Tropical paradise hey

2nd of June

Day two of the blog and day four of shit weather in paradise… I had to wear a jumper yday. Now thats not what we are here for! Life must be tough if you have to wear clothes.

So we are in full swing of preparations to head out the reef for our longest stint yet. The forecast just keeps getting better and better! So we are getting pretty excited. Trying to do as much work as we can on land before we head out to the world of no reception. We love getting away with no phone and not have to worry about anything, only the weather and to catch food. Well, the first mate gets a bit itchy after a few days with no internet. But as much as i enjoy being away, its kind of a catch twenty two as we work on the internet… So by being away means when we get back its all mounted up in front of us. But hey, you can't pass up a few days of sick weather!!

So just checked the weather again now after writing the above paragraph… Thought it was to good to be true… It might be a struggle now to get to the reef. Damn wind forecasts. The issue is that the reef is just so far out to see and you are very vulnerable to the elements. We will head out the islands and check out some new places and be patient with this weather. It changes so often. There is a little storm on saturday night which has turned all the report upside down, so the best option is to head to the islands and evaluate… Thats the new plan.

So a rough guide in the above picture, blue arrows mean winds greater than 15 knots and that line is twenty knots. Don't really wanna be anchored out in the ocean with that business going on. But the following days after are forecasted to still be excellent. So lets hope it remains that way!

We discovered today that our batteries are shit. We knew they were not performing the best without the wind turbine operating at its full potential. (It has no rotor on at the moment) We have three 80 watt solar panels which can handle all our needs, when its sunny. Since this 'tropical paradise' is struggling to know that that means sunshine, we have been slowly running out of steam. The batteries are a bit old to, which isn't helping the cause. However, in our time working in West Oz, I acquired a couple of batteries from my old work site. So lucky enough, we know a fella that lives in Airlie that we dropped these batteries off to this morning so we can charge them fully and let them sit for a few days to see how good they are. I reckon they should be fine as they haven't been used and are less than a year old. Fingers crossed because to replace these suckers is not a cheap exercise! So we will give them their best chance of living and when we get back, there should be a blade for the wind gen to. Then hopefully we can puit all this together and have a kick arse power station on Nandji… I think i might need a battery to. But then it takes longer to charge… Ah, worry about that properly when we get back. So for now its an esky with ice for the fridge this trip. 

If crew are reading this, would love a bit of feedback. Anyway, with in humans...

Captain Yosh