We pass today by a hair the zenith. This zenith is the cut of the line between the middle point the sun and earth with the surface. In other words; where the sun in all directions have an angle of 90 degrees with the surface.

We were just 8 miles away from this point, so there was almost no shadow. Although this may be evidence for tropic waters, we might as well think that we are on the Bonkevaart.

Despite the fact that we ignore the GPS and only use astronomical positioning, we are not that wrong. We are going to catch ‘skaters’. Not with a bowl of soup or aniseed milk, but with a catamaran and a net.

These ‘skaters’ are little insects which walk or jump over the surface of the ocean, and we do not know a lot about these insects. That is why we got Martien and Lanna on board, two scientists who study this journey these skating insects. 

Today we used the calm weather to lower the catamaran on sea and we caught last night 11 of these skating insects… of each city one?

Richard Slootweg
Captain Clipper Stad Amsterdam