Feel-good short film set in a virtual reality world

A fabulous short film set in a virtual reality world. This could be the implementation of yesterdays post.

Future of Mobile Technology

And there was no one left to speak out for me

On Friday, unidentified attackers shot and stabbed to death the editor of one of Sri Lanka's most controversial newspapers, 50-year-old Lasantha Wickrematunge. He had clashed with the government on multiple occasions over coverage of the war, alleged corruption and and other issues. He had left an article with the newspaper to be printed in the event of his death, reportedly written only days earlier. It is a long document but the last couple of paragraphs really stuck a chord:

People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it is a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that: it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot, whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged or the persecuted. An example that has inspired me throughout my career in journalism has been that of the German theologian, Martin Niem”ller. In his youth he was an anti-Semite and an admirer of Hitler. As Nazism took hold in Germany, however, he saw Nazism for what it was: it was not just the Jews Hitler sought to extirpate, it was just about anyone with an alternate point of view. Niem”ller spoke out, and for his trouble was incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945, and very nearly executed. While incarcerated, Niem”ller wrote a poem that, from the first time I read it in my teenage years, stuck hauntingly in my mind:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Long Time No Hear

Sorry for the long delay but we have been focusing on getting where we are going. This morning we checked out of Thursday Island and are now on the last leg down to Cairns. Thursday Island check-in was a breeze and other than the $240 AQIS checking in fee was all over bar the shouting in under 30 minutes. Customs gave the boat a once over and we were all done.

The trip so far has been strait forward. We stopped at Maumare (Sea World) in Indonesia and Dilli in Timor Leste for fuel and have been doing a lot of motoring. The nasty port engine has been eating fan belts but other than that has been behaving itself. We had the autopilot fail 500 miles out of Thursday Island and had to do five days of hand steering. For those of you that crossed the gulf (of Carpentaria)you will be pleased to know that it doesn't matter how you approach Thursday Island you can look forward to five days of washing machines to approach Australia.

Anyway the end is in sight and all are well on board. We have been eating well and the crew really managed to adapt to steering Seadrive after some practice (not that they had too much choice!) I think we are all looking forward to some land time. I certainly am!

Days 5 and 6 to Australia

Well it has been very slow. We have had very little wind during the day and 20 knots plus at night time accompanied by thunderstorms and lightning. At least we get some sailing done and save our precious fuel. At 7am this morning I woke the boat with the proclaimers song 500 miles as that's the distance we have no covered since we left Singapore. We have had two days of repairs though. We tore the main at one of the batten pockets and had to jerry rig one of Askaris sail slides that I have been carrying round for a year. No sooner had we finished repairing that when it was time to change chart cartridges for the rest of Indonesia. Guess what! The only cartridge that doesn't work is the one we need. We have reverted to charts and dead reckoning supported by GPS. This was followed promptly by the failure of the Racor filter on the "evil" engine. It appears that the previous owner had broken off the drain plug and glued the hole of with something that didn't works so well! This explained why I had to bleed the engines every couple of days. Anyway some epoxy and time, both of which I have lots of it is now repaired and we are motoring along waiting for some wind. At this rate I think that we will have to stop somewhere for fuel. Possibly Maumare or Tanah Bahru. Anyway we are plodding along with the odd hiccups. Thankfully Nazile has been cooking up a storm including banana bread, pancakes, fried rice, soup etc etc and many other good dishes. So if we dont get any wind we can sit here and get fat waiting for a rescue! May not even ask for assistance until we run out of food! All jokes aside we are making good progress Just need some more wind. We have now got under 2000 miles to go!

Days 3 and 4 to Australia

Day 3 was great with wind up the skirt for most of the day. We managed over 100 Nautical Miles. The only drama of the day was the Tacktick wireless wind indicator that we had repaired at great expense in Singapore plummeted from the mast in the middle of the night, never to be seen again!

Day Four has been very slow. The wind would blow for 10 minutes, just long enough for me to get to sleep and then stop requiring me to get up and get the boat back on course. I only got about 30 minutes sleep last night and I am very tired today. The wind today has been on the nose (what little there has been of it) so we sailed at 2 knots until about 2pm and relented by starting the engines. We have a fuel range of about 500 miles so we have to be very careful where and how we use it. We are trying to avoid having to stop in Indonesia to refuel.

The two crew members Mike (a friend of dads) and Nazile from a crewing website on the internet are settling in well. Nazile is a chef and has owned her own bakery and restaurant so we have been eating really well. Mike flew into Singapore from Lake Macquarie. He was very pale when he arrived but is now a shade of pink after 5 minutes out in the sun! They seem to be aclimatising well although the first 4 days has been a mix of sun, rain, lots of wind, no wind etc etc... A real pot pouri of sailing conditions.

All is well but we hope for some more wind from the right direction.

Day 1 and 2 to Australia

After leaving One-15 Marina we headed out to the "Two Sisters" to clear customs. We waited almost an hour as there were several boats waiting in the queue. Finally the boat arrives to take our passports and check our papers, but there is a problem so the Captain is summoned aboard the customs vessels to explain the discrepancies in the crew papers. We had had a similar discussion when we signed the crew on earlier in the week but I guess no one really understands the black art of Singapore Customs including the customs officials. All sorted out we pack off and head for Australia.

The straits crossing was non eventful and we have a good run. We have been praying that the monsoons will come through early to improve our run to Australia and it seems our prayers have been answered at least for the first day. We arrived at the Southern end of Batam just as the sun was setting and decided to anchor and get some sleep rather than battle the tides. Our speed had fallen to .5 a knot through the water and we still had twenty miles of the Riung Straits to complete.

I awoke at midnight to feel that the tide had changed and the wind had picked up. We set off at a cracking pace and headed out into the rain. It has been raining all day today and we have two 40 knot squalls. But at least we are sailing! The crew is holding up well and we should cross the equator around 7pm tonight. We are 128 nM into the 2400 nM trip to Thursday Island. Maybe after we make an offering to Neptune as we cross the equator we will get some sun but we cant complain as we have had two days of Monsoon winds and hope we get more!

Sebana Cove Marina

The girls arrived back on Friday and had a couple of days with us before they packed up and headed back to Singapore to get visas for Indonesia and boat to Surabaya - Java and then another boat to Bali. They are going to tour around Bali for a bit and then see if there are any cruising boats in the marina heading south . If not then it is a Jetstar flight from Bali to Christchurch (NZ).

Well, we have a week until we fly out. The sails are down and the tarps are up again. We have water maker to re-pickle and a few other jobs. The preliminary packing of bags is looking good. 10kg each backpack so we can still put some more into check-in luggage.

We are slowly eating out the supplies. One of the fridges is off already. We are finding it hard to keep the batteries charged to keep both of them running. It is rather cloudy here so the solar panels don't get a good charge. And now that the tarps are up two out of the four are covered anyway.

I have to say , and i know we will regret it , but we are really looking forward to some cool weather. It has been really hot and humid here so you end up soaking wet and exhausted after a couple of jobs.

Not much news I am afraid. We haven't done too much socialising. The Jesters and Muscat are due in on the weekend , so we will save up for then.

Sebana Cove Marina

We have been in Sebana Cove for a few days now. It is nice being tied up again and much nicer to know we have done the Singapore Straits. The girls have reassembled their bikes and have decided to cycle to Singapore for a few days. They managed to get somewhere to stay off the Couchsurfing website which is great as there is not much cheap accomodation in Singapore. We may go over on the hi-speed ferry ( 1 hour) for a visit for old time sake. The ferry leaves next door to the marina which is really convenient. We will do a day trip into Johor Bahru at some stage. That is about an hour and a half on the bus. Faster to get to Singapore. We took the shuttle bus yesterday,into the local town - Rengitt (10km). It was fairly small but had most of the basics. It took us 10 mins in the bus just to get to the front gate of the resort. Don't think we will be walking down to the gate. The resort is pretty deserted , which is par of the course for Malaysian resorts. Lots of staff cleaning and doing what? I don't know. But there is a nice pool complex here, a fantasic gym, so we need to drag out the joggers, the restaurant is not bad, it is BBQ night on Saturday night. If you play golf there is a beautiful course here as well. They have a daily supply of veg, cheeses and breads which I will go and check out today. So you don't have to wait for the veggie run once a week. The shuttle into town goes 3 or 4 times a week so you are right foodwise and basic supplies. There are a few people on boats here and our friends from Scotia are here as well.

Pulau Pisang to Sebana Cove

We had a very comfortable night at Pisang. So we were all rested for a trip through the Singapore Straits. It was pretty easy going for the first few hours as we were just on the edge of the outbound shipping lane. We made it across the tanker parking lot near the entry to Raffles Marina no problems. We started to be shadowed by a Navy boat and had three fighter jets doing circles above what seemed to be just us. We were starting to get a little paranoid. We had taken our Aussie flag pole down as it needed to be tightened up. Maybe they thought we were up to something. It turned out the Navy were doing a navigation exercise and we soon left them doing donuts behind us, but the jets kept circling for an hour. Now were in the path of a few large ships as we motored on. The sea started to get chopp from where all the different currents meet. Time to shut the hatches. Got all of them just in time except the girls cabin. We hit a patch of rough water and the boat slammed into it and sent a spray of water up to the cabin windows. Some water in but nothing that didn't dry out in an hour. As we started up the river on the Malaysian side for the marina the heaven opened up and visibility was pretty bad. We were lucky we had got through the traffic otherwise it would have been very unpleasant. The run up the river was amazingly rural and deserted. Hard to believe that 5 minutes the other way was the busiest shipping port in the world and you have the high rise and bustle of Singapore. It is like we are out in the wilderness. A bit like the Kumai river in Borneo. Bizare.

We arrived in about 4.30pm. Mike did a fantastic job getting us through Singapore waters without incident. He felt the new AIS system made it a lot easier than the last time. AIS is a system that allows you to see all the big ships and their course plotted on your navigation software. You can also see the ship name and call sign. They appear as little green triangle on the chart. A one point just about the whole chart was green.

Our friends Scotia are here in Sebana, so we will catch up with them today. We are planning a lazy day today with a quick recky trip to the local town. The ferry to Singapore is just next door so that is easy when we decide to go . Singapore is about an hour away on the ferry and Johor Bahru the nearest big town is about 1 and half hours by bus, so we will make a trip there later in the week.