FUEL Ready to GO!

May 26. I headed out to Osaka by Shinkansen. Once I arrived in Osaka, I headed straight for Hokko Yacht Harbor. A team of volunteers from Kaientai went on their first round of shopping and the food was all piled up in the boathouse. I touched each item and confirmed each one. We will take everything out of the boxes and put them in ziplock bags to save space. Even the cup for the cup noodles take up space so the contents will be put into plastic bags. Some of you may think, then why don't we just take the instant noodles that come in bags? Well, with those types of noodles we would first have to boil water, then put the noodles in and let it boil for another 3 minutes or so for it to be ready to eat which means we would be using up a lot of propane. With the ones that come in cups, we only have to use enough propane for the water to boil then we can turn it off. It may seem like only 3 minutes but do it often enough and that's a lot of propane. The volunteers will go for their 2nd round for shopping at the end of next week and once it's June, we will start loading the yacht. When I arrived at the Aeolus, there were eighteen 20 liter plastic tanks and eight 18 liter plastic tanks tied together. A total of 504 liters. The Aeolus holds 110 liters so that totals to 614 liters of fuel on board the Aeolus. I don't think there has been any other yacht the size of Aeolus taking this much fuel with them to cross the Pacific. We need it all to keep the satellite machines for our live broadcasts and the 24 hour camera for the documentary running. At 3 pm, we borrowed an area at the harbor and had a BBQ. We had delicious meats and draft beer made by a member of Kaientai and had a great time. I planned this BBQ in an attempt to express my gratitude to all the volunteers from Kaientai who have worked so hard to help me but since I was on the road this morning, I ended up having to ask the volunteers to help get everything ready. Thank you once again. I know that for the next 2 weeks until we set sail, we will need the help of the volunteers from Kaientai, probably more than I realize.  

Originally posted by Hiro in Japanese on 5/28/2013
Translated by SWIS Project