Mar 1 — No Robinson Crusoe Island this one...

Jacob is approaching Tamana Island, which has about 1,000 residents. I would guess he is not stopping, but is well within sight of it now.

On GE you can zoom in to see the details.

Here is a 1984 thesis on the island and its people and culture at this link on the bottom of the page.

(direct link does not seem to work. let me know if you cannot get it.)

http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10063/531.

back with weather and sea report tomorrow when we will know if he stopped or not.  The coral surrounding this island could be pretty rough on the boat, so it would be a certain risk.

Feb 20 — Change two hemispheres at once... almost

I was originally thinking this:  A waypoint on the horizon for Jacob is 0º N, 180º W. If he does cross through that point he will go from Northern Hemisphere to Southern Hemisphere at the sametime he goes from Western Hemisphere to Eastern.  Clearly one of the unique places on earth.

Through his trip for the past eight months, his Lat has been getting smaller and his longitude has been getting bigger. Once he crosses that point, both of these will reverse. Lat will increase; he has to go from 0 at the Equator to 17 S at Cairns, and in longitude he has to go from 180 E 146 E.

But in reality he got pushed farther west, so he is now well in to eastern longitudes, but still about 1º above the equator.

After a day or so on the sea anchor, progress is back to very good. We have nice confirmation of the current models during the recent lull. Always hard to measure in the conditions he has but he is confident he was seeing 1 kt or more to the West  and that was the forecast at the time.  I think we have good current data for around Feb 14, but still have to check it.

Time to start looking out for atolls and islands. more on that later.

here is latest video update which shows the new way we are passing on forecasts to Jacob using meteograms made in LuckGrib.

Feb 12 — Update weather outlook, new current data.

These notes are periodic updates to a progress report on a transpacific ocean row using state of the art weather overlays in Google Earth. Description of the Project.  See also Index of data sets in use.

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Latest video is weather update, with new currents. Recall OSCAR is only updated every 5 days.

We also discuss range rings on the destination as a way to monitor progress.

There are two videos, one looking at the Google Earth data; the other looking at the LuckGrib analysis of the wind and current forecasts.

And then this one using LuckGrib

Feb 8 — 400 nmi rings and tropical storm stats

These notes are periodic updates to a progress report on a transpacific ocean row using state of the art weather overlays in Google Earth. Description of the Project.  See also Index of data sets in use.

*   *  *

We added 400 nmi rings to help estimate progress. The display is shown below. You can turn it on or off or just turn on any one of them. He is now approaching the 2400 nmi off distance, 6 x 400.

These rings serve a couple purposes. One, they monitor how far to go, and two they remind us if we are travelling parallel to one of these lines, we are not getting any closer to Cairns.

If Jacob makes good a speed of 1.5 kts, which he has been over recent days, then it takes 400/1.5 = 266.7 hr = 11 days to make good 400 nmi.

Right now it looks like 6.5 x 11 days = 72.2 days to go.

One thing a navigator can benefit from that is often overlooked is a simple list of the days of the year that are numbered, ie Jan 1 = day 1. The Nautical Almanac Office of the USNO knows this is valuable because they put such a table in every almanac, as shown below.

This is not the NAO version, which I will add later. This is one was just made as a placeholder to finish these thoughts.

Today is Feb 8, which is day 39, and 39 + 72 = 111, which is April 21.  Chances are very good that he will not get there that early, and that is good news considering the tropical storm season will not be over then.

Here is a picture from our Starpath Weather Trainer Live software.

We see the peak in storms is Feb with 4.1 with April down to just 1.7. If all goes well, arrival time is likely to be in May, where we are down a factor of over 10 from the peak.

Feb 8 — Pushed West

These notes are periodic updates to a progress report on a transpacific ocean row using state of the art weather overlays in Google Earth. Description of the Project.  See also Index of data sets in use.

*   *  *

My apologies. Got tied up in the office and did not make the Feb 4th video, but will add one now on these topics:

-- Review of Feb 4 notes.

-- A big hearty welcome to John Wickham's 6th grade science class at Stoller Middle School in Portland, OR, who are following along with Jacob's progress.  Please do not hesitate to post questions in the blog and I will answer them.

-- Also if other schools are following along, please let me know.  You can also contact us at helpdesk@starpath.com or 206-783-1414.

-- Below is a video showing how we analyze the route using LuckGrib.

Feb 4 —One correction and new data sources

These notes are periodic updates to a progress report on a transpacific ocean row using state of the art weather overlays in Google Earth. Description of the Project.  See also Index of data sets in use.

*   *  *

In the Feb 2 post i had  missed one red dot, so progress was not as good as it seemed. But now we have confirmed about 35 nmi a day in the right direction.

New to the data are extended BOM wind forecasts up to 96h .  If you step through these winds you will see his winds are veering around to the east over the next 4 days.

We also expanded the oscar and rtofs current range to cover present location. these forecasts do not agree.

Plus add a  new RL from feb2 position to Cairns

Will add video shortly to discuss this and look at ways to plan ahead on such an unusual voyage which will introduce the use of LuckGrib for weather routing.

Plus a note on a new way to access the data which i just learned about.  this is the GE menu item "add network link."

Hope to get the video going today feb 4 or tomorrow.

Feb 2 —New Data Sources: Clouds and OSCAR Currents

These notes are periodic updates to a progress report on a transpacific ocean row using state of the art weather overlays in Google Earth. Description of the Project.  See also Index of data sets in use.

*   *  *

All seems to be going well. Jacob covered a total of about 126 nmi over the past 3 days for an average of 42 nmi/day (1.75 kts).

Recent additions to the GE display include cloud cover and the OSCAR currents, which have been missing due to government shutdown.

Will also try today to move a copy of the first post into this blog.  Not sure if we will need both blog and video channel, but for now we have both. This can at least be used to update the videos or correct mistakes.

Discussion of Feb 2 conditions at