Demarcation Diaries
5 September 2001
One blade of the aluminium propeller was broken off yesterday.
The ship hit a boulder. There are two more difficult passages
to go to make it to checkpoint one and we're on our last propeller.
This one is bronze so it shouldn't break.
Only a day or two to get there, barring more mishaps. We should
be within voadeira range soon although it will be easier unloading
equipment directly from the ship.
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The crewman dove under the stern with a hacksaw to remove
the cotter pin from the old prop and put the new prop in
place. We went for a swim from the beach on which the bow
of the ship rested, to distract the jacares from eating
the crew said Ribamar. The beach had fine white sand like
the west coast beaches in Guernsey where I grew up. There
weren't any hookworm or canjiru fish in Guernsey though,
or none that we knew about anyway.
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We had a barbecue after dark for Skipper Flavio's birthday. All
the crew went plus every winged bug in the Amazon. We had fojo
music and the bugs had an electric light on a pole for entertainment.
Flavio dispensed caipirinhas from a coffee pot, barbecue trident
in hand, his magnificent beer gut resplendent in the twilight.
The black and white gulls can fish by flying low over the river.
They let the lower half of their beak drop and scoop up fish from
the surface. They carve a line through the surface and make a
tearing sound. We passed a turtle sanctuary yesterday, saw one
of the little critters clinging to a stick. They nest on some
beaches here.
We trained on the high frequency radio and sat phone systems
yesterday. We'll call in twice a day as the expeditions move further
away from the ship.
It'll be interesting to start building the first camp. Everyone's
getting a touch of ship fever, the restlessness of not walking
on land. Wonder how everyone will handle six weeks in the jungle.
The forest unrolls endlessly on either side of us and the rive
is only 150 metres wide here. It's quite unusual to bring such
a large ship here in the dry season, a touch of the Fitzcaraldo
spirit maybe.
Time to sweep the decks and clear off partied-out six-leggers.
Ian
xxx
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