Canaries bound for Mar del Plata, Argentina
by Kate and Hamish Laird

23 27
19 58

We've entered the Torrid Zone, past the Tropic of Cancer. I'm off watch but I am staying up because we're going to have a partial eclipse of the sun in about half an hour. We're poised with various pieces of cardboard with different sized holes for watching the eclipse...Hamish and I might have a look through the sextant as well, but we don't want to do it in front of Helen and Anna, as they would want to try and it would be impossible for them not to look at the sun. We left several welding helmets behind us when we set sail; wish we'd thought to bring them.

It has been a lovely passage so far. We're a couple of days into it, and are still undecided whether we will stop at the Cape Verdes or not. It depends how much we have to motor between now and then. We added a new big Yankee headsail for this trip, and it has made a huge difference - we can keep sailing down to about 8 knots of true wind, whereas we used to start motoring at about 12 knots. At the moment, we have the full main up and full Yankee poled out, and Jimmy the wind pilot is at the helm.

I've been doing a lot of celestial navigation practice. Had a good one yesterday - just a couple miles off the GPS position, but I think that was just lucky. Hamish and I both started sailing in the Sat Nav era, but he was lucky enough to sail with several masters at celestial navigation. I hope to get a good grounding in it on this passage. It's an ideal one for us to practice on, as our usual passages in the Southern Ocean are too often overcast and the seas are usually too rough for a novice to even have a hope of getting a good sight. Trying to do it accurately in ideal conditions with light winds and clear skies makes me even more in awe of navigators like Worsley, who managed to get fixes in a 22.5-foot open boat en route to South Georgia. All of the Shackleton reenactment boats have used a GPS.

We've canceled regular school for Helen during the passage and instead we're studying astronomy and Spanish. With no set schedule, Helen and Anna can stay up well past dark and look at the sky, which is a rare view in this world. There's nothing like looking at the Milky Way hundreds of miles from land. We're learning the stars, and hopefully about eclipses any minute now. Spanish isn't going so well, but I'm sure Helen and Anna will pick it up quickly once we get to South America...I'm the problem. Hamish speaks it quite well, at least as far as buying mechanical parts and clearing customs.

Time to go watch the eclipse!

You can learn more about the Lairds and Seal at their website www.expeditionsail.com.