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| Day 85 |
30 June 2000 |
| Banda Sea |
| "A Rozengain By Another Name" |
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A few surprised faces at breakfast this morning. Banda is
clearly in sight again. We have sailed a day and a half and made
good 15 miles.
It would be easy to get demoralised by this painfully slow
progress. Yet what we have done since leaving Banda is
remarkable. We have lugged 110 tonnes of timber and gear these
15 miles into the waves, using nothing but the wind to travel
against itself, catching it in hand-stitched flax sails, trimmed
to the wind by muscle power, steering the ship every centimetre
by hand. I have always thought that sailing upwind is like
rolling a ball uphill using gravity. There is a bit of magic in
it. There. I feel less demoralised already.
We pass close to the east of Pulau Hatta, named after the
independence leader who was exiled in Banda by the Dutch. Hatta
later went on to become vice president of the new republic.
Pulau Hatta was previously known as Pulau Rozengain. The
upper-merchant on Duyfken's 1606 voyage to Australia, Jan
Loderwycksz, must have liked the name so much that he added it
to his own. Thus it was Jan Loderwycksz van Rozengain who
arrived in Cape York Peninsula looking for trade. As if his name
weren't already a mouthful.
We wear ship again after lunch and just before sunset we pass
east of Pulau Hatta again at about the same distance as before.
Now we have sailed two and a half days for the same 15 miles
made good. But are we demoralised? Well, I can see a few faces
turned longingly towards the soft, stable beds of Banda Neira's
hotels.
We have a fuel crisis on our hands. The diesel we bought in
Banda is very dirty and is clogging up the filters on the
generator in no time. Since we have only a limited supply of
filter elements Mick has to find another way of cleaning the
fuel. He is trying draining it into a drum through a funnel
stuffed with cotton wool out of the medicine chest, then pouring
the strained fuel back in the tank. A labourious task. We will
have to wait to see if it is successful.
While the generator is out of action we have to pump the bilges
using the two elm pumps that discharge into a channel in the
deck of the cabin. These pumps are authentic in every detail,
including the sweat that pours off the operators within a couple
of minutes of manning them.
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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