July 2, 2008
South Australia and stability test
Because of the big distances and the cold temperatures for our kids sitting in the bike-trailer, we were happy to travel with Country Link train and Great Southern Railways to South Australia and Broken Hill in the Outback.
School visit in Mypong Primary School
Our base camp was in Yankanella at Steve, Jane , Daniel and Carly's place. A wonderful place with nice beaches and hips of kangaroos.
Steve is a great organizer when it goes to arrange dates with media, school visits and public presentations! Read the article in "The Times" and in the biggest newspaper in South Australia "The Adveriser".
At the Rotary Club of Yankalilla we got in touch with Hanna and Don Law after a presentation. Hanna goes to support us with her great editing skills to review our English documents!
Back in Sydney we are very busy with improving Pachamama and to do the stability test so that we are able to enter the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Very early in the morning last Wednesday we measured the boat in absolute calm conditions and just after we did the testing:
putting loads - thank you Phil Bennett for providing the spinnaker poles! I met Phil the first time in 1998 while guiding in Canada...
Even with a heavy load Pachamama stays pretty stable!
John Anderson from NSW yachting association measuring
The conditions were perfect: No wind and no waves so that John Anderson was able to do a perfect job.
All the data goes now to the ship architect Bernard Nivelt in France. He will do all calculations and draw the GZ curve. After a lot of work we are looking to see the final results soon...
Roger from Raymarine in the mast fixing the radar
Many thanks to Tom and Roger from Raymarine Roger was able to fix our radar and optimize or navigation system. Together with a course computer we will have a perfect system on board.
Thanks also to Gaelle from Profurl Australia, who changed our bearings on our drums and supported us with spare tubes to improve the furling system.
Finally many thanks to Swiss Ambassador Christian Mühlethaler (hear in the TOPtoTOP-SGS jacket in the middle) together with the Australian Federal Gov't Minister of Trade, Simon Crean (on the left) and Phil Hocking from SGS (on the right) for all the help provided to come so far with the application for the race.
At the end another article from the Alexandra News and a nice email from Bob:
"Hi Sabine & Dario,
It's been 4 years since we adopted you two at Beans & Bytes Internet Cafe on St. Thomas. What made me think of you is a set of photos I found while I was cleaning up some old web pages. Last I heard was that Sabine had a baby (girl I think) and I am wondering where your travels have taken you over these past years. I still keep in touch with Sarah and Ferguson. They are in the states.
I established a non-profit learning center for underprivledged, abused, and neglected young adults on St. Maarten, in the Netherlands Antilles (only 100 km from St. Thomas). It's called The Learning Curve Foundation, and I moved here (St. Maarten) last March. I still do the same thing on St. Thomas, I just travel back and forth.
Let me know how you are doing. Mainly, I hope you are both safe as your travels had a lot of danger involved.
Always the best to you.
Bob
Go here for the pictures!"