Pos. S 40d26m W175d16m
Course ESE at 5kts
WInd S at 15kts

[In response to what he thought of the film Tuesday night, he wrote:]
Vic and Abdul was definitely good except the colonizing queen vs the colonized Muji (Abdul) makes it a little bothersome. That side of the movie is addressed by the friend of the Muji but is not very convincing.
However as a personal story and relationship it is quite good.
Actually Ham would not give us unlimited talk because it is a significant drain on the batteries. The signal depends on a lot of things but mostly: sunspot activity, quality of the antenna and distance between the transmission and reception. The waves propagate from the tranceiver by bouncing off the F layer of the ionosphere and then back to Earth where they bounce back toward the F layer and so on propagating around the Earth. The more ionized that layer is, the better they bounce, which is why sunspots are good because the send particles ionizing the atmosphere. The distance between transmitter and receiver is not necessarily critical, you just have to be at a spot where you can get the waves as they come in toward the Earth after a F layer bounce (there are what's called skip zones located pretty much under the locations of the F layer bounces - the waves are up in the ionosphere and your antenna is on the ground so wrong place at the right time!).
...

Today we are on a close reach and [near] the 40th parallel of latitude. When we're under we're officially in the roaring forties, and above no such scary label. We're move up and down according to the wind shift. We can feel that we are getting to the Southern Ocean because the skies are mostly grey so everything is grey as well. We're not far enough South yet for the majestic swells though. However we saw our first albatross today and we couldn't keep our eyes off of him. There is nothing more graceful in the world. It's so beautiful to see them fly it makes you want to cry. Far away he could have been some other seabird but then as he got closer I started to realize the size of his wing span and as he flew across the stern I could see details on his body. Worth the trip just for that!

Breakfast was yogurt fruits and lunch was guac on a pan toasted ciabatta ( mold removed ) with melted gouda on top. Also did some domestic work:
secured the liferaft better, stowed unused lines, galley cleaning.