20. October 2022
Authors: Manuel, Constantin
Position: Dartmouth, harbour
Nautical Position: 50°24.07’ N 003°34.5’ W
Etmal: 429,7 NM
 
We are still waiting in the harbour of Dartmouth, England. Like yesterday, the weather doesn’t allow us to depart from Dartmouth to the next stage Vigo because the wind is blowing against our route to the south. Nevertheless, we had a pretty interesting day with a lot of input.

Benno’s Workshop
We started our day with the first pathway-presentation by Lea. We learned a lot about the deep-sea, diving records, submarines and animals living in the depth of the ocean. After this amazing first presentation, Benno started his spontaneous workshop about society and how we want to form our future. The workshop started with an introduction of Benno about missing positive future visions. Nowadays, we are confronted with a lot of problems about our planet, society, human beings and about our future. The question we were supposed to ask ourselves was: “In what society do you want to live in the future?”. Everyone had 15min to take some notes, get an overview about our wishes and overthink how we want to design our utopia. Then we all came together in small groups of three and discussed/exchanged our thoughts. The last part was the talk with the whole group.

Ship routine while moored
Like the last two days we had some electricians on board. They checked the whole Pelican of London about any technical problems to make sure we have a trouble-free voyage to the Caribbean. For that purpose, some lightbulbs were replaced so some of us had a shower in the dark :D.
 
Oceanography
In the afternoon, an old navy friend of our Captain Chris came to talk to us about oceanography. Sadly, we weren’t able to visit Mr. Steven Shanks in the Royal Navy Academy in Dartmouth because they have very strict regulations for visitors.  One of the fundamentals of oceanography is salinity. Salinity is basically the amount of salt in 1000g of seawater, which varies everywhere around the world. The average salinity is 3.5%, 35 PSU, or just 35 which means there are 35g of salt in 1000g of water. The salinity effects the vessel buoyancy, the corrosion and the quality of drinking water. We also learned something about systems which keep the PoL moving and the world with all their ecosystems sorted. The ocean-atmosphere-system organizes transformation from heat from the air to the water between the equator and the poles (You can find an example down below). Together with the thermohaline-circulation there are different currents, which keep the water moving all over the ocean. It is very important to observe all the currents because you can guarantee safe and efficient shipping and marine transportation for humans and the environment.

By the way, Mr. Steven Shanks joined the navy about 25 years ago. He was working in a submarine but now his main-focus is on ocean geography and mapping the ocean.
 
Be positive 🙂
All in all, we had a really interesting and informative day. We learned a lot about the ocean, which we can see while we are writing this daily report. These backgrounds make it easier for us to understand how exciting this voyage is. We hope the weather will let us leave Dartmouth in the near future, so we can start the trip to Vigo, but we’ll stay positive and make the best out of this beautiful city.
 
We wish you an amazing rest of the week, stay tuned!