Bill Teplow - Singlehanded Sailing on a West Wight Potter 19

Subject: Bill's Position on July 30th (nine days into voyage)
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002
From: Joseph Oster

Based on the news from Nomi, I've plotted Bill's position here:

And created an animated .gif of his approximate route using satellite weather data for each of the first nine days (WARNING!!! file size: 1.5 MBytes): ANIMATION

Source of satellite imagery:
http://weather.hawaii.edu/satellite/still.cgi?chnl=ui4.5&domain=hus&anim=no&size=large&thumbs=on&banner=uhmet&satplat=goes10&overlay=on

Then, using these coordinates for:

San Francisco: 38:40N 122:20W

Hilo: 19:42N 155:06W

Bill's reported position: 29:38.0 North 131:36.0 West

and a great circle calculator found here: http://williams.best.vwh.net/gccalc.htm

Computed Bill's:

Distance traveled (nine days): 710 miles

Distance to Hilo: 1411 miles

Average speed, based on 710 miles in nine days: 79 miles per day, 3.3 knots

ETA Hilo: August 17?, 27 days total, 18 days after contact with ship (1411/79)

Bill has gone through some stormy weather at the tail end of tropical storm "Elida" up from Mexico. Winds are now very light in that area as he has gone west of the faded storm front and south of the straight line course to Hawaii.

Aloha,

Joseph Oster
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http://www.wingo.com