Captain's Blog 1/15/12

DATE 1/15
TIME 0700 LT, 1200 GMT
LAT 17-37N
LON 75-22W
C 209
S 15K
RPM 70
DEPTH 800 METERS
WIND NE FORCE 4
SKY 6/8
PRES 1020
AIR 78/72
SEA 80
36 NM EAST OF MORANT CAYS

Sunday at sea is a tradition at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Only those personnel assigned to essential tasks like watch standing or sanitary maintenance have to work. Everyone else gets to sleep in, wear MMA leisure gear, enjoy a Helo Deck cook-out - just about anything they desire. We've been at it for two weeks now, one week out of Buzzards Bay, which isn't all that long, but everyone will enjoy the day nonetheless.

Our satellite TV system met the challenge yesterday - as everyone was able to watch the Patriots overcome Tebow-Time in Foxboro. We were pretty unsure about the system, as we found ourselves coincidentally between continental USA DTV and Caribbean DTV - which involves changing out a receiving component, contacting the company, and getting the black boxes 'activated'.

It looked like it was going to fail on Saturday morning, but we took a chance and changed everything on Friday - and it worked! But come yesterday afternoon the signal was lost. Not knowing why, we speculated that Cuba's mountains might be mixing it up. So, we speeded up the ship a little, and made the turn at Windward Passage at a little after 1900 - once we were steering 180 degrees- bingo, we had the signal. The 49'ers fans got to see the final quarter, and everyone got to see the Patriot's win. Tomorrow I'll report on the activities during the Sunday at sea.