Credits

This post is to recognize and thank several people who contributed above and beyond to the success of the voyage.

Jimmy, patron saint of our voyage

If there could be said to be a patron saint for this adventure, that recognition goes to Jimmy McPherson. From the first time we mentioned the idea two years ago, his generosity, encouragement and support in too many ways to mention have literally made the trip possible. In addition to all that, when our spirits occasionally lagged along the way, he had a gift for putting the situation back into perspective and doing so with just the right mix of encouragement and humor. As a sailor himself, he knew whereof he spoke.

During the voyage we received invaluable daily weather reports thanks to the efforts of our friend Mark Nay. Mark is one of those rare people who can resolve all manner of technical challenges with a laser-like focus. He quickly developed algorithms and a shorthand code for sending us weather forecasts in a format that we could interpret literally within seconds.

Additionally, he tracked other vessels in our area that were transmitting AIS signals outside the range of our receiver. That gave us a comforting heads up on what was heading our way.

Mark is also the person who developed the tutorial that many of you used to find our messages on the tracking map page after that turned out to be more complicated than the satellite device company had initially indicated.

Then there is Lynn Smith-Lovin, who sent us greatly anticipated world news summaries each day during the last half of the voyage. I (David) am a news junky and, with history currently being made (for better or worse), I was anxious to know about it. Lynn would send us strings of 160 character messages daily that then would give us hours of topics to discuss while looking out across the endless seascapes.

Last but not least are all of you who followed our progress and sent us messages of encouragement along the way. A highlight of every day was reading and responding to your messages. Your many questions added an unexpectedly welcome dimension to the voyage as we enjoyed answering them.

By the way, we responded to every message we received. Unfortunately, because the satellite device was somewhat screwed up throughout the voyage, we had no way to know if we were sending our responses to the correct person. We believe this has now been fixed, so future messages should go back and forth more seamlessly.