Chinese Tanker on the GBR: Part 3 - The Arrest

Ok, so I guess you could say that I'm following this story now.

The captain and the chief officer of the Shen Neng 1, the ship that grounded on the Great Barrier Reef, have been arrested. The ship dragged for over 1km (.6 miles) after it hit bottom on April 3rd. The general concern seems to not only be the destruction to the reef, which is extensive, but also the amount of oil that leaked and what the bottom paint that got scraped off the hull, will do to the surrounding coral life. According to the BBC, the bottom paint and oil will disrupt seabird and turtle breeding grounds.

Best guess seems to be 10-20 years to rebuild it. You can read the BBC article here.

Clipper 11-12 Round the World Yacht Race

I didn't do anything boating related this weekend.


I took the weekend off and went hiking up in Westminster, MD with my girlfriend, Danielle at the Hashawha Environmental Center on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day for it too. 75 degrees and sunny is really hard to beat for just being outside. Sunday I went to the Washington Capitals hockey game in DC instead of sanding. However....


I was reading a mini-interview with Sir Robin Knox-Johnston (as I tend to do occasionally) from Sail Magazine and it lead me to a link of a race that he founded. The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. I'm not quite sure how I missed the reference in Adam Turinas' post but it probably had a lot to do with me not knowing anything about the race to begin with. 


After reading how it is a round the world race for people who may or may not have any sailing ability, an "opportunity for people from all walks of life to compete in a round the world yacht race", I promptly signed up. Its not that I don't think I have any sailing skills because I certainly do. I guess I just like to be humble about it. Plus, any sailing expedition where the boat is provided sounds good to me.


 So not only is it sailing around the world; its racing too! How could I not sign up? 

Chinese Tanker: Part 2

So as an update to the Chinese Tanker that grounded on the Great Barrier Reef, gCaptain had some great graphics I had to share.

Additionally, they think that the mate was sleeping which caused them run aground.

Chinese Tanker Crashes into Great Barrier Reef (GBR)

The title pretty much says it all. Apparently where the tanker crashed was closed off to shipping. Thanks to gCaptain for bringing this to my attention.

The Bloomberg story is here.

The NY Times story is here.

Below is Australian news coverage of the event and some AP raw footage:

The Beginning of Spring

This was quite a productive weekend for me.

I got off early on Thursday and after visiting my local dive shop, Sea Colony Aqua Sports, and finding out some prices for renting diving equipment and picking up some screws from the hardware store, I made my way down to Surprise. I had to check out the diving equipment rental prices since, not only am I planning on cleaning the bottom of the Surprise next weekend, but I'd like to see if I can make some extra boat money scrubbing other people's boats as well this season and I'd like to know what its going to cost me.

Anyhow, no time like the present right?  I got onboard and took out the hand sander and got to work topside. I was able to do it a lot faster with the hand sander than I had anticipated and I stained both sides with the cetol in pretty short order. I was on such a roll I stained the step into the cabin as well, since it had been sanded during my dad's and my new hatch door misadventure and hadn't been touched since.

While I was waiting for those to dry up, I put the new screws into the bottom of the whiteboard and since those were a bit bigger, they bit and held on nicely.

The new Surprise whiteboard

Afterwards, I took a note out of O Dock's handbook and relaxed a bit. Enjoyed some LandShark, read a bit more of my book, and took a nap.

Saturday, after my dad and I put some jib rollers onto our middle shroud, we took Surprise out for a calibration run. With all the relatively new instruments, we like to calibrate them every so often. The wind was blowing 9-17 knots out on the Magothy and it was a bit chilly out by 1600 so we didn't put the sails up but did accomplish the calibrations at least. I also the learned the different wind forces (AKA the Beaufort Scale) as well which helps put the "we were in Force 9 winds!" dock talk into better perspective.

My dad at the helm

View going into Magothy Marina

Sir Edmund Hillary Picture

So I finally found one of the pictures with Sir Edmund Hillary:

Pictured from left to right are June Mulgrew, Mom, Allen (my brother), Sir Edmund Hillary, me (at a chunky/awkward phase of my life), my little sister KC, and my dad.

Abby Sunderland Around Cape Horn

So just to update, Abby Sunderland, Zac Sunderland's little sister, has recently rounded Cape Horn and become the youngest person to do so as far as the reports are saying. She is on track to become the youngest, solo, non-assisted sailor at the age of 16.

I wasn't doing anything nearly that cool at 16. Playing trumpet in high school marching band and homework don't even begin to compare to sailing around the world.

Anyhow...if you're interested, her blog is here.

I should have posts from the weekend up soon!