Ship Ahoy (sequel to "Star of Water")

              Welcome aboard, welcome to my observatory. This private observatory is about the size of a bedroom—in fact, it is a bedroom—with pale blue walls and sailor-white windowsills. The room’s two windowed-walls join at the top corner of my house, reminding one of a ship’s head. Spanned outside the windows is greenery, but for now, imagine the panorama to be as blue as the wall. There is only one wooden chair, so if you could draw up the folded extra leaning in the corner, that would be great. You must now be thinking that the place looks nothing like an observatory. There are no mass cylinders, electric circuits, telescopes, or brass scales after all. But not to worry—a laptop, a globe, and a small trunk of books will be enough for our expedition. Ship Ahoy!

Open your laptop and google Earth Null School Ocean Currents Map (NASA and NOAA are also possible destinations, if you prefer). The screen turns black, as with the scenery outside the windows. We are in space. Adjust our space shuttle and zoom in closer, and a dazzling blue marble comes into view. And in the marble’s blue is The Ocean.

First things first, let us check in with Korea’s east coast. The ocean current is headed out toward the sea. The wind must be blowing offshore—perfect for surfing. The data script tells us that the wind is indeed offshore, with speed 9 knots—the waves would be great for amateur surfers. Sadly though, the data is not real-time. This is the earth a day and seven hours ago. Another map, Windfinder, shows us that the wind is parallel to the shore right now. Not a surf-able sea. You could almost hear the surfers of east coast sighing.

Now, let us turn our binoculars to wherever the wind leads us. A million small current vectors slide across the globe in a single network. Flowing, whirling, meeting, and parting to form a delicate dance. Gyres and eddies are not the perfect circle that our school’s textbook shows, but they are in equilibrium with the entire system, dynamic but graceful.

The current is moving east in the Strait of Gibraltar, into the Mediterranean Sea. Then the waters below must be moving east to the Atlantic, but the map doesn’t show it. Drop the anchor, mate, and let us take a closer look. The water is faster in the strait than it is a hundred kilometer away. Will Mr. Bernoulli pull out the equation of continuity? Are the different wind speeds the culprit?

Enter Mr. Cushman-Roisin and Robert H Stewart, second navigation officers of our crew. Their books give us the answers to the speculations. The graphs and sectional diagrams of seas hold as many secrets as the lost maps of Atlantis. When they explain in vector calculus, however, I am lost. Websites and mathematical physics books are there to help. But even with the extra rowing, we occasionally find ourselves dead in the water. Mayday! Here comes chief navigation officer Professor Kim. He is disguised as a high school mathematics teacher, but he had worked modeling Antarctica’s ocean ice before coming to the school. During lunchtimes and free periods, Mr. Kim becomes the ship’s veteran sailor.

Together, we sail into the ocean. Whether we are under a sky bejeweled with stars or in the middle of a unrelenting storm with raging waters, the navigation will never end.