Hanging The World

For years and years, we had a small inflatable globe aboard. It was a $6 impulse buy from a toy shop along our route, and you could tell. Place names were frequently misspelled, and colour fills didn't always match their intended borders. But we had drawn our route on the globe, and it was fun to twirl and look at where we had been.

Alas, our $6 globe was only $6 worth of robust, and developed a leak. It was now a sad deflated thing, sitting in a corner and waiting for me to consign it to the Great Map Collection in the Sky.

And now I can.

Reassuring the Boat

Something strange is going on around here.

First, the SSB/modem system wouldn't work, despite pretending all was well during frequent troubleshooting sessions. Then the inverter/charger began to charge erratically or not at all. The new lifelines wouldn't fit through the stanchions. The bolt for the bail on the mizzen was too short. Erik found a dubious spot way up the main. Some of these were little problems, some of them enormous. All of them were suspicious. Being a methodical sort of person, I sat down with a cup of tea and pen and paper to figure out what was going on.

Possible culprits for recent issues on Papillon
1. Ghost.
2. Saboteur.
3. Ghost-saboteur
4. Small-and-unusually-nimble crocodile escapee from the neighbouring mangroves
5. Angry Australian bird, likely deadly.