Well
we'd done a housebot thing
before and it seemed like three years was too long between such
adventures. A city holiday was planned for Paris but got bumped.
Shand extrapolated heavily and suggested that we get a couple of
peniches up us for Éclipse totale de Soleil du 11 août 1999.
Oh yeah the day the sun goes out and everyone goes loony. Of
course an eclipse wasn't good enough - we had to all be in La
Bande de Totalité. Rock and Roll.
Once again it was Scientists Afloat with spouses
and sisters as guests, a sparkie, and extras to fall in the
canal.
We took a feather from the cap of those wacky Dance Drug Party dudes and went for the party boat / chill boat approach - a Penichette 11.20m and a Eau Claire 9.30m from Ardennes Nautisme at Pont du Bar. The result was most enjoyable and not a peniche nor a penicheur died during the eight days of mirth and derision, though there were some close scrapes. Then again a peniche being lifted from the canal by a huge mother crane is very entertaining and the only chance of a good shower on the trip was the hospital at Rethel.
Not so coincidentally the adventure
coincided with the anniversary of Shand
Dufau Wedding and the grand tradition of excessive data
acquisition continued. The technology was well under control
until the final day when the electrics started to fail on the
party boat - the only real technical challenge being the
scheduling of the charging of the batteries of many shapes and
sizes and the realization of French Onion Soup as God Had
Intended It.
The Bob and Dino Challenge
The
Anatomy of a Lock
A
Queenslander stranded without Sheep
More photos: 0-1-2
Man and machine were pushed to their limits, and beyond.
Éclipse totale de Soleil du 11 août 1999 root certificate
sha1: 294D 286B 0B09 8065 E6C4 3643 0D55 AF78 1F23 E03E
© 1999, Bruce Ellis: brucee@chunder.com, Home.