South of Sumatra
Digiboat's "Product Testing"
Simon Blundell
Tue 1 Mar 2011 01:22
00:08.093N
098:57.534E
We have been
motoring most of today past Nias, one of the larger of the many islands in
the chain to the SW of Sumatra. On fact Indonesia claims to be the largest
archipeligo in the world with in excess of 6000 islands with a population of
around 200M. In spite of this we are amazed at the lack of activity on
this sied of Sumatra. We have seen less than half a dozen fishing boats in the
last three days, It may be that all the fish are outside the island chain
as we certainly haven't caught any,in spite of Al's undoubted
ability.
Starting to get into
the routine of shipboard life. Simon (skipper) is training our two Burmese
crew with a list of their daily duties. Each day starts with "Sun up, flag
up, fishing line out, toast and jam" and ends with "Sun down, flag down, line
in, gin and tonic". They are fabulous workers, repairing and servicing a
myriad of equipment, including broken toilet bowls, In addition they clean
the boat, do some of the cooking and all the washing up! Our routine
revolves aroung sailing the boat and standing watch. Simon oversees all
activities and tasks with great diligence and seems to survive on very little
sleep. I share his night watch from midnight to 4.00am and sleep till
9.00 or 10.00am. But Simon is usually awake and on deck way before I
arise. We prepare most of the meals, help sail the boat (not much of
that at the moment), read, chat and play Scrabble. There is also an
entertainment centre with quite a few hundred movies
available.
Tonight we were
buzzed by a lone dolphin. First heard it surface for air alongside the
cockpit. It then went forward to play in the bow wave and was clearly
visible in the phosphoresence. In fact it looked like a mass of underwater
shooting stars, zooming backwards and forwards across the bow and then swimming
directly on front of the bow. It was so close that I'm sure it was
touching the boat with its tail.
MC
1/0100z