Jon T. Howard - North Atlantic Gyre Blog #13

I arrived at the Haven Grande port in St. Thomas last night around 9:30 pm after leaving LA at 6:00 am. Needless to say it was a long day and four time time zones later I was finally at my destination. I was greeted on the Sea Dragon by Anna Cummins and Dr. Marcus Erikesen from 5Gyres.org with a cold beer and a warm meal which sure felt good. I was given a quick tour of the boat and then just did some unwinding after my day of travel. I woke up this morning January 5th, 2010 to a clear blue sky and 85 degrees. I had a great nights sleep being gently rocked on the boat but I know that won't be the norm once we hit the open ocean on the 7th. While I slept, the port filled up with huge cruise line ships and private luxury yachts from around the world and the Haven Grande Yacht area is bustling with tourists this morning. I have the morning off to get acclimated to the area while the crew gathers the last few things we need for our voyage and we wait for the rest of the people joining the adventure to arrive. I am currently nursing a large iced Americano at a local coffee shop called Bad Ass Coffee with Stiv Wilson from Wend Magazine (http://www.wendmag.com/). It is great to be working with such a cool group of people who really care about the environment and are trying to figure out ways to make things better. I am truly grateful for the opportunity that EcoUsable (http://www.ecousable.com/) has given me to be apart of this crew. Here is what I have learned so far... The Sea Dragon is nearly 100,000 pounds of wielded steel and has a zero class rating. It is capable of sailing during any conditions the weather and seas present and has been around the world twice. It began it's journey to St. Thomas out of the UK and went down through Cape Verde, Portugal, and Morocco before heading west to the Caribbean Islands. They are saying the first week should be warm and sunny but as we head further north the weather get much cooler and the winds will pick up. Once we set sail our global position will be posted via a GPS satelite on http://www.panexplore.com/. Until next time...

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