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Saturday, August 29, 2009

Still in Kirkwall

As we were getting ready to leave, the media all at once showed up. Our mission is to use the publicity to raise money for wounded hero foundations so we made time to meet with them. We are hoping 150,000 people will make a donation of $30 or more and get a shirt to commerate their donation and of course wear it on Fridays.

After further inspection we feel like the T-Top is about to completely break off in our laps. We have one of the most dangerous pieces of water to go through. What I call the gauntlet, the place the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. If the T-Top gives way at that spot it could be a real disaster to us. The winds are about 40 mph and that should bring about 15 ft seas. Fifteen foot seas are dangerous enough without having the top of your T-Top break off in your face. There are a lot of wires running through it so we could not just toss it aside. It could be an end of the trip so to speak. We are going to do some more repairs on it before we move on.

We should be able to get that fixed and move on tomorrow early in the morning stop for church somewhere and then keep on moving.

3 comments:

  1. Liquid weld and duct tape. Wore my shirt friday. Need to order anothe r in XL. Dont finish to soon I am enjoying the blog. Good Luck fair winds and following seas.

    Shane

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  2. We ducktaped table knives (the only metal that we could find) 3 knives to each cracked tube. The other day, while holding on to the pole, it felt different. I inspected the crack that we have been watching and discovered that the break had completely seperated. I then insepected the other poles that had hair line cracks in them for a long time. I also inspected the poles that we had fixed a couple of thousand miles back. Out of the eight poles, 3 were completely seperated and 3 more had cracks that went about 80 percent around the pole. After the taping we then tied the top of the pole to the bottom of the poles using the cross pieces for anchorage. I think this will hold for the last 800 miles or so, as long as we don't see too many large waves.

    Bob Brown

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  3. Tell everyone that you know who is reading these blogs. The spot doesn't always work, we are spotting every couple of hours and have no way of knowing if it is working. Ralph often blogs by phone and then tells where we are. The blog is the most accurate way of following our journey. Bob Brown

    ReplyDelete