Sunday 15th of May

18 May 2016

Update Hans Houweling:
“Today is the fourth day since we set sail to cross ‘the pond’. Twice we saw dolphins, the first time soon after leaving Bermuda and the second time yesterday. Friday, when I was up in the mast together with Tim and Jan, we got a visit from a lone swallow. We saw the occasional Bulwar’s Petrel – which breeds on the Azores -, brown with white markings and bigger than a seagull. Today, there was a sea turtle paddling alongside the ship. Yesterday, on the radar we ‘saw’ a ship crossing our track; the AIS (automatic identification system) showed it was a cargo ship heading for TT POS (Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain in the international coding system). It passed us by about 15 miles distance and we never got to really see it, since depending on conditions our vision does not reach further than 7 or 8 miles at maximum. That’s about all the life that we saw in four days.
But what an enormous amount of water we are facing all around and all the time! Very soon after leaving Bermuda the depth of the water reached 4000 meters and since then it has remained in that range. If the Atlantic is about 3000 miles (5000 km) wide, 6000 miles (10,000 km) long and on average 4000 meters deep, that would amount to roughly 200,000,000,000,000,000 m3 of water, or almost 30 million m3 for each inhabitant of this planet! 
Being ‘alone’ in this vast seascape of deep blue nothingness makes one think about life and existence. For me, I have never experienced that after four days of sailing we are still heading roughly in the same direction and nothing has appeared on the horizon. We hope to reach the Azores in about another eight to ten days. On board we have modern equipment. At night we see the stars and the planets: Jupiter soon after sunset, Mars and Saturn later. I feel very tiny and vulnerable and it makes me think how seamen in former days found their way under the sky. This morning, Pentecost Sunday, a few of us exchanged religious memories of our youth and sang loud hymns on the poop deck.
However, even here things can change fast. In order to reach areas of stronger wind and better currents, we changed our course a bit to the North, thereby reaching waters in which it would be more common to meet commercial ships. In the evening an Italian cargo ship heading for Baltimore, passes us by at ‘just’ three miles.”