smiling. True or not, the man could spin a yarn.

The following books I knew were fiction, and I enjoyed each one immensely. Leif Unger’s quirky western, So Brave, Young and Handsome, was an utter delight. Out Stealing Horses, by Per Patterson, is one of the most haunting, wonderful books I ever read. Stephen Harrigan’s sprawling Texas novel, The Gates of the Alamo, brought history to life in spectacular fashion. I really liked Arturo Perez-Reverte’s treasure-hunting mystery, The Nautical Chart, though my mates found it less amusing.

However, we all agreed that Fatal Voyage: A Story of Arctic Disaster and One Fateful Whaling Season by Peter Nichols, a factual account of the wild year of 1871 in the same waters we traversed last summer, was pretty darn good.

At the outset of the voyage I read Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, a title no one is taking credit for shipping aboard. The year in question begins the moment Didion’s husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, drops dead at dinnertime. This, most assuredly, is not a cheery tome. Didion’s an amazing talent and this was an award-winning effort on her behalf, but it just might be the single most depressing book I’ve ever laid eyes upon.

Happier fare included Harry Bruce’s book on writers and writing, the hilarious Page Fright, and another title that mined similar fare, Michael Shapiro’s A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives and Inspiration, a book of interviews with some of my favorite non-fiction writers, including Jonathan Raban, Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux and Tim Cahill. (Shapiro’s book was a gift from fellow sailing writer Rob Moore, one of the most underrated guys in the business, who “retired” to race sailboats all over the planet. By the way, Rob, it’s time to start writing again!)

As a writer, I like reading about other writers, and the opening chapters of The Kitchen Readings: Untold Stories of Hunter S. Thompson, by his long-time Aspen pals, Michael Cleverly and Bob Braudis, are an absolute riot. But The Kitchen Readings are quite the surprise, as the book is ultimately an emotional tribute to a dear friend. Their passages about “the Duke’s” final days, including the one when he took his own life, are enough to break your heart.

Also troubling, but for different reasons, is the book I finished just before starting L’Amour’s, a stunning collection of essays by John McPhee called The Control of Nature. I first read McPhee when I first started really reading. A Sense of Where You Are, his book on fellow Princeton graduate Bill Bradley, the All-American basketball player (before becoming a New York Knick and then a New Jersey senator), left a profound impression on me. It was the first time I realized that sports, my all-consuming love as a kid, could be understood and appreciated in an intellectual capacity, as well as a physical one.

Then, on my first trip to Alaska, I carried with me a copy of McPhee’s own epic, Alaskan masterpiece, Coming Into the Country, and I fell in love forever.

Reading McPhee, however, is a dangerous, almost reckless exercise for any writer. The man is so good, so smart, so fluid, and such a capable and total craftsman, that it makes you want to throw your computer overboard. In fact, McPhee is so outstanding, polished and professional, that if you’re foolish enough to compare his prose with your own, you’re left with the impression that your own scribbling nonsense is so pointless, lame and inconsequential that it makes a fine case that you should just stop trying. Once you’re over the discouragement, however, you can only hope some of him rubbed off on you along the way.

And that brings us back to Louis L’Amour, who offers this comforting advice for those afflicted with the urge to write: “Writing is forever and always a learning process. One is never good enough and one never knows enough. I cannot repeat that too often. No matter how good a writer becomes, he can always be better.”

Well, not McPhee, of course, but point taken. And John Osberg was correct: Comparing one’s own life reading list to Louis L’Amour’s is as humbling as reading McPhee. The man also wrote 86 novels, but Education of a Wandering Man, written just before his death in 1988, is certainly his most personal book.

The beauty of the memoir, and it is beautiful, is that it’s not just a great adventure story and a fine coming-of-age tale – though it is certainly both of those – it’s full of insights on travel, philosophy, history, and most of all, about books and writing. It’s something we can relate to here on Ocean Watch, where we love to hear and tell stories, and where books may be our most precious possessions. As with L’Amour on his journey, books have been a grand source of knowledge, entertainment, and even companionship on our own long wander across all these mighty seas.

I’ll finish this log with a confession and a promise. Until I picked up his Education, I’d never read a syllable of Louis L’Amour. Once I get ashore, that’s definitely going to change.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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March 2, 2010 – At Sea, 17º 09’S, 075º 59’W
By Herb McCormick

Long before the idea of sailing to Patagonia and ranging through the Chilean canals was on the rise, with detailed cruising guides and well-researched sailing instructions available to all, American cruising sailors Knick and Lyn Pyles were down there exploring. Way back in 1992, they’d already bagged a rounding of Cape Horn and were wandering through the Beagle Channel and points beyond with their daughter, Jenny. To say the Pyles’ were ahead of the voyaging curve is to traffic in understatement.

As an editor at Cruising World magazine at the time, I met Knick and Lyn on a couple of memorable occasions. Bold and adventurous, modest and funny, they had a million stories to tell, and they told them well. In fact, it was our pleasure and privilege to publish several articles by Knick Pyles, as good a writer as you’ll find in the pages of any yachting magazine. Knick wrote passionately about Chile, a place he and Lyn considered a second home, so much so that they bought a place near Concepcion and lived there part of each year.

Today, as Chile continues to deal with the physical and emotional aftermath of the earthquake that rocked the country to its core, Knick and Lyn Pyles are on our minds here on Ocean Watch. That’s because they’re missing.

Aboard our 64-foot cutter, this afternoon we were plowing towards our next port-of-call in Lima, Peru, with dispatch, rolling in front of a lovely 15-knot southerly with our working sails set wing-and-wing. The sky is clear, the sun hot, the ocean flecked with whitecaps. At this pace, we’ll be in Lima in 48-hours, well ahead of schedule. All’s good, right? Well, not entirely. As the reports from Chile filter their way out to our self-contained world in the South Pacific, we’ve begun to grasp the enormity of what’s happening upon – and what’s happened to – the land we last set foot upon. And we’re sick about it.

It would be pretentious to label the vague but real uneasiness we’re experiencing as “survivor’s guilt,” but perhaps it’s something like that. We understand and are grateful that we were lucky not to be in harm’s way. Were we still in Chile, it’s impossible to say what we might or might not be doing right now – probably not much, in real terms – but not being there – and in fact, sailing in the opposite direction – doesn’t seem quite right. You cannot visit the place and leave it without a tug at the heartstrings. To have left it in these circumstances feels downright miserable.

The note we received yesterday from current Cruising World editor Mark Pillsbury didn’t help matters. It read: “You have any insights that might help Jennifer out?”

The Jennifer to whom he referred was the same Jenny who plied the Beagle with her intrepid parents nearly twenty years ago. Mark forwarded a note from her, which said, “(Knick and Lyn) happened to be less than fifty miles south from the epicenter of this past Saturday’s earthquake. We have been unable to reach them and are wondering if you had any contacts down in Chile or sailors near their vicinity that could possibly get information on them in regards to their well-being, etc.

“They live in Coliumo which is across the bay from Dichato. The only word we have received is that they did survive the quake, and were huddled with other neighbors in a home that is higher on the hill and more stable. This contact was made within the hour of the first earthquake and no one has heard anything since then. There have been at least 90 aftershocks since then.”

Soon after receiving the correspondence, skipper Mark Schrader and I, respectively, emailed the two most well-connected people we know in Chile, old friend Mauricio Ojeda and new one, oceanographer Cristina Rodriguez. One can only imagine the chaos in their lives right now, but each responded within hours. In the chests of Chileans beats the heart of giants.

Mauricio’s reply was cautiously encouraging: “The biggest problem is communication with that area of the country. I will do my best to find out. However, we have tried without results to contact friends living in Concepcion, which is the big city close to Coliumo. The tsunami after the earthquake affected that area. If they did move to upper grounds, they should be okay. The earthquakes that followed were of less intensity.”

Cristina responded with the news that a list is being compiled on the Internet for those seeking news about friends and family. You can “google” a name and find instant information. Cristina did so with the Pyles’ and learned that their status was unknown at the present time. The URL address for this Chilean website is incredibly long, and we’re not comfortable posting it in this space for several reasons. But if you’re legitimately looking for folks in Chile, you can send a brief email note to crew@aroundtheamericas.org we will be happy to forward the link.

And of course, if you have any information on the whereabouts of the Pyles’, please send it to that same email address and we’ll forward it immediately to their concerned daughter, Jenny Pyles Cairncross.

Oddly enough, and please take this in the spirit that it’s offered, somehow this note from Jenny has been therapeutic. We fully share her concerns, but at least now we’ve been moved to some sort of involved action. We’re connected with our friends in Chile in some meaningful way. However small, we’re finally doing something.

For now, and hopefully for not much longer at all, what’s happened to Lyn and Knick is a mystery. Aboard Ocean Watch, something we can’t quite put into words is missing, too.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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March 1, 2010 – At Sea, 19º 53’S, 075º 41’W
By Herb McCormick

At almost the precise moment in time early last evening, the two primary celestial bodies in the lives of we Earthlings were in balance and synchronicity. That is, as the plump orange sun set in the west, the full beaming moon rose to the east. Smack between the two, Ocean Watch was at the midpoint of the teeter-totter; the kids at either end were looking one another directly in the eye. One could even say the scales of heavenly justice were even.

Up on the foredeck of the boat, lounging around on a summer eve just before the mast, we were like spectators at a tennis match, looking left, looking right, looking left, looking right, fearful of missing the winner. I used to have a football coach whose sage advice against getting blindsided into next week was to “keep your heads on a swivel.”

Our heads were on a swivel.

As it happened, there was a money shot, it came from the west, and none of us missed it. Just when the top of the sun kissed the razor-sharp horizon, there it was, the always-popular (and increasingly evident) green flash. David Thoreson pressed the shutter of his Nikon, and the satisfying “click” bid adieu to the descending orb at the nick of the colorful instant.

“I got it,” he said.

On the pleasant voyage between Valparaiso, Chile, and Lima, Peru, it was the highlight of another day at sea.

Today on Ocean Watch, it’s yet one more, but with a host of special milestones. It’s exactly nine months since we left Seattle, with just over 21,000 nautical miles behind us; we’ve just crossed the 20^th parallel of latitude on our northward jaunt towards the equator; we’re less than 500 miles and almost exactly 72-hours from our arrival in Lima. The wind is out of the west at about 10 knots, we’re motor-sailing with a full genoa and mainsail with the diesel kicking over at 1200 fuel-efficient RPMs, and we’re making just over 7 knots. Between the open sky and the wide Pacific, it’s impossible that the world could be bluer.

Sunrise yesterday was just before 8 a.m.; today, just before 7 a.m.; tomorrow, just before 6 a.m. Let me explain. Over the last couple days, we’ve changed the clock an hour each day, to adjust for the proper time zone. If one doesn’t think too hard about it, it’s easy to consider the continents of North and South America as a pair of Lego pieces stacked atop one another. Not true. Though we’ve been wandering up the West Coast of the southern continent for a few weeks now, the corresponding West Coast of the United States is, well, west. Like, real west. Until you study a globe, it’s hard to comprehend. How disparate is the perceived disconnection? Today, Ocean Watch is more or less due south of New York City, and now that we’ve adjusted the clocks, we’re actually in the same time zone.

Other than shifting the watch schedule slightly to get the clocks in order, the day has rolled on rather typically. David Thoreson has been busy with cameras, both still and video. Dave Logan has been tending to the thousands of chores necessary on a daily basis to keep Ocean Watch a going concern. Skipper Mark Schrader has spent a few hours at the navigation station, poring over charts and getting up to speed on Peruvian immigration procedures and other ship’s business. Sam Treadway is filling the role of onboard scientist for this leg, and has been busy taking cloud observations for our ongoing NASA project. Aside from some low ribbons of stratus and a little bouquet of cumulus buds way off on the horizon, there isn’t a bloody cloud in the sky. Sam’s surely got the day’s easiest job.

Well, except for me. I’m just typing.

I had a saltwater bucket bath up on the bow yesterday, followed by a freshwater rinse down below in the shower. Before that, Logan got out his barber tools and hacked off my mullet. I wasn’t actually trying to grow a mullet, but there aren’t many barbers at Cape Horn or in Patagonia. As the ocean is now a tepid 76º, I may pour a few more buckets of ocean over my head later on. The icy Horn seems a million miles away.

I’m on dinner duty tonight, and as the guys know, that means some sort of pasta is likely to be involved. We all have our specialties. Last night, Sam prepared some killer burritos. The night before, David T prepared his staple dish, beloved by all, a spicy Thai peanut chicken over rice. The night before that, Logan employed his favorite ingredient, a versatile pork shoulder with fresh vegetables. The skipper’s fare generally consists of beans, rice or soup, usually enhanced by some variety of, well, tube steak.

For this evening, I’m thawing out a big tub of frozen crab we picked up in Patagonia, and I plan on using a bunch of gorgeous, ripe tomatoes from Chile, lightly stirred with sautéed onions, garlic and seasonings, over some bow-tie pasta tossed with pesto. My mates are a generous lot; they’ll say it’s great, even if it isn’t.

The moon will rise, just a sliver smaller than yesterday. The sun will set, and we’ll cross our fingers for another splash of green. Ocean Watch will continue to guide us through the waters, another day logged in on the voyage Around the Americas.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.