Well, it's been a while. I've been busy pretty, between long hours at work, and getting ready to depart Sydney around July 10 and head north. Some good news is I have signed up some crew to sail with me. Her name is Pascale, a traveller from Paris. She's gone down to Melbourne for a little while before we go, but will be back before I finish with work, July 6. We'll do a few things to get the boat ready, then out the Sydney heads and take a left.
The schedule is: Depart Sydney July 10, stop at whatever ports interest us, between Pittwater, Port Stephens and Coff's Harbour again. Then up to Brisbane about July 20, then into the Gr. Barrier Reef shortly thereafter, can't think of the next city (July 31), then to Cairns about Aug. 10. Jeff, I'd say Aug. 12 to 25 is a sure thing in Cairns, and if you have to book a few days earlier I'll be there. (You mentioned bringing a friend, definitely good as it'll just be two of us aboard.) Then over to Darwin, and jumping off Aus. from there by mid Sept. with intention of Christmas Island(not sure yet if there's a port there) and definitely Cocos Keeling. Then along up to the Maldives and perhaps southwest coast of India/Sri Lanka... or maybe Chagos island group and Seychelles... I've decided Indonesia is too unstable right now for travelling by boat, so we're bypassing that for a direct west route out into the Indian Ocean. Hopefully Cocos Keeling is the paradise I'm imagining it is and we just throw over the anchor and make the month our smallest useful time period with days lost in snorkelling, spearfishing, and generally doing as Joshua Slocum did one hundred years ago as the first to circumnavigate solo (he liked Cocos).
Nalu is coming out of the water Monday for bottom paint (and I'm bringing the anti-foul paint up another six inches so I don't have to scrub the waterline any more). New batteries arrive Monday or so. The old batteries have gone eight years and the last of three can just barely start the engine now.
Work continues well, another milestone day today, the system carried over one hundred simultaneous trains (which is roughly the max load for all of the Sydney system). Also processed over 700,000 track change messages(signal green, track section occupied, etc.) These days I'm finishing my program which shows the train running maps in a browser over the internet, and I'm working on things like making everything fault tolerant so if any one computer dies it's no problem.
Lately I've read Blue Flower, which is a beautifully written story with no point. I already forgot what happens in the end. I started to read Story of O, but found it unsuitable reading for on the train. I could miss my stop. Still reading the Coming Plague, very interesting scary story. I recently reread Joshua Slocum's 'Sailing Alone Around the World'. He had a good time in Sydney in 1898.
