TOPtoTOP expedition reports

Asia to Africa

More pictures here!

Important note: Please do not forget to donate for the TOPtoTOP Maasai Project!
Short description of project: Catching water from the roofs of Loiborsoit primary school in tanks. Distribution of water through pipes. Water will be mainly used for washing and cooking in the school kitchen. No such intallation exists up to now for the about 650 pupils. CHF 11'000.- are needed to build a sustinable system. For donations please contact Markus Heeb (info@massailand.com). Please download costs (Excel).
TOPtoTOP already did a recycling workshop and clean up and donated 4000 text books to the school.

Highlights from the Official Founding Ceremony of TOPtoTOP Asia, based in Singapore; - a chapter of the TOPtoTOP Global Climate Expedition. Filmed by Claude Verly at the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club: click here! Event Poster.

Next major events are the World Climate Conference in November 2011 in South Africa and the World Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil in June 2012. But first we have to sail over the South Indian Ocean and after cross the South Atlantic Ocean.

Pachamama optimized by NTU:
Wang Zizhen and Dr Tan Yen Kheng from the NTU Univerity of Singapore exchanged yesterday the halogen lighting to a LED lighting system:
Result:
1. Original Halogen lighting system consumed 18.5 Amperes of current
2. LED lighting system consumed 5.7 Amperes of current
This is a great achievement with around 3.3 times reduction in power consumption. We are sure Dario and his family can enjoy the fruit of this ERI@N technology contribution! The next step is to exchange also the navigation lights and the lights in the technical compartments of the boat.

Thanks to Horizon and NTU, Pachamama has now also a fuell cell facility. Dr. Ding Ovi Lian, the fuel cell program manager of NTU installed it in the last 2 days.

Tree planting for Alegra
On the 17th of August at 6 p.m. we planted a rain tree at the Swiss Club above Alegra's placenta with all the people, who became close friends to us during our stay in Singapore. Heinz Iten from the Swiss Club ofered us a drink and godmother Cinthya and godfather Chris organized some chocolate cake, so that we were able to celebrate Noe's bithday. He became 2 years old on the 15th of August on Pachamama.
The event at the Swiss Club was a great event to say thank you to all our loved Singaporen friends and say goodbye...

TOPtoTOP Camp in Maloya
We would also say thank you to Lucia, who organized a wonderful TOPtoTOP family camp 2011 again at the campground in Maloja. The TOPtoTOP board decided to do this every year end of July/begin of August.

Finaly thank you to our parents for their love and help. It was great to see all again and celebrate Nona coming in her 100 year of life.

We arrived in Cocos Keeling

We had a great send off from our Singaporean and Swiss friends at the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club on the morning of August 21st and have sailed non-stop to Cocos Keeling; arriving on August 30th. We have a clean-up planned with a local school tomorrow.
Our route from Singapore to Cocos
This is Alegra's first voyage with us on the Pachamama and with the rest of the family we are accompanied by Michael Thatcher & Dominique Gabella - Swiss friends based in Singapore.

It's been a good leg with particularly good winds since we made it into the Indian Ocean. The travel down through Indonesian waters had some heavy traffic at times, including fishing boats, nets, tugs with barges, ships and perhaps most 'exciting' coming into a group of twenty or more small fishing boats just after sunset that had no lights and were practically invisible!

Highlights of the trip have been:
Our 10th wedding anniversary on the 25th of August
Sailing past Krakatoa at sunset on the 26th
Connecting with the Vigar and Liz Beth, a Norwegian couple, also crossing over to South Africa on their boat the Pamona

We'd like to extend our special thanks to the Swiss Embassy and Swissnex in Singapore for connecting us with LCDR Jean-Michel Kergoat who is helping us avoid Pirates on this journey!

We will spend the next 24hours here in Cocos Keeling and then continue to Rodrigues Island tomorrow!