Atlantic Passage

This part was remarkably simple, no canceled flights or lost luggage just a little trouble finding my shuttle driver at Palma airport.

After a stunningly beautiful drive through Switzerland, over a high snowy pass and down into the “lowlands” back to the airport, I boarded a Swiss Air flight and took off for the sunny south. It was with some sadness that I said goodbye to Francois and Ursula as they have been truly wonderful hosts and friends to this wandering sailor without a ship.

I arrived just as the Sun was setting into the Mediterranean. As we drove into Palma from the airport the setting sun silhouetted not one but TWO sets of lofty spars. It seems that the Picton Castle has company at the dock. So at least I know “my ship has come in”.

Tomorrow morning I will try to get me and my stuff over to get on board at last. Doesn’t seem real just yet. Hopefully I can get squared away without too much trouble and begin trying to remember all 130 working lines on the ship

Next post may be after I’m aboard or I’ll edit this one.

Thanks for reading.
KJ

So…

I’m posting this from the Terminal in Toronto where I now have to wait for another 3 hours to go to Frankfurt because Air Canada cancelled my connecting flight to Zurich!

Hmmm…  I thought it was going too smoothly.

At least the checkin agents in Calary didn’t try to send my bags off on that non existent flight.  They were waiting on the domestic carosel just as if it was planned that way. Odd thing is that they assured me they would be checked all the way to Zurich.  Blessings for small miracles I guess.

Next post will hopefully be from Switzerland on the weekend.

Thanks for reading
KJ

One of the things that people, shipmates and others that have spent time at sea, have mentioned is that regular soap doesn’t work in sea water. There are several (relatively) expensive concoctions that claim to be “sea soap” sold in yachting and outdoor stores however most of the people I’ve talkd too swear by Joy dishwashing soap.

Unfortunately Joy isn’t available anywhere around here so I started doing some research and found that the common element amongst all these sea water usable soaps is coconut oil.

So off to Safeway I go looking for coconut oil based soaps and lo and behold there are lots! It seems that the trend to “organic” cleaners has meant that many soap products are now made, and proudly proclaimed to be at that, using “natural coconut derived” oils.

But would it work in sea water that is the question.

Time for some science said I

Being in the middle of the continent means sea water is a scarce commodity, google to the rescue.  Sea water is about 35g of salt per Kg of water. So, after whipping up my own personal bit of the great briny, I tested three different dishwashing soaps, two Organic Earth Friendly ones and one generic lemon based one. Surprisingly all three worked although of the three the one with the highest level of coconut oil (ie first on the ingredients list after water) worked the best.

It will be interesting to see how this stuff works on real dirty clothes in real sea water.  At least being organic and “Earth Friendly” and all it’s unlikely to eat my skin if I use it as shampoo too.

On a “man this is expensive note” I filled my anti-malaria prescription…

$350.00 later !!!

Good thing I’m able to save some money on the soap

Thanks for reading.

KJ

I’m writing this on a shiny new Asus EEE PC 701.

This lovely little sub notebook will be my link to all of you while I’m on my travels.

It is my one (fantastic) piece of “corporate sponsorship” donated by Tremar Computer Solutions of Cochrane Alberta. Thank You Guys!

If you haven’t seen one of these little beauties they are about the size of a trade paperback book. This one has an 1Ghz Intel (R) mobile processor which is underclocked to 630 Mhz for stability and power reasons. There is 512 MB of RAM and 4 Gigabytes of solid state hard drive storage. An SD Flash card slot and 3 USB 2.0 ports will allow me to move pictures from my camera easily. It has built in wireless and Ethernet and even has pretty good sound (actualy better than my usual laptop). It runs a custom Xandros Linux distubution which is very nicely laid out. The screen is about 7″ across but pretty bright, I can use it outside as long as the sun isn’t shining directly on the screen.

Here is a picture of one:

Did I mention that this is a COOL THING (TM).

So now in addition to packing and making sure all the myriad details of getting ready to leave are handled I have to make sure I know how to make this baby do all the things I will need it to do on my travels.

KJ

So another week has blazed by.

Just 12 days till I get on a plane and leave my current life behind.

I get an odd reaction when I sit down long enough to think about that, part fear and part excitement. It’s a bit like when I was a kid, I’d always get this same odd feeling the last two weeks of August before heading back to school.

Luckily I haven’t had much time for doing that kind of thinking.

Mark from Tremar Computer Solutions, who along with his team will be looking after my day job for the next couple of months, started job shadowing me this week. I figured that would be better than hoping my documentation was good enough that he didn’t get blindsided by anything I forgot. Turns out that was a good call.

There is an amazing number of subtle and odd details in my day to day work. Things that I do automatically and don’t even think to write down, even when I’m trying to document a process in detail. Working with Mark this week showed me lots of places where such details were mysteriously absent from my documentation. Blah.

Yesterday (Saturday) was spent setting up a new mainfloor “utility room” to house our new portable washer. I also moved a lot of junk around and tried to rationalize the layout of our living room to make things a bit easier for Jayne while I’m away.

I also started (again) reviewing my lists of stuff. Packing will start in earnest this week. Jayne suggested I should post a picture of everything laid out before it gets mashed into my duffel bag, just for the record.

Everybody tells me not to take too much stuff and that I can get anything I’m missing through the magic of plastic money but my mind fixes on “6 months!” and wants me to cover every eventuality. I would end up looking like an overloaded packhorse if I did that.

One of my clients mentioned he had a friend who went to Australia for a year and took a huge pile of stuff but came back with a single backpack’s worth. Whenever I have traveled in the past I always took way more stuff than I ever used or even touched so I’ll just have to be aware of that tendency. I suspect the contrast between the pile of things to pack and the volume of space in which to pack it will help.

There is one aspect of this trip I hadn’t thought much about before now and that is preparing food for 40 people when my turn on “Galley Duty” coincides with the cook’s day off which is Sunday. So I’m interested in any recipes for easy things to cook for 40ish people, preferably with simple ingredients or easily substitutable ones. If you have any suggestions/recipes/ideas feel free to include them in a comment.

Thanks for reading.
KJ