Nationality
Panatlantic
Mon 17 Dec 2007 12:41
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Dear All,
Greetings from a blustery ocean, the wind is
blowing from the ENE at around 15knots or so, whipping up some choppy seas that
make for a bumpy ride, not that we'd expect any different! We are currently
playing some pop-culture nonsense on the MP3, Buster Rhymes or some such, not to
my tastes i'll have you know. i've been introducing James to some excellent
world music like Manu Chao, Gypsy Kings and my favourite new album Indian
Takeaway hits, the smash hit single Jaramapurnapeelatanamajana really is up
there with the best of the best to come out of Bangladesh. During my night
shifts i tend to play Rolling Stones 40 licks, Queen, Greenday or Aerosmith, all
uprising stuff in an attempt to keep me awake. We are now nearly 2 weeks in and
i've started to feel more tired at night, on saturday night i fell asleep at the
oars probably once every minute for 30 minutes during one shift, losing a lot of
ground in the process. Rachel suggested i try rowing while sleeping instead, so
last night i fell asleep rowing and we appear to have made much more ground as a
consequence!
With this wind has come our first rain, brought
forth by huge clouds shaped like angular snooker tables, minus the legs.... and
the balls; giant continents of cloud that float intimidatingly overhead before
depositing their payload upon us with relish.
The sea otter of the pacific rim is on record as
having the most dense fur of any animal: up to 100,000 hairs grow on each cm of
skin, it is so dense that the water never penetrates, they have incredibly
flexible skin that the can pull around to their mouths to blow air into the hair
thus providing more buoyancy, allowing them to sit on the water as one can in
the Dead Sea in Jordan. Ladies and gentlemen: we have a new world record holder!
Yesterday evening i counted no less than 117,764 hairs in one cm of
my upper lip! My chin comes in closely behind the otter with 89,498 hairs
per square cm. People have long commented how flexible my chin skin is, i can
grab a good handful of it without any difficulty at all. Well yesterday i found
a use for it: before popping over the side of the boat to clean off the host of
stowaways we had accumulated i pulled my chin up to my mouth and blew air into
the hair, thus providing me with the buoyancy necessary to stay sufficiently
afloat next to Komale as she charged through the waves. So, it appears that as
well as being half Irish, quarter English, quarter Scottish, one eighth Indian,
one sixth chinese, five eighths italian and one quarter spanish (the son of an
avowedly Irish man and an unquestionably Canadian woman), i appear to have some
part sea otter in my ancestry too. That's evolution for you!
Right good people, i shall leave you there. My
apologies that this is so short, we are having some difficulty recovering power
in our batteries at the moment so i must log off. Unfortunately electronics is
something about which i know little and care less, which really is saying
something as i know next to nothing... this unfortunately means that our
solution to everything electronical is 'turn it off, turn it back on again'
(thanks Mohammed), and if that fails then turn it off for a few days, turn it on
again. We aren't using any of our electrical equipment (gps etc) unless
absolutely necessary. Annoying, but just one of those tribulations we must
conquer to succeed in this challenge of ours!
Until the next time, i bid you all
adieu,
Niall
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