The last minute preparations are being completed and the T.S. Kennedy is almost ready to set sail. The ship is clean and shiny, the gauges have all been checked, the library is stocked and ready, The lines are tied and the flags are flying.

The ship sets sail on Saturdays high tide, so Follow the Voyage classrooms, be ready to begin collecting data for your log book. On the FTV Blog on the right hand column you will click on ship tracker

The Ship Tracker Screen will appear, you will see a map of Buzzards Bay with little red dots around it. These dots are the ships location for a given day. Beneath the map are links to data you need to record. For example: the tides, temperature, and visibility readings.

Beneath those links you will see the name of the ship and its current position (longitude & latitude) Using the new position plot the ships new position. Draw a line between the two dots. This is the new distance.

Measure the distance between the previous location and the current location (using the map key) to get the distance traveled for that time period. Using the distance and time period you can calculate the average velocity for the day using the formula Velocity= distance/time.

Alternatively, you can calculate the distance using this online calculator

Next return to the blog entry and perform the activities suggested.

In case you want to brush up on your navigation skills, or practice gathering voyage data you can try these activities.

Read this to see how sea navigators measure their ships speed?

Try this Where on earth are you?