The winds shifted back – they were coming from the north today.
This morning we arrived on the north side of the anticyclonic eddy. With calm seas, I started my swim with Heather and David on the dinghy. We had planned to end the day with a photo session of the crew in the water with me.
Our microplastic count had dropped in the past few days to a few hundred instead of the high hundreds and thousands we had collected previously. Today the count had increased again to the high hundreds. Heather pointed out the high quantity of microplastic pieces in the water column when she swam with me for one hour, and after David made the same comment. I have to consciously think about looking for microplastics when I swim because usually, I am in my thoughts and my mind is thousands of miles away. Heather found a small glass bottle of ethanol. It had passed me and I didn’t even see it.
By the end of the day, the waters had changed and I was now swimming in the sea with waves of 1 to 1.5 meter high. With those conditions, the crew could not join me in the water and we rescheduled the photos for a later day.
When we came back to I Am Ocean, her mainsail was folded back in its place. Yoav and the crew finished the repair. Next time we will put the full main on or shake it to reef one…we will test how strong those seams are!
32° 30 N / 146° 13 W
Ben
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Photo credits @sea.marshall, @osleston, @dwlangdon
