Riding through the karoo

Random collection of pictures taken during my ride from Stellenbosch to just West of Vioolsdrif - to join up with about 200 other dual sport bike riders from across South Africa for a weekend of fun and laughter.

Route was:

Day 1: Stellenbosch - Ceres - Sutherland - Carnarvon
Day 2: Carnarvon - Brandvlei - Pofadder
Day 3: Pofadder - Vioolsdrif

Then - Bash!!  

Didn't take a lot of pictures, sadly not even of the corrugations and trucks that made the second half of Day 2 an absolute nightmare.


Day 1
Day started with a Wimpy breakfast at the Winelands Engen 1-Stop with some old good friends. These would be the same people I'd be visiting in Carnarvon - but as Danie had just come back from the USA the night before, we all thought a good bit of Wimpy coffee would be the proper way to start a Karoo day.

Whilst they took the tar route back (errands to do on the way), I turned off for Ceres to take one of my favourite dirt roads to Sutherland. It soon became apparent that (sections of) the Karoo had had some rain - the vygies were out in full bloom!









Not all them were purple either - even found a few patches of yellow. 



One for the "Roads in a distance" collection...



"Long and winding road"



Those vygies were prolific - think the bees might have been happy and busy this spring! 

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Day 2
Started out nice and early. Sadly my camera didn't do justice to the vista and light I saw that morning, but here's a shot that might give you some idea of how far one can see on a clear Karoo morning.







The road to Brandvlei was pretty good. Apparently the substrate has been laid for future tarring if the SKA project comes our way. So the first bit was smooth sailing.










Late morning I decided I was tired - more so that I could enjoy the delicious fresh apple and tasty biltong my gracious hosts had packed in for me when I left them that morning than from any exertion...


Strange thing is, on these never-ending Karoo roads there are very few places to pull over, and virtually no shady spots to rest under. So I was grateful when I spotted a lone, dilapidated scrawny thorn "tree" offering scant shade. I pulled off and parked underneath...





... only to notice that there were some picnic spots set up. Now why wouldn't they have put them near where the trees were growing...?  





The 235 km from Carnarvon to Brandvlei passed without incident - except that I almost ended up going to Van Wyksvlei when I entered the wrong route on my GPS. Caught it in time, but it cost me about 20km of backtracking.


When I got to Brandvlei, I realised that in the 3 hours it took me to cover the 235 km, I had seen only 3 humans, no vehicles or vehicular dust trails (not even in the distance), and about 165+ sheep nibbling away at the Karoobossies...


In start contrast, my (unphotographed) ride from Brandvlei to Pofadder was most unpleasant. The roads I ended up on are used by heavily loaded quarry trucks and Interlink freight trucks - all barelling along the under-maintained gravel roads at full speed. Apart from the billowing sandstorms they created that left me blinded each time we crossed paths, they also made such deep, continuous corrugations in the road surface that the 200-odd km from Brandvlei to Pofadder was one long bone-jarring barrage of vibrations, bumps, rattles and mechanical masochism. Apart from loosing the fillings I have yet to receive, the bike only suffered a loose mirror, quickly fixed after my numbed hands stopped tingling.


No photographs were taken of this bit of gravel hell, as I only wanted it - and the +35C and 20 knots headwinds - to go away.

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Day 3
Pofadder to Vioolsdrif. I wanted to take a loop up north before coming back down to join the N14 - but due to a misunderstanding between my GPS and the actual terrain I ended up doing - and enjoying!  - a lot more! No idea what roads I ended up on after taking the Klein Pella turnoff, but here are some pictures from that stretch.

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Bash! / Bushwacked
Awesome place! 


View from the shower:





Campsite and neighbours





Friday evening sunset





Saturday sunset

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Serenity...







We live in a beautiful, diverse, random, open, inviting, friendly country!!

The blog time forgot...

Sort of forgot I had this... :) Fortunately a good friend reminded me by way of her own blogging.

With some luck I'll endeavour to keep it updated a bit more...

Back to work

We left the Besiktas shipyard early Friday evening, then spent the night waiting for a Pilot to guide us through the Bosporus Strait (http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/bosporus.htm). I was actually quite glad for this, as it allowed me the chance to observe Istanbul, the Strait, Europe and Asia as we sailed north from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. However, the weather is a cruel mistress and didn't quite deliver what I was hoping for...

Right, let's see if I can get the image insert to work. Unless indicated otherwise all text refers to the picture above that text.

This was the view looking aft from the Bourbon Hector's bridge. Off to the right (boat port), just below the flag, is about all I could see of Turkey for about a week. At times even that was obscured with the eternal fog/smog that seems to be hanging about. Not sure if it's the change of seasons or pollution that causes it, but we just aren't getting the clear, distant days I'm used to.

The weather also isn't something I'm used to (anymore). I've gone soft working in African tropical waters for the last 4 years - the 15-20C days we've been having here almost seem cold! I'm better off than the Phillipino crew aboard however - they still don balaclavas and thermal overalls when venturing out. There is hope for improvement though - we've had a few semi-sunny days (which are quite warm), and sooner or later the cold wind from Siberia has to dissipate...

On this picture you can also see a bit of our ROV system. The red thing standing upright on the right is the A-frame. Just below it is the ROV (all yellow on top), the to the left is the TMS (Tether Management System) that normally fits on top  of the ROV and holds about 400m of tether. A bit more to the left is the winch holding 3500m of armoured umbilical. At this stage they'd only just completed the supporting steel work for all the structures so nothing is connected together yet.

This was the view to our starboard. That's a RoRo (Roll On, Roll Off) used to transport cars and the like. This pulled in to the dry dock one evening, the dock was emptied, and 46 hours later this is what she looked like. Stripped down to metal, with undercoat applied. Apparently they can turn around a vessel of this size in under a week - hull completely stripped down and repainted.

Note the little white dot beneath the hull.

That white dot is a man's safety hard-hat. The drydock is about 9m deep. This should give an idea of the size of the propellers and prop shafts used...

Here you can see some more of the system. This was just prior to leaving the dock, so it's almost complete. Well, as complete as needed to be for us to leave the shipyard and set sail for our  "working" port -- all the steel work was welded down and tested to be good (to a 12 ton load) and the workers had done a stirling job of applying some paint to the bare metal for us.

Although not fully connected, here the A-frame is almost where it would normally be, and the TMS has been connected to the umbilical. The umbilical is what takes the load of the system - basically it's three layers of steel wire counterwoven around a core of 17 copper conductors and 12 optical fibres. The conductors carry the electrical power (at 3000V), while the signals (video and control) are carried over the fibre-optic system.

The tether on the TMS (referred to earlier) is a lighter weight version of the umbilical, without the three layers of wire armour. This gives us better range on and controllability than if we had to operate off the umbilical only. A 2500m catenary when operating from a vessel out here would also be a nightmare to manage around any obstacles. The TMS also "disconnects" us from the vessel's movement, i.e. the boat can pitch and roll as it wishes, bu the ROV (once away from the TMS) will remain steady. The operators still sitting in the control van on the boat might not be so steady on their feet if the boat's bucking around really wildly though!

The two containers you can see are the workshop (to the left of the picture, boat starboard, and the control van (bottom of picture, boat for'ard). That's pretty much the layout of our system - updated pictures will follow once we're operational and "normal".

Here we've just left the shipyard. our (comparatively tiny) berth is just visible directly behind the boat's stern. As you can guess there wasn't much scenery visible with all the hulks of steel around us...

We cast off the ropes around 19:00 - which I though far too early to sail through the Bosporus Straits in daylight. Indeed, if all had gone well we would have sailed north around midnight, but we only picked up the pilot to gude us through the Strait in the early hours of this morning (Saturday morning).

View from our cabin porthole this morning. Yep, that was the weather in Istanbul today - grey, damp, and quite chilly...

Europe to the West...

Asia to the East.

There are a few more misty shots of various highlight along the shore as we sailed north, but none really worth putting in here I'm afraid. I'll try uploading a collection to Facebook sometime.

I'll leave with a last two pictures - a self-portrait (taken early in the morning, pre-coffeee!), and another of one my co-workers, affectionately called Shrek...!

Me...

And "Shrek"! :)

That's all the news for the now. We're due to do our first dive (a test dive) tomorrow. So far everything seems OK, just hope there's no hidden leak that's going to drown or sink the ROV/TMS! Once the dive's out the way we have a million other little things to attend to, including cleaning and painting all that lovely new steelwork... *groan*

The boat itself is quite nice, and the crew that's currently here are good people (although very mixed). Captain and Chief Mate are French and Brittany (French...), the Chief and Third Engineer are Polish, the Second Engineer is Slovakian. Two other bridge officers and the deck crew are  Phillipino. The ROV crew is a South African (me!) and two Brits. A proper international bunch we are! :)

Coffee and chocolate

I just have to share a very auspicious occasion with you - I suspect some of you could likely relate to my simple pleasures...

I finally ran out of food today, and had to do a shop for some more survival items (pb, bread, jam, fruit, etc). (Of course we're guaranteed to fly soon now that I've restocked the larder.) As I meandered through the supermarket, piecing together what the items were from my meagre pidgin Spanish, I spotted a little bag of something that I had not expected to find in Punta Arenas.

Introduced to them back in '99, I have only come across these little delicacies in 1st world countries - the UK (WH Auden), and the USA & Canada (Starbucks etc). Most South Africans have no idea what they are, and most would probably not enjoy the sweet and bitter taste thatthey leave on the tongue.

I'm talking about chocolate covered coffee beans of course, especially the ones coated in a thick layer of dark cocoa chocolate...

So great was my happiness at finding some of these little delicacies available locally, that I promptly bought a bag and consumed about half of its 80g contents (the rest got shared with my co-workers as part of my "the first one is always free" addiction-sharing programme). I expect I won't be sleeping much tonight - but hey, the taste and experience was worth it. :)

(And for those who have not tried a chocolate covered espresso bean yet - try it, you'll like it.)

We're still pending a clearing in the weather at 80S. As Jaco (fellow Sefrican and meteorologist at PH) phrased it this morning - "there's a horde of clouds conspiring to outflank our manoeuvres and dump a load of snow on the runway". The guys have fired up our snowblower (capable of moving 2500 cubic metres of snow an hour) and are clearing the runway - hopefully we get to bash through the clouds before they complete their flanking.

A blog starts

Spent some of my unproductive time of the last few days setting up my very own weblog (or "blog" as it's known colloquially).

http://whitingjj.blogspot.com

As managing this mailing list gets to be rather cumbersome at times, I'll be posting most of my reports to the blog - check back regularly to see if I've managed to rattle off a new missive. (Please feel free to distribute the URL to anybody you know that might be interested inwhat I'm up to.)

You might also gather that I'm still not at Patriot Hills, and how right you'd be. The chance I thought we'd had a few days ago very quickly faded into a snowstorm with 200m visibility, so we've gone nowhere. Now just hoping the runway isn't too snowed over (and if it is, that it can be cleared quickly) and that we can get moving shortly.

Fortunately I'm not in the same boat as one of my other teammates - he's been here for a month, just waiting for a (new) machine to reach PA so that he could help load it to go to PH. So we're both getting a bit frustrated with work to do, and nowhere to do it. (At least his machine is now on the aircraft, and he'll be heading in with me.)

Well, it's off to a quiet Saturday evening. The Straits have quietened down after masses of white horses galloped across the steely grey waters throughout the day, there are several ships at anchor just outside the harbour (just switching on their lights as the sun starts setting), and Tierra del Fuego and surrounding islands are slowly becoming amorphous mountainous blobs as horizon and sea assume the same blueish colour. Who said remote wasn't beautiful?

Take care all, hope to have some cool news soon!

Life from the outside

Just had a social dinner with some of my Antarctic crew-mates (those of us who have been down here more than 4-5 times), and retired downstairs to check up on some stuff. Took some time out, quickly read through the last couple of December Durban Clipper diary entries, found my mind suddenly in a very different space, and thought to drop a quick note.

Although it is now 22:30 here in Punta Arenas, there is still a lovely baby-pink hue to the night sky. Venus has just started strutting her stuff, the last pink of the day has left the clouds to continue their chilly eastward dance, and the twinkling of city lights down the hill remind one that there are people with normal lives.

Looking out over the city, I'm reminded of a feeling I still often get when driving along dark streets past houses gaily lit from within. Each passing house is different, each glowing with a warmth from within, and each lasts but a fleeting instant before it fades into the past. (Each also seems very distant, seemingly containing a life I cannot comprehend or attain.) Watching the houses pass by, I'm reminded that there are moments in life that - however fleeting they may be - are islands of warmth, bonhomie, life, friendship, and fun. We can choose to enter these moments, or just watch them pass by from the outside, forever wishing, striving, and (ultimately) regretting not being part of that which we witness.