Cruise 1

We’ve been sailing all night, but didn’t have too much trouble sleeping. They have typical japanese beds here, so a matress that’s about as snuggly as a wooden floor, and a bean- or pea-filled pillow. I think I prefer the german eider-down pillows and matresses.... Breakfast this morning was “continental” : bacon, omelette, salad and a melon slice, with toast. The japanese breakfast is rice with soup. I think I’ll stick with the continental, as it will mean one meal a day without rice.

We are sailing through the inland sea between Honshu and Shikoku. The smaller island is attached to the bigger one by what must be some of the World’s longest bridges. We passed under one this morning and even the Japanese crew were all excited, as it’s first time most of them have been on the inland passage. The bridge was really impressive, looking os if they had glued lots of different bridges one to the other, to make the final bridge long enough. And that very impressive bridge is called Seto-o-hashi, for big Seto bridge. Wonderful....

The inland sea is very cute, with tons of mall islands all over the place. It looks a bit like Maine, without the fog. There are a few monster cargo ships, but not nearly as many as there were leaving Beppu. That must be a regular shipping line, as there must have been 10 cargo ships in sight constatnly. Now there are only 1 or 2, with small flotillas of fishing ships. The fishing ships all have “wind sails” of different colours so it’s quite pretty.

They are installing the PICASSO system this morning but as they can only fit 4 people in the container at the same time life is pretty calm for the rest of us. It will be lunch soon, and then maybe we will install the microscope this afternoon. Otherwise I’ll just stand around with camera and sun glasses looking like a tourist.

Best thing.

MR-X1 and PICASSO (left)

This afternoon I looked at Dhugal set up the laboratory. They have a high-tech anti-vibration table for the dissecting microscope, but apparently it can be done just as easily with 2 planks of wood and some tennis balls. After that we got to observe the absence of whirlpools. It’s actually more fun than it sounds. The wrirlpools appear in a very narrow straight between the big island of Shikoku and a smaller island on the Honshu side. There is another bridge over the straight : Naruto bridge. And the currents going in and out cause whirlpools. The captain of the ship had planned it so that we only say the absence of whirlpools, but we did get to see some smallish ones, and some change in water colour along the frontal zones.

In order to pass the bridge at the right time, and because they never get to do the inland route, we made a little detour into a cute bay in a medeum island. We went nearly to the end of the bay, quite close to the shore, and hooted the horn. It turns out that’s where the captain’s mother lives and she had come down to the dock to wave at the boat. A fun excursion.