Rumble: The Atlantic, Chagcharan and Eva Cassidy

I dropped Lana at the railway station this morning, came back home, took a cup of coffee, and sat in front of the computer. Got some inspiration at sunrise again. Wanted to write a piece about 'how to become an aidworker', and about something in Afghanistan.

The iPod played some random music and stumbled upon Eva Cassidy. In a flash, everything around me stopped, and the music pulled me back four months when we were racing across the Atlantic delivering a sailing yacht, the Persuader Too, from the UK to the British Virgin Islands.

Eva Cassidy. About the only music both Pete, my watch mate, and I liked. Most of the other stuff I played on the boat -I have a weird music taste, I agree-, Pete did not digg. And vice versa... But Eva Cassidy, we did agree upon.

So often, when we had the sunrise watch, we became close friends with Eva. In thoughts... Her music playing through the speakers on deck. A nice stiff breeze filling our sails. The pitch dark night disappearing and the sun climbing up through the orange-red striped clouds, lifting the mystic veil of the night, and displaying an ocean of emptiness. A total void, filled with clouds, wind and water. And a yacht smack in the middle of this infinite splendor.
The stories of this Antarctic crossing, you find here. They are displayed in reverse order, so you might have to read them from the bottom up. It is strange, now that I re-read them, it seems the stories go from very 'business like' through a stage of happy-madness, to an almost mystical mood. That is what eight weeks on a boat does to you..
Four months ago it was. Seems a life time ago.

Anyways, here is the story about Afghanistan I wanted to share with you:
Often we put up our radio-boosters (VHF repeaters for the techneuts amongst you) in remote places. We pay local people to guard them, otherwise the equipment disappears as fast as we can put them up. These guys in Chagcharan (Afghanistan) took their job a bit too serious. We did not really mean they had to deploy an anti-aircraft gun to guard the equipment. :-)

Hey, I put some humanitarian news on bottom of the right column on this site. Tell me if you find it useful. Hopefully, it does not slow down the loading of this page too much. Let me know.

Afghanistan picture: Aramais Alojants. Picture Persuader Too arriving in St.Lucia: Tim Wright