Many of you may already know of the genius cartoons expressed by XKCD. If this is your first time hearing about it…. you’re welcome…. enjoy… www.xkcd.com

I wrote about our 4 day passage from Culebra, Puerto Rico to Great Inagua, Bahamas, briefly glazing over the wonders of the Puerto Rico Trench. My writing failed to serve it justice. Months later of this dormant guilt I found something incredible! I found an old xkcd comic giving the Puerto Rico Trench its’ well-deserved prominence in the below sketch including amazing detail and facts of the ocean. With resurfaced fortitude…. I give you… The Puerto Rico Trench on our blogsite via Kirsten’s account with visual aid from xkcd…

Prior to leaving, I was unaware of the trench. In fact, as I was sailing along a beautiful sunny beam reach with light surf, Mike down below sound asleep, I looked at our charts and saw depths of 16,000 feet I followed the contour lines further……19,000…. 23,000…27,000 feet! I thought to myself ‘Wow…. that sounds deep.’ And as I thought about it some more…. I recalled, we didn’t even see depths like that in our Bermuda crossing, in fact, it was a half of that. I scrolled in and out of the charts looking for details and I found it, starring me right in the face The Puerto Rico Trench. ‘Why hello there’ (I hope I don’t fall in).

The Puerto Rico trench is 28,378 ft (8,648 meters) deep or 5.37 miles deep. It is the second deepest trench in the world. They named the deepest part of the trench Milwaukee Deep, after the subpar beer of course……. NO, not of course. It’s named after the vessel that sounded the deepest part of the trench on the 14th of February in 1939. Now for the true genius….

*****Below is the great cartoon with seemingly accurate information – aside from the depiction of David Bowie at 6,000 m… Even if Freddie Mercury is under pressure, I don’t think he’d go that deep, I think he’s in the outer reaches of our galaxy.

http://xkcd.com/1040/large/