Tuesday 7 August 2018

Today looks like best day to depart for Chagos. Not going to happen. Too much stuff to do including buying diesel and eggs, cleaning up mess made yesterday fixing (he said hopefully) leaks, exploring and general goofing off. Some crew are still in recovery. Maybe Saturday.

No luck with HF radio previous two days. Sent entries via internet at West Island this morning. This one may go that way too if frequency gremlins don't behave. Dinked over to Home Island at 0630 in rain and blustery wind to catch 0700 ferry, resulting in SDB (soggy dinghy butt). Glad to get outside work done yesterday. Just fortunate to have hit dry season. Other 364 1/2 days is wet season. They get something like 800cm of rain a year, well over 300 inches. No worries about washing salt off deck.

Cocos airport has big time security with fences around and a metal detector in the terminal. This seems a wee overkill especially since anyone can walk around the building and onto the field. Houses line the entire south end of the runway with no fence. Think we've succumbed to mass hypnotic paranoia and lost sight of common sense so even an atoll in the middle of nowhere has to make the motions. Of course, there have been no terrorist attacks so it must be working, right? Perhaps evil doers just haven't noticed the gaping hole in security.

Jack