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| Day 107 |
23 July 2000 |
| Arafura Sea |
| "For The Record" |
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Captain's Journal
Day 107
Duyfken
Lat: 9 56 S, Long: 135 42 E
Arafura Sea
23 July, 2000
'For the Record'
I have stopped the leak. After many attempts to find the place
where the water was getting through the deck and dripping down
over the chart table, I seem to have succeeded at last. We pass
through a couple of rain squalls today and not a drop comes in.
I feel a sense of achievement out of proportion to the small
quantity of sticky black goo that cured the problem. But how
irritating that little trickle of water was, dripping on the
navigator's head or, if nobody was about, splashing onto the
chart and turning it into a pulpy mush. Each rain shower meant
rushing to the aft cabin and spreading a cover over the chart
table to save the chart from this fate.
The leak was a worry for another reason. Inside the hinged lid
of the chart table lives the laptop computer I am typing on now.
It serves as the terminal for our link with the rest of the
world. It brings us weather reports and navigation warnings, and
allows us to send and receive telex messages and emails. Most
importantly, if we were to get into serious trouble it is the
only means, besides our emergency beacon, of sending out a
distress message. And the leak was directly above the keyboard.
More than once on this voyage a drop of water has landed on the
computer and made it so unhappy it stopped working for a couple
of days. I hope these problems are behind us.
I should describe my daily writing ritual. Each night after
dinner, about the time I feel like falling asleep, I go into the
aft cabin, turn on the computer and try to think of something
out of our daily shipboard life that might interest a
net-surfer. I usually write for an hour or more, during which
time Andrea or Gary will come in once or twice and shoo me out
of the way while they plot the ship's position or send off a
weather report.
To write at the computer I either wedge myself in the narrow gap
between the heel of the mizzen mast and the chart table, or I
unplug the computer and sit in my hammock with it in my lap,
swinging from side to side with the roll of the ship, which is
what I am doing now. When I finish the journal I will plug it
back into the transceiver and send it down the line.
The communications system we use is called Inmarsat C. The
message I write gets converted into telex format by the
transceiver on board and sent, via satellite, to a land station
in Perth. Here the message is converted into an email by some
magical process that is a mystery to me, but I'm happy to
imagine a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters
keying ship's messages into the internet.
My messages are addressed to Graeme, Duyfken's CEO, in Perth.
Each morning he checks his emails, takes the Captain's Journal
and sends it on to our website, where it is automatically
uploaded and available for viewing immediately.
Inmarsat C messages are not as cheap as emails. They cost one
cent per keystroke. This page of journal, for instance, will
cost $49.08. I hope it is worth it.
I often get a strange sensation that I am calling into a void,
that I send these journals off into cyber-space and they get
lost up there among all the busy traffic of information, useful
and otherwise, that is the internet. Every now and then I get
some feedback and it comes as a pleasant surprise to learn that
someone is reading them. People out there on the land are
interested in what we are doing out here on the sea, which seems
strange because we have been going at it long enough now that it
feels routine, almost mundane. Knowing the interest this voyage
has generated reminds me of the significance of what we are
doing. These working days of ours may seem to us like the
monotony of days at sea on a sailing ship, yet the fact that
someone is reading this is testimony to the novelty of our
undertaking.
In a few days we will be landing in Australia, some four hundred
years after possibly the first landing there by Europeans. It
was an event that marked a dramatic, if for a long while only
symbolic, change in the continent's place in the world. When
Jansz stepped ashore and drew his maps he linked Australia
irrevocably with the rest of the world. He placed the new land
into that vast network of knowledge, growing exponentially to
this day, which it has been our obsession to record, first on
paper, now electronically. At that moment Australia became part
of recorded history for the first time.
This journal is also part of that obsession to record. It is not
sufficient that we just do this re-enactment, but we must
document it as well. We must get the word out about this little
known but momentous moment, the first moment, in our recorded
history. Australians, everyone, should know about it.
Now they can read about it. For only $49.08
Peter Manthorpe
Master
I have stopped the leak. After many attempts to find the place
where the water was getting through the deck and dripping down
over the chart table, I seem to have succeeded at last. We pass
through a couple of rain squalls today and not a drop comes in.
I feel a sense of achievement out of proportion to the small
quantity of sticky black goo that cured the problem. But how
irritating that little trickle of water was, dripping on the
navigator's head or, if nobody was about, splashing onto the
chart and turning it into a pulpy mush. Each rain shower meant
rushing to the aft cabin and spreading a cover over the chart
table to save the chart from this fate.
The leak was a worry for another reason. Inside the hinged lid
of the chart table lives the laptop computer I am typing on now.
It serves as the terminal for our link with the rest of the
world. It brings us weather reports and navigation warnings, and
allows us to send and receive telex messages and emails. Most
importantly, if we were to get into serious trouble it is the
only means, besides our emergency beacon, of sending out a
distress message. And the leak was directly above the keyboard.
More than once on this voyage a drop of water has landed on the
computer and made it so unhappy it stopped working for a couple
of days. I hope these problems are behind us.
I should describe my daily writing ritual. Each night after
dinner, about the time I feel like falling asleep, I go into the
aft cabin, turn on the computer and try to think of something
out of our daily shipboard life that might interest a
net-surfer. I usually write for an hour or more, during which
time Andrea or Gary will come in once or twice and shoo me out
of the way while they plot the ship's position or send off a
weather report.
To write at the computer I either wedge myself in the narrow gap
between the heel of the mizzen mast and the chart table, or I
unplug the computer and sit in my hammock with it in my lap,
swinging from side to side with the roll of the ship, which is
what I am doing now. When I finish the journal I will plug it
back into the transceiver and send it down the line.
The communications system we use is called Inmarsat C. The
message I write gets converted into telex format by the
transceiver on board and sent, via satellite, to a land station
in Perth. Here the message is converted into an email by some
magical process that is a mystery to me, but I'm happy to
imagine a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters
keying ship's messages into the internet.
My messages are addressed to Graeme, Duyfken's CEO, in Perth.
Each morning he checks his emails, takes the Captain's Journal
and sends it on to our website, where it is automatically
uploaded and available for viewing immediately.
Inmarsat C messages are not as cheap as emails. They cost one
cent per keystroke. This page of journal, for instance, will
cost $49.08. I hope it is worth it.
I often get a strange sensation that I am calling into a void,
that I send these journals off into cyber-space and they get
lost up there among all the busy traffic of information, useful
and otherwise, that is the internet. Every now and then I get
some feedback and it comes as a pleasant surprise to learn that
someone is reading them. People out there on the land are
interested in what we are doing out here on the sea, which seems
strange because we have been going at it long enough now that it
feels routine, almost mundane. Knowing the interest this voyage
has generated reminds me of the significance of what we are
doing. These working days of ours may seem to us like the
monotony of days at sea on a sailing ship, yet the fact that
someone is reading this is testimony to the novelty of our
undertaking.
In a few days we will be landing in Australia, some four hundred
years after possibly the first landing there by Europeans. It
was an event that marked a dramatic, if for a long while only
symbolic, change in the continent's place in the world. When
Jansz stepped ashore and drew his maps he linked Australia
irrevocably with the rest of the world. He placed the new land
into that vast network of knowledge, growing exponentially to
this day, which it has been our obsession to record, first on
paper, now electronically. At that moment Australia became part
of recorded history for the first time.
This journal is also part of that obsession to record. It is not
sufficient that we just do this re-enactment, but we must
document it as well. We must get the word out about this little
known but momentous moment, the first moment, in our recorded
history. Australians, everyone, should know about it.
Now they can read about it. For only $49.08
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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