The DanHammer

In a concerted effort to return my brain to tip top condition I have embarked on a body reconditioning program which should return my physique to the incredible marvel of a nutritious diet, regular exercise and vice less paragon I was before I embarked on a career in yachting.

My brain has already started to bear fruit and I have been thinking on how to improve my internet experience. My findings are the framework for an application which could have far reaching consequences.

Much like the advertisement and pop up blockers from days gone by the DanHammer ™ works like this.

The user completes a profile to create a settings file, for example.

I have no interest in reality television
I have no interest in the *stars* of it
I do not subscribe to political manifestoes
I detest talent shows
I am not religious

The DanHammer program then acts as a proxy filter hiding away these wastes of space. A logic routine might looks like this

Key word Kardashian found
Trigger Delete offending text, ban website, block facebook friend
Key word Simon Cowell found
Trigger Send Abusive email
Key word X-Factor picture
Trigger Replace with picture of Llama

Already the users internet experience is far better. This is not censorship. It is taking out the trash.

Sadly my body reconditioning program is taking up far too much of my time for me to pursue this further but I take heart that some of my previous ideas were inspiration for this little app.

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Desert House

Following by camel caravan slowly after Cowboy Trance comes the Deckhand Desert House mix. I recorded this mix this morning after feeling suitably inspired. Kind of rough like my shaving after a night out but like my shaving I figure something is better than nothing. My Wife has been asking me to record a house mix for as long as we have been together so this one is for her and my brothers struggling in this flaming Desert.

http://soundcloud.com/deckhand/my-house-in-the-desert


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One more Reason

I miss being the Med for summer.

Yes I do know one of the crew members. No I do not know Beyonce and Jay Z. Yet.
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Words left unread

A friend emailed me wondering what had been happening for the last couple of months. To be perfectly honest I have not been enjoying this part of the world greatly. I have plenty of uncharitable words to write about here. Perhaps it would be enlightening to write what I miss instead of writing what I do not like.

  • I miss walking off my gangway and being somewhere hospitable
  • I miss grass and trees
  • I miss seeing skin
  • I miss seeing faces for that matter
  • I miss people obeying traffic laws
  • I miss sub 30 degree temperatures
  • I miss meeting other crews from boats
  • I miss hearing languages that I sort of understand
  • I miss freedom, you don’t realise what you have until it is taken away

On a slightly more positive note we should be leaving here at the end of September. I am booked in for a course in November in England and will be trying my best to schedule a few days in London to see a few people.

I have also requested a months holiday at Christmas and I will drown and douse myself in all those things I miss.

Ciao!

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Hoha in Doha

I do not think words can adequately describe the climate induced shock that Qatar renders so efficiently on a foreign body but I will try. You know that feeling you get when you open an oven that has been roasting something, or a hair dryer about to explode? Well that is what greets you every time you venture outside. Currently we have a low of 32 degrees and its hitting 40 degrees during the day. Americanos that is degrees Celsius. I am very thankful that my job allows me to be inside most of the time. I did have the pleasure of removing those cameras I was so enthused about a couple of months back. After a few hours outside I realized that my brain malfunctions at elevated temperatures. I actually become a bit hoha (crazy).

Inside I am less crazy but a bit starved for inspiration. My apartment looks out across a building site and a busy road. With no real public transport, footpaths or climate encouraging alternative transport the roads are perpetually busy which allows for a hypnotically distracting vista. Thankfully I have my laser to fall back upon when the road is obscured by nightfall or sand.

On Sunday I went on an expedition to get my blood tested, chest x-rayed and blood type for residency purposes. Being one of the older crew members I went with the Chef and Chief Steward. The experience was mildly harrowing. The queues and efficiency shown were somewhat soberly akin to a concentration camp. I left with a little less blood an the only anomaly found during my chest x-ray was a nipple ring. My blood type is A+ and I was a little gutted that nothing stranger turned up but given the circumstances it was probably just as well.

One of the Deckhands and I have bought Badminton rackets. I take great lengths to educate anyone and everyone that Badminton is the fastest racquet sport and anything else is just a waste of time. Sadly Qatar for all of its infrastructure only has two Badminton courts and they are always busy. That has not stopped James and I playing freestyle hot air Badminton downstairs in the very large car park. We do not have a net but our efforts have not gone unnoticed with a crowd of three people watching us play on the weekend. The hot air and abundant concrete make for a very challenging venue which will only get better once we get some blue tape down to mark out a court and erect a net made from purloined materials.

My flatmate bought a shish-a for use in our apartment. Having not indulged in a conventional shish-a before I approached the device gingerly at first. After a few sessions I have grown quite attached to it. It has a football theme which makes it infinitely more entertaining than real football. I must confess to watching the second half of Italy versus Spain. I guess I am more Spanish now than Italian as I was supporting Spain before I fell asleep.

On that note it is time to sleep. Only 12 more of those until my wife arrives. Yippee.

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Das Rude ein Sandstorm

Alas I am so very punnie.

A week into my tour of duty in Qatar and I can report with a few nuances and nuisances of living in the Middle East. I have been enjoying living ashore and my house mate Joe has turned me onto a few delightful traits of his which can only be described as liberal and swashbuckling outsourcing on a grand scale.

When we moved into our apartment we took our laundry to the local Laundromat so it could be washed and folded to a good standard for storage in our free standing closets. We have a kitchen drawer full of fine eating establishments that are quite happy to deliver at all hours. We had a cleaning lady come and clean our apartment yesterday. There is some talk of getting a cook into cook us dinner a couple of nights a week. I am not sure if I agree with all of this but I will happily go along with it if it frees me up for….

Playing Diablo 3. Imagine waiting 12 years to do something. Imagine waiting an additional three weeks because of work commitments. Imagine finally getting a day off and the time to fulfill your destiny and the servers being down for maintenance. Needless to say I was positively thermonuclear last Wednesday I am sure you could have heard me screaming where ever you live.

Needless to say when the weekend finally came on Friday and Saturday I played so much Diablo 3 that my eyeballs almost fell out of my head. A sandstorm literally sanded me into my room and although people came and talked to me they could have been figments of my sleep deprived mind. I made the mistake of leaving the apartment complex on Saturday afternoon and was hit with both sand and a huge culture shock. I am a million miles away from home. There are sand people (Jawas) walking around. If I do not want a kebab, shesha or mobile phone my part of town is a bit lacking.

I completed my first run of Diablo 3 on Saturday evening. I could breathe again but I picked up a cold. I have named this illness sand flue. In my ever so smart but completely bullshit capacity I have worked out that new comers to the Middle East get a cold within the first week due the climate. Hence a lot of our crew stricken with this mystery illness.

Indeed it was a dire sight that greeted me at work on Sunday morning. A lot of sand. Luckily I do not work outside any more and shall not be working outside until a decision is made about those blasted mast cameras.

What else? well liquor laws here are interesting. To purchase alcohol for use at home you need to get a licence and buy it along with bacon at the “naughty’ shop. The only other way to have a tipple is to drink at one of the numerous bars and clubs that are part of hotels. The really interesting thing is that these hotels are never full of guests staying in rooms. I surmise that Qatar is not a hot tourist destination for many so what keeps these hotels running is the large and thirsty ex patriate community that frequents the bars and clubs.

In an effort to make things a bit homelier I printed off 45 photos to adorn our living room. I organized them by geo location and time of day. It became blazingly obvious quite quickly that I have a sunset and cloud fetish. When I go I want to be on a cloud drifting off into the sunset.

What what else? Well my wife and I will be reunited next month. If that is not cause for sensible celebration I do not know what is.

More news as it hits me in the face. Ciao!

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Touchdown Qatar

Preface,

Its not often I am near tragedy but there was a massive one here on Sunday night. A local shopping mall had a terrible fire which enveloped a creche. 19 people died including three triplets from New Zealand. All of our crew had visited the shopping mall in the previous days and my flatmate was barred entry on the night of the disaster when he tried to get a puncture repaired. This is a first of the kind for Qatar and my thoughts are with the families of the victims.


We arrived in Qatar on Saturday afternoon. My more persistant readers will know I have been to the middle east before but never Qatar. A rule of thumb is that Qatar is a few years behind Dubai with its westernization but coming from the Seychelles it feels like another planet. Everything is done on a grand scale and one only needs to get in a car to feel like you are in an asteroid belt. The heat is blistering and we are still a couple of months away from the real hot season.

We have been lucky enough to get apartments to live in whilst we are based here. Coming from our probably quite large for a yacht crew accommodation the apartments feel positively palatial. My flatmate and I have been busy decorating and our substantial efforts have left the place looking like a cyber rave post modern bat cave. We are not finished yet and a laser will be arriving next week to supplement the chin up bar, Bose q10 sound dock, PS3, Egyptian papyrus and trimmings.

You would think I would be not reminded of home much here but there have been a couple of moments that have made me feel right at home. The first was being allocated a crew car with one of the Australian Engineers. We have earned the one and only Toyota Hilux. Hilux’s are a bit of an institution in New Zealand and it looks like they have a fan base here. I only wish ours had bull bars and an air conditioned dog on the back.

I thought of dogs with my second experience. I left the boat and was struck with a very familiar smell. The smell of a wool shed on a hot summers day. I could not see any shearers and showing ones shoulders through a black singlet is not allowed here so I Sherlocked  the situation. There was a large sheep carrier upwind.

For now much of Qatar remains a mystery but its nice to know small parts of home are abound. I shall be taking some photos over the next week and will share these with you soon.

وداعا




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Pirate Attack

Exactly three years ago to the day I was busily day working at the Monaco Grand Prix. My jaw was bouncing off the deck in between saying wow every other minute. In a moment of relative coherence I asked one of the crew does one ever become used to this life. The South African replied with a smug look “yes you will get used to it”

This all came flooding back to me last night when we had a couple of pirate skiffs circle us at high speed and were consequently seen off by our heavily armed security force. When the call came over the radio for us to muster in the crew mess I was sure it was a drill. Why we would be running a drill coming out of the pirate zone escaped me at the time.

I reassured the crew around me that it was a drill. It became evident it was not a drill when we saw our Grunts tooling up and manning strategic sniper stations. I still did not really click, and I watched bemused as everyone seemed to receive and amplify each others excitement. Not me, I watched bemused. The Grunts as I affectionally call them would take care of any danger. They are huge impressive beings, who previously turned up to our fire drill underway strapped locked and loaded. I have a new definition of irony. Watching a walking weapon, watch The Expendables.

The Pirates were seen off. It was perfect conditions for an attack, the heavy sand fog had lowered visibility. The weather conditions were calm allowing the pirate skiffs to circle us at high speed. Thankfully we had security and had prepared as well as we could. We subsequently learned a ship had been attacked by 21 skiffs a couple of days earlier in the same waters.

This is all normal for me. Is this normal?

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Goodbye Seychelles

Sorry to be a bit slow with the blog updates. I hope this movie makes up for it. Its been put together by a very talented crew member. There are couple of my photos in there and I play a small part in the proceedings. Sadly there was no suitable footage of my two DJ outings. This is probably a good thing.

 In other news, we have left the Seychelles for a yet to be disclosed location. It should be a nice jolt to the senses and should prove to arrest the cardiac functions of my brain and fingers. More blog updates on the way.

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How to have an EPIC weekend

On the weekend just past I concocted a recipe of sorts for having an EPIC weekend.

It began averagely enough, I had agreed to spend a day with three of the deck lads. They are all considerably younger than me and prone to dare devil stunts and flights of fancy. In my agreeable state I said I would go along and make sure nobody was injured and local customs were obeyed.

We drove around the island towards Police bay where there was heaving surf. The drive was nice, although our driver James did stop the car to watch two dogs fornicating. The conversation then lurched onto a David Attenborough like speil by Theo who’s family breeds dogs and has spent a lot of time watching David running around with wolves.

Sadly we were not allowed to enter Police bay. Being polite has its disadvantages, we should have just waltzed through like we own the place. The problem is that Police bay is owned by the King of Abu Dhabi and we were clearly not him.

Not discouraged in the lightest we made our way to the nearest shop and purchased essentials.

Pringles
Beer
Ice
And a large pink bucket.

It took us about 15 minutes to find out next stop an idyllic and very welcoming small beach. This was to be our home for the rest of the sunlight hours.

For the rest of the afternoon we capered around, some of us more energetically than others. Theo took some remarkable photos that I will share with you.

We made ourselves more than known to the native fauna.

I shouldn’t have batted an eyelid when James suggested a nude photo shoot but I did. Theo joined him and Craig took the photos. I chortled as the beach seemed to empty before my eyes.

I went for a paddle out into the waves. It was the kind of day you wish would never end. The beer did end. We got more. We eventually retreated back to the boat as the Sun set. Some of us had a party to play at.

Brent the pocket battler was to have left the next day for Milan so we commandeered the nearest bar and grill for a farewell party. I played three chunks of music over the night. For as long as I have been on tropical islands I have wanted to listen to my kind of music. It was impossible in the Carribean. The closest thing I found to good music was a sushi restaurant on Saint Martin. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and gained a couple of fans. Some people are starved for good music on the Seychelles it seems. Others are blissfully unaware.

We had a ceremony for Brent at 12am when his birthday kicked in. Something went a bit wrong as he ended up drinking chunks of glass. Brent did the worm(break dancing worm). It was stifling hot. At about 2:30 things winded up as the bar staff wanted to go home. I walked my gear home and Brent followed behind to eat my toasted sandwich and tell me what a great guy I am. I went to sleep content and slightly worried about the burnt toast smell. We burn a lot of toast in our toaster and burnt toast equals fire alarm.

It had been planned the night before that we would recreate our epic day with a different bunch of people. The first surprise of the day was finding that Brent had missed his flight to Milan. This was hilarious and it became abundantly clear that there was a reason for it.

The reason was this stunning beach which was a perfect place to spend a day. We even found beer, and  made this advert.

Despite doing his best to be somewhat put out about missing his flight to Milan, Brent seemed to take the trauma quite well.

We knew we were doing something right when a boat load of Russians turned up to try and crash our party. By this stage we were quite hungry so we took a long drive to the nearest Japanese restaurant.

The Japanese restaurant was part of a resort and I think I would like to spend a day by the pool.

The food was fabulous, they even made very drinkable Mojitos and espresso martinis. With Sunset approaching we had one more destination, the Sunset.

Coral Island resort backs onto a great beach with a great vista of the sunset. Let me show some photos and they can talk for me.

And that my dear friends is my recipe for an EPIC weekend. The only way it could have possibly been better if it had been with you.
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