A Super Yacht

I was instructed to head over to the super yacht upon its arrival last night since there was rumored to be a foreigner on board. I did so and met the English captain (not to be mistaken for the owner).  We agreed to meet up later, after my eisa practice.

The boat is 100 feet long and only three days old.  Everything still has plastic on it.  I got an awesome tour that started with an introduction to the computer system that is used to operate everything.  Then we got to see the head state room, then the lower state rooms. I was just continually blown away throughout the tour by the things that I had never imagined being on a boat.  Take the combined washer/dryer, BBQ, outdoor stove, or full-sized refrigerators, for instance. Oh yeah, a huge outdoor bar and the jacuzzi.  The engine room was probably my favorite.  Two 12-cylinder Caterpillar engines for two props.  Port and starboard stabilizers for when the boat is traveling parallel to big waves.  Three air-conditioning units.  On-board desalination plant, which produces 57 gallons of freshwater an hour, and the captain told me it can barely catch up overnight from what the ladies use during the day. There were two jetskiis, lowered from the bridge with a crane.  I forget the capacity of the fuel tanks, but I remember that it costs about $100,000 to fill them.  The captain is just a regular dude, so it was fun to make "I can't even imagine.." comments with him.

[if you look below "PANAMA" you'll see a tank to keep your fresh-caught fish alive]

No information on the owner, but he was on the boat with his friends and harem (imagine the kind of girls who get invited to ride a boat like this) and I unknowningly talked to him.  The boat came from Taiwan, where I assume it was built, and it's heading to Nagoya in the next couple days.  Price?  $7.2 million.

They say money doesn't buy happiness, but after touring this boat I beg to differ.

Contest Entry #2

Calendar Contest Entry #1

I'll post some of the shots I entered into the JET calendar photo contest this year.

Sabani: The Start

[start]

[we were fourth coming out of this turn, but then made some poor route choices (tacking instead of just putting the sails down and paddling into the wind), so when we got to the strong sailing portion we'd dropped to 14th]

[we're alone out here while the rest of the teams paddle to the next turn way out to the right]

[that single guy behind our boat in this photo is ahead of us at this point, a good indicator that tacking was not a good idea]

[one of at least three broken masts I saw at the end]

I asked to be in the support boat at the start hoping I'd get some good pictures.  But the weather didn't comply so I wasn't too psyched about any of my shots.  Unfortunately we never traded out the members in the boat, so I never got to paddle.  The end was supposed to be in Naha, where the party would be held.  They still had the party in Naha, but all had to take a ferry to get there.  I did some math on this and it would have cost me another $80-100 in hotel/boat/food costs to attend the party (in addition to the $30 I'd already paid for the party itself).  I sadly decided to eat that party fee and stay on Zamami (sad, but I don't regret it).  Overall, Sabani was sort of a letdown this year.

Sabani Before the Start

The original race course - Zamami to Naha - was nixed because of high winds and the residual fear from the Rough Water Swim death two weeks ago.  The new course wrapped around some of the small islands nearby and ended in the Zamami harbor.  Here's some pictures leading up the start.  Pictures from the actual race coming soon.

[my team: Shimawarabi (I don't know what that means)]

[with the course change, the top teams switched their outriggers and re-rigged their sails for a port wind]

[The smartest teams (see the two far right boats) didn't raise their sails until a couple minutes before the horn.  The center boat in this picture had their mast snap just ten minutes before the race start.  They had to paddle the whole race with no sail.]

[support boats awaiting the start]

Sabani, 2010

There are more big, expensive camera lenses on Zamami this weekend than any other throughout the year.  Sabani is a huge photo opportunity.  Here's a few of mine from today's preparation day for tomorrow's race:

[the winds are relatively huge right now (25mph+), so we tied and retied these ropes which keep our outrigger in place]

[this team prepares to eliminate one section of the sail in an effort to prevent catching 'too much' wind]

As I mentioned, the winds are big.  Big enough that the race develops from "yay, we won't have to paddle so much because we can sail a lot" to "we are going to have to be really careful not to flip".  Today everybody had to move their boats from the harbor around the corner to the starting line at Furuzamami Beach.  In the 200m exposed section of that distance, we saw one mast snap in half and two (of six) boats flip.  That was 200m.  Tomorrow is 45 kilometers. 

Our captain is a very experienced sailor, so I'm fairly confident, but I'm worried about the lesser teams. Also, I am insistent on not being in the boat for the start because I want to photograph the first 2km of the race (the boats are all together, the background is nice), but I might be risking not being able to be in the race boat at all if the conditions are too dangerous to make a support-boat-to-Sabani-boat transfer.

Camouflage

Barely spotted this guy as I wandered past the brown sheet laying on my floor.  Unfortunately he changed  his color a little by the time I got the camera out:

[p.s. I have a colony of geckos forming in my apartment right now.  The many offspring currently running around are what have upped them from mere family to colony.]