"The invisible summer, seamless from spring to fall," said Bill Patzert, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who studies the role of oceans in the global climate. "The ocean never warmed," Patzert said. The cause was a stalled jet stream pattern in the Northern Hemisphere that created a semi-permanent trough of low pressure from Alaska to southern Baja California, Mexico, and kept the entire west coast of North America cool, Patzert said.
But now our attention turns to New Morning as we have roughly two months to prepare everything we need for a year of cruising. We plan to return to Panama in early December and repair the autopilot, install the new solar panels and fix a few other problems that were identified back in April. These include an incorrectly plumbed shaft seal vent, broken raw water pump, and a few problems we created ourselves while decommissioning in April. We have plenty to keep us busy, probably right up until Christmas. Then we plan to return to the San Blas Islands for a few months before transiting the canal in late March.
