Evening Ebb

The sun lit up a few clouds this morning on its morning transit. One more night in the desert before heading to the coast.

News from the Volvo Ocean Race that Team Vestas Wind put their boat on a reef off the Mauritius Islands in the Indian Ocean. According to the story, the boats are using electronic charts on their circumnavigation and several boats didn't realize there were reefs and rocks along their route: "We are offshore in the middle of nowhere, and on the chart, if you don't go on the maximum zoom you can't see anything." A lesson one would have thought anyone using electronic charts for awhile would have learned, but easy to forget if you think there's nothing in the stretch of ocean you're crossing.

Life on dirt is quite a bit different from life on a boat. The most obvious difference is being out of sync with the cycles of the moon and sun. Added a web app showing moon phases to the sidebar.

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Vessel Name:	s/v Evening Ebb
Vessel Make/Model:	1979 Pearson 365 Ketch
Hailing Port:	Washington, DC
Extra:	The boat's name comes from a poem by Robinson Jeffers: Evening Ebb The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five nightherons Fly shorelong voiceless in the hush of the air Over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings. The sun has gone down, and the water has gone [...] down From the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The ebb whispers. Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water. Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams, and the evening Star suddenly glides like a flying torch. As if we had not been meant to see her; rehearsing behind The screen of the world for another audience. More