From Ron - One Year!

Sorry I didn't get to post this a couple of days ago on the actually anniversary of the start of the voyage. Tom and Amy have sent me their coordinates all year long so that I can maintain the maps in the blog. That information also allowed me to compute, with reasonable accuracy, the distance travelled.

Between the Presidio Yatch Club in Marin to Musket Cove in Fiji, I compute that the Sandpiper has covered 8142 nautical miles. That is 9370 statute miles. To put it into perspective, that is like driving two laps around the lower 48-states.

But... they have only travelled 63 degrees west of San Francisco, which is about 1/6 of the way around the world (360 degrees). They have, however, travelled 55 degrees south of San Francisco, which is about 1/3 of the distance between the north and south poles.

If you have Google Earth, you can take a quick "flying" tour of the voyage so far. It is really cool to do this. Follow these instructions:

• Click HERE to get the Sandpiper's GE file, which should start Google Earth on your PC.
• On the menu bar, click TOOLS > OPTIONS...
• Click the "Touring" tab
• Under "Driving Directions Tour Options", set the "Camera Tilt Angle" to 45.0
• Set the "Camera Range" to 500 meters
• Click "OK"
• On the menu bar, click TOOLS > Play Tour

Google Earth should then zoom over to the Presidio Yacht Club, then fly to each point on the voyage, pause, then fly to the next point. Let me know if you have any problems.

Ron