Day 71, Year 3: Super Work Day
Date: Saturday, July 19, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Yesterday’s panic resulted in a frantic work day today. We certainly didn’t get it all done, but we made great progress. Mark got the sewing done on both the headsail and the bimini; we did the best we could on scraping the “green grass” growing along our waterline; and I finally got all of the food lockers cleaned out and the remainder of the food we bought on Thursday stowed away. There is still much to do, but we feel good about today. Tomorrow we will chip away at the list again. I will
do cooking and canning in the morning and am hoping to have the time to go to the Northern Territory Museum tomorrow afternoon. Mark has to go up the mast to put in another LED anchor light and hope that this one works. He also has more sewing jobs that would be nice to get done but are not necessary. So tomorrow’s agenda is set.
Tonight we went to the Sail Indonesia Welcome Barbeque. It was held here at the Darwin Sailing Club. There were also two wedding receptions happening at the same time, so we had wedding parties being led in by bagpipers and Indonesians entertaining us with gamelan music (something like xylophones). Tonight we sat with Judy and Howard of Laelia (Santa Cruz, California) and Ken and Jean of Renaissance 2000 (Canada). Howard is a retired marine biologist from the University of California Santa Cruz,
did post-doctoral work in Boston, and then did a couple of research stints at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole. It was fun to talk with a couple who are familiar with a part of the world that we know well. Judy and Howard have also lived in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand and they are a wealth of information on this part of the world. Another interesting thing tonight was watching all of the Rally children at play. I don’t know how many boats have young children, but I do know that there
are a number of children ranging from ages nine months to the teen years-more children than we have seen gathered in one place during our voyage. Traveling with more than a hundred other boats is going to be an interesting experience. Once we all reach Kupang, our first destination, I know we will split apart, but there are events in tiny little places in Indonesia where we all come back together again. People who have done the Rally in the past have wonderful things to say about it, so I guess
we will all get used to each other and enjoy the experience together.
