We are now back at Archerfield again after having spent the weekend south of Brisbane. The service centre has successfully installed the ferry tank that is needed for the crossing of the Pacific Ocean. With the 250 liters fuel capacity of the ferry tank in addition to the normal standard- and auxiliary tanks we have enough fuel for the longer legs of the pacific crossing. The installation is a fairly straight forward procedure and what you do is simply to take out the back seat and put in the two cell tank, connecting some electrical pumps, sensors and the fuel lines, and voila. The question that arose this morning was how to get the back seat to the US. Until yesterday we planned to bring this as check-in luggage but it proved that this would probably not be possible. Thanks to TNT Logistics this was however quickly resolved and TNT offered their help with the transport of the back seat and the empty ferry tank box to Long Beach, CA, USA where the tank will be un-mounted again.

It is now a week since I joined the rest of the team and one of the most striking differences between the normal office life in Sweden compared to the expedition life is how much slower time moves when each day is different from the previous day. The amount of experiences during a certain time is a lot higher during the expedition life compared to the more routinely everyday work. I believe that as a consequence of this, time somehow seems to move slower than usual (or perhaps a better explanation is that the experienced time suddenly moves faster relative to clock time than usual).

Leaving philosophy and moving back to the expedition events for a while; The passed Tuesday we had a very nice evening event together with Audiologists from the area. A few hard of hearing children were also present to listen to Johan’s performance. This event was set up by GN ReSound Australia and it was good fun to spend some time with the Australian team. Thank you Emma, Aliki, Peter and the others. On Wednesday we were engaged in a very nice visit an elementary school where a number of hard of hearing children also studied. As usual the children showed enthusiasm and a lot of interest in the expedition. The day after that we had a few interviews with media in Australia.

Now we are hoping that Johan and I will be able to leave for Fiji tomorrow or on Wednesday if the weather holds.


Take care,

Martin