So much for the quiet evening we were expecting, after a few text messages, we found out there had been an earthquake in Russia and a whole bunch of Tsunami alerts issued.
Good news, it was over 3000 miles away in a different ocean – NOPE, wrong, a series of red alerts were issued down the coast of America. Bugger. Oh well, the next best place if you can’t be a long way inland is in the deep ocean – Yey!…. Ah, it turns out there could be a problem… we’re in the middle a fast-flowing 2 knot current that’s like a river at sea. The Tsunami is going to hit that at 45 degrees – what then?!?
After a bit of research, I got two conflicting answers from my friendly AIs. Claude said we should prepare as the maths said it could put up standing waves (not hugely dangerous, but needed to be managed). ChatGPT said “naaa, you’ll be fine mate, don’t worry your little socks about it”! Without having a friendly hydrologist on speed dial we decided to play it cautiously. Given my experience of AIs / LLMs when coding, I didn’t want their stock answer of “Sorry, I have failed you absolutely, but don’t worry, i’ll get it right next time”!! Not good in the middle of the ocean, so out of an abundance of caution we turned south.
After that, it was a case of waiting and actually getting some sleep.
10 hours later (at 10am) and as i’m writing this, here hasn’t been any sign of anything. We’re into the time when things should be passing through, so I guess ChatGPT was right. Anyway, we’ll give it a few hours and get back up into the current again.
Talking of which, all this routing means we have crossed the equator twice in the last 24 hrs, which means we have progressed from being “Polywogs” to “Shellbacks”, not sure what that means in real terms, but there is probably a piercing or tattoo you can get for it.
However, it was a good excuse to toast Poseidon as we made the transit. I got to make a “Michelada”, which is a very salty / spicy mixer you put into your beer that I really got a taste for in Galapagos.
So that’s about it for now – will keep a watch to see if anything changes and then back into knocking off the miles.. Tates still isn’t feeling great, so she’s falling behind in the coffee drinking as she’s on lemon and honey at the moment.
