VOYAGES

1999 Voyage | Spring 2002 Navigation Contest | Fall 2002

SPRING 2002 NAVIGATION CONTEST

Voyage 2002 begins on April 7 at San Juan, Puerto Rico. The first leg ends in Norfolk, Virginia on April 14. (click on this map for a larger version) This leg of the voyage will be on the ship Norwegian Majesty (a cruise ship), rather than Easy Wind (our sailboat). You can follow the our of this voyage on our web site and enter our "discussion zone" with your comments and ideas.

Here's a map of the route travelled so far. Click on the image for a larger version. The longitude and latitude numbers correspond with the information given in the Ship's Log, which you can access by clicking its link at the top of the page.

Please enter our Navigation Olympics--a contest that asks you to predict our longitude and latitude at nine different points during the passage. These nine times will be at 8:30AM (Eastern Daylight Savings Time), 11:30 AM, and 2:30 PM on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of April 11-13. Calculate our position based on the previous log entry, our bearing and our speed. Send your guess to our discussion zone at least one half an hour before the next log entry. Three winners will be chosen each day and an overall winner will be chosen for the entire contest.

There will be bonus questions too. Join the fun (but let us know that you are going to take part so that we can assign you a code name for the contest) Contact Captain Lathrop at captain@virtualvoyages.net or dicklathrop@prodigy.net. It's free!

Instructions for submitting your estimate of our position:

You should send in to our web site your best guesstimate of our position on our next log entry. This log entry will be made three hours after the previous one, and your input must come in at least a half an hour before the log entry is scheduled.

Times of log entries:

GMT	Eastern Daylight Savings
1230	0830 (8:30 AM)
1539	1130 (11:30 AM)
1830	1430 (2:30 PM)

Enter your guess of our longitude and latitude. Use degrees and tenths of a degree (rather than minutes and seconds) for your entry. For example, if you thought our latitude would be 23 degrees 30 minutes North, you would enter 23.5 in the box labeled "degrees North" because 30 minutes is half (.5) of a degree. Do the same with latitude.

Submit your entries to: voyage2002@virtualvoyages.net. You can either click the link, type your submission in the email form that pops up, and then hit "send," or else copy and paste the email address into the email program of your choice and send it that way.

There are several different ways to calculate our position, but the easiest way would be to figure out how far the boat will go in three hours (using the speed in Knots on our log entry). Once you know this distance you could make a circle (part of a circle, really) in your map using this distance as the radius of the circle. Use a drawing compass. Use the ship's known position (from previous log entry) as the center of the circle.

Using a protractor, figure out the direction the ship is moving. You know this from the ship's course given in "degrees true". From the known ship's position, draw a line that represents the ship's course.

The place where this line intersects the circle is the place that the ship should be at the next log entry (if it does not alter course or speed). Find the longitude and latitude of this point. It is your best guess of the ship's position at the next log entry.

Good Luck.

Captain Lathrop

PS. For the first entry on Thursday Morning, calculate the distance from the entry made Wednesday night. There will be other night entries made, but they won't be at predictable times nor will they count for the contest.

Here are the results of the contest so far:

	Mastrandrea Family	Wild Family	Sarah Mader	Cap'n Dick's Position
4/11 0830	22.1ºN, 67.8ºW	21.8ºN, 65.2ºW		21.2°N, 65.9°W
4/11 1130				22.0°N, 66.3°W
4/11 1430	22.9ºN, 66.7ºW	23.0ºN, 66.1ºW		22.7°N, 66.7°W
4/11 2030				24.3°N, 67.6°W
4/12 0830	27.7ºN, 69.8ºW	26.2ºN, 68.5ºW		27.4°N, 69.4°W
4/12 1130	28.3ºN, 69.7ºW	27.8ºN, 70.1ºW		28.2°N, 69.8°W
4/12 1430				29.0°N, 70.3°W
4/12 1940				30.3°N, 70.1°W
4/13 0830	33.6ºN, 72.4ºW	32.0ºN, 72.3ºW		33.4°N, 72.5°W
4/13 1130	41.2ºN, 72.9ºW	34.0ºN, 73.4ºW		34.1°N, 72.9°W
4/13 1430	34.9ºN, 73.4ºW	35.0ºN, 73.2ºW	36.3ºN, 68.0ºW	34.9°N, 73.4°W

...and here's a chart showing the waypoints. Click on the image for a larger version.

Here are the results of the navigation contest's bonus questions:

Event	Latitude	Longitude	Time	Other Info.
Cross Tropic of Cancer	23.5 North	067.3 West	04/11/02 1730 hrs. LT
Cross Path of Columbus's first voyage West	24.0 North	067.6 West	04/11/02 1923 hrs. LT	Didn't spot any of his ships. 509 ½ years too late.
Nearest Bermuda	29.6 North	070.3 West	04/12/02 1810 hours local time	330 nautical miles away

	Tropic of Cancer		Columbus Voyage		Bermuda Closest
Latitude	M:	W: 23.5 N	M:	W:25.2N	M:30.0 N	W:30.5 N
Longitude	M:067.0W	W:067.0W	M:	W:068.5W	M:071.2W	W:070.1W
Time	M:1714 ½	W:1630	M:	W:0230	M:1418	W:2000
Distance						W:359.6
WINNER	MASTRANDREA!			WILD!		WILD!

The score for the Navigation Olympics is:

Mastrandrea: 7 Wild: 2

The score for the Bonus Questions is:

Mastrandrea: 1 Wild: 2

The Mastrandreas are the Overall Contest Winners.