Posts Tagged ‘onboard scientist’

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January 7, 2010 – At Sea, 42º 40’S, 057º 00’W
By Herb McCormick

Wiping sleep from his eyes, Warren Buck came up from below, sat down in the cockpit, glanced to starboard, and not twenty feet away, took in the arresting sight of a pair of wandering albatrosses gliding over the greenish-blue seas.

David Thoreson was incredulous.

For the previous couple of hours, he’d been scrambling to and fro across the decks of Ocean Watch, long lens in hand, shooting birds in flight, and the moment he set the camera down, arguably the most majestic image of the morning slipped fleetingly by.

“Pretty good timing, Warren,” he thought, ironically.

And that, we’re happy to report, has been the most fraught and unsettling moment of the day so far. Man oh man, what a difference a day makes.

For today, just 24 hours after a rude spanking from a Roaring Forties gale, the crew of Ocean Watch basked in the sun and took in the sights on one of the most glorious days imaginable, whatever your latitude.

“Roaring Forties?” wondered Dave Logan aloud at some point this morning, just about the time that first cup of java kicked in. “This is more like the Fantastic Forties.”

As usual, he was right.

With the passing of yesterday’s cold front, a massive high-pressure system has eased off the coast of Patagonia, with lovely blue skies overhead and a pleasant northwesterly breeze filling in from astern. It’s translated to a day of bird watching, quiet conversation, welcome rest, and in a couple of cases, necessary recovery in the wake of those gale-force conditions.

Last night was clear, and cold: We’d been told we’d encounter crisp air just two days south of our last port of call, in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and those rumors have been substantiated. Two days ago I was bodysurfing off Mar del Plata in 68º waters that were fresh but not unpleasant. Today, the seawater temperature gauge sits at 54º. Something tells me I’ve had my last dip for a while.

The temperature isn’t the only thing that’s changing. Take the length of the days, for instance: They’re longer. Last night, twilight lingered until well past ten; the waning moon rose two hours later; the morning sun arrived five hours after that. This time-elapsed celestial sequence made for a short, quick, merciful night, and the new day brought a steady progression of visitors of the winged and feathered variety.

For hours and hours now, Ocean Watch has been encircled by birds, particularly albatrosses and petrels, the former regal and stately, the latter sprightly and frenetic. Of all the petrels we’ve seen, the most unforgettable have been the ones that skip atop the wavelets like flying fish, plucking snacks of some sort from the bountiful ocean.

There’s been no lack of albatrosses, either, of several species, from mottled youths to confident adults. They seem to be particularly enamored with the disturbed air off the leach of our mainsail, where they twirl and wheel to our endless joy and amazement. The greatest of them all have are the majestic wandering albatross, with their effortless flight and law-defying wingspans, jibing downwind on the thermals like a racing yacht angling towards the leeward mark.

Logan’s pictorial guide, Peter Harrison’s Seabirds of the World, has become a cockpit staple, and the entire crew is grateful to his friends and clients back in Seattle, avid birders Curtis and Bobbi Pearson, for their most generous and useful gift.

The skies are not the only element bustling with activity. Our Raymarine depth-sounder/fishfinder has been issuing forth a steady record of, well, something, hovering just 20-30 feet below the surface. Shrimp? Kelp? Fish? Temperature gradients? Current upwelling? We’ve considered all the possibilities. The only thing we’re absolutely certain it isn’t is land; the ocean floor here is a couple thousand feet below the keel.

It was a day to talk about such stuff, to ruminate on possibilities. Our newest crewmember is our latest onboard scientist, Warren Buck, a nuclear physicist by vocation with a world view that is, to put it mildly, fascinating. Warren’s particular area of expertise is neutrons and protons, and the dynamic interaction thereof. To be honest, when the talk heads in that direction, I’m not sure I’m registering high marks on the comprehension scale. But I can state with absolute certainty that as of today, my knowledge and understanding of neutrinos — they’re tiny, but active! – has expanded tenfold.

Warren is also an accomplished African-American sailor, which in the world of sailing, frankly and puzzlingly, is all too rare. He’s owned several boats, including an engineless 31-foot trimaran aboard which he cruised up and down the Atlantic, a challenge that’s even harder than it sounds. The odd thing about the lack of black American sailors (Warren correctly notes that there’s no lack of great black sailors in the Caribbean) is that the ones I’ve met – offshore racer Frank Savage, who’s won everything worth winning in the Swan class, and intrepid solo sailor Bill Pinckney, who sailed around the world, not coincidentally, in one of Ocean Watch skipper Mark Schrader’s former race boats – aren’t only passionate, they’re talented and instinctive.

So add Warren Buck to that list. Warren also underscored my Two Degrees of Separation theory about sailors, as we share mutual friends and acquaintances like accomplished multihull designers Chris White and Dick Newick, and the late, great solo racer, Phil Weld. After my blank stares about physics, it was good to shoot the breeze with Warren on a topic I could keep up with. He’s fit right in with my fellow lunatics on our floating asylum.

The other day, in the midst of the gale, skipper Schrader looked at the chart and said, “Yup, once we’ve hit the Falklands, we’ll be out of the Roaring Forties and into the Screaming Fifties. At least there you’re not hopeful about decent conditions. You know the weather’s going to be awful.”

But that was before the Roaring Forties became the Fantastic ones, before the weather gods served up one of those days you could repeat a thousand times. Yes, that was before the happy crew of Ocean Watch enjoyed an afternoon we won’t soon forget, for the weather, for the camaraderie, and for the birds.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos