Setting sail on a voyage.

Date & Time 15-12-2011  0000hrs

Position:- 09* 34’ S  146* 43’.6 E
(Nothwesten edge of the Coral Sea)

Course:- 277*

Speed:- 4.5 Knots

Wind:- NW 18 Knots (Force 5 Fresh breeze)

Sea State:- Slight (< 1 meter)
Temo :- 82F

Weather:- Rain

(Wind Sea & Weather are all taken from the Beaufort notation to indicate the given conditions)

Distance to go:- 2818 nautical miles

Music track of the day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uI_4Uc-XKY

Aye Aye,

The paying off crew have gone and we finally got underway at 1945 13-12-2011 for our voyage to Johor Baru. The crew have been trimmed down to 102. I am on watch from midnight till midday, although there is little to do as we are being assisted on passage by the Lewek Kestrel because the engineers will be working on the thrusters on the way. We are on a sort of assisted half tow half own power passage.  

I have been at sea for 35 years (not all in one go) and there is still a special exhilaration of knowing you are on passage.

I have never been sure if it’s because you are leaving where you were, or looking forward to getting where you are going, or just the unknowing excitement that most of us feel when embarking on a journey. For me it is the journey itself as opposed to the destination or departure points.

The only time I am less interested in the journey and more concerned about the destination is when I am travelling home to be with my wife.  

When I hear of people saying they are “going travelling”, for example on a gap year, or just deciding to take off and see more of the world, I think “Good for you” but I am so glad I am not going. I just know that I would not enjoy it.

When people start to tell me tales of seeing the tourist trail sights of whatever country or how they immersed themselves in the local culture by surviving on a diet of yak snot and wearing a silly felt hat for a year, my eyes begin to glaze over very quickly.

I am a crap tourist, I have never liked being a tourist or being mistaken for one. Nothing fills me with a bigger sense of utter dread of dying the slow death of   boredom than traipsing about with a load of other people looking at stuff, be it old buildings or wandering around markets and gawping at other cultures.

For me there is so much not to like, the places you are allowed to walk, the railings that keep you fenced in, the rule about what you may and may not touch, where you may and may not take photographs, who you have to pay, what face or version of the real history is going to be sold to you, the whole “industry” and façade of tourism. All those other people trying to get their monies worth looking at the same stuff that a load of other people have just looked at. I just don’t get it and am happy not to have to take part in it.  

The reality is that a decent documentary maker will obtain better footage, better clearer views and access to places that the general public (oh how I despise that term) are not allowed to go.

I know some people enjoy that sort of palaver and spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of pounds to obtain a few hundred digital snapshots and some “experiences of foreign culture” to file away in the memory bank and good luck to you if you are one of them, but please don’t get out the photo album if I ever visit.

I find the whole thing as dull as dishwater, but what I thoroughly enjoy is the travelling to get there. Be it by plane train car helicopter, boat, tuk tuk, motorbike taxi, ship, I enjoy them all, it is just the end result that is too often the let down..

Even if you are a seasoned tourist there are becoming less and less places that you can visit safely unless you are a member of the special forces or harbour some sort of weirdo, rubber necking, penchant for looking at the sites of recent riots, catastrophes or natural disasters.  

I would travel to see one thing and that is a mid ocean sunrise or sunset.

Luckily for me they come with the job much like this mornings magnificent effort which has the colours and shades akin to staring into a bowl of tropical fruit, however  there is a down side in that I cant share it with the one person in the world who I would like to, as Mrs B is not much of a sailor.

I have always found (on land or sea) watching a sunrise, or sunset, invokes in me something  primeval hidden inside under the cloying and hectic layers of modern life we cover ourselves with  A hint or trace of something simpler, something more natural. Something pure.      

Love and Peace 

 Bentley