Problem Solving on the Atlantic
Photo: Me, milkshake, 6 fingers, and watch set to 1200.
Song of the Day: Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan
I am fond of saying you need six things to solve any sailing problem.
Time, skill, ingenuity, adaptation, grit…. and money. If you have plenty of the first five you don’t need much of the last one. Most problems are solved with a mix of all six and if I could have only one… it would be time.
Time is such a funny thing, and maybe today I am thinking about it because today is one of our “double noon” days. We celebrate double noon to adjust our “ships clocks” as we move west to eventually get our watches and our bodies on Caribbean time.
Where we left from, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, was in the UTC-2 time zone, but it followed Spanish (Madrid) time and was therefore on UTC. Time zones are based on the speed at which the sun races across the earth which is about 15 degrees an hour, or four miles a second. Political choices dictate what time zone is observed. regardless of what time zone a place is actually located.
Where we are going to in the Caribbean is UTC-4. So tomorrow, we’ll get one step closer and roll the ship’s clocks back to UTC-3 by celebrating “double noon.” Next Sunday we should celebrate our final double noon and be on time for our destination, just in time to pass Barbados.
Our celebration involves marking our position at 1200 both electronically and on our paper charts, recording it in our log, seeing what our 24-hour “distance run” looks like, and pressing the “OK” button on our Spot Tracker to send a message to our families that we are indeed “OK.” Then at 1300, we do it again… but also dig into the menu system of our navigation system and iPhones and set our clocks to UTC-3. We leave the VHF radio clock set to UTC because it can be helpful for these reasons:
to settle discussions of “what time is it where?”,
radio comms often reference UTC, so having it at hand helps when overnight watches lead to foggy brains, and
because if you think the menus of the nav system are complicated… the VHF system is like a 1980’s VCR you are trying to program to record Judge Wapner at 1100.
I did say we celebrate. Last time we celebrated with fresh baked cookies, but today the ice cream in the freezer mixed with some chocolate powder and a little peanut butter is the belle of the ball.
Maybe any problem can be solved with SEVEN things. Time, skill, ingenuity, adaptation, grit, money, and… ICE CREAM!