B-log ~ November 2020

Bonza Black Friday Blog
A bit of doom and gloom in this issue, but there’s also uplifting suggestions and grand results.

Covid-Covid-Covid – How have you been managing? We have used the forced isolation to jump into much needed house maintenance put off far too long. We are used to long periods alone, so, outside of fearing for our lives, and immense sadness for those taken by this virus, we’ve been fine. 

 

Mental Health Awareness Month

October was Mental Health Awareness Month, and we wanted to reach out to as many as possible to help facilitate positive, non-judgemental discussion surrounding the important topic of good mental health. A positive view forward is essential to a happy, productive life.

We know from living half of our lives in the wild natural world, getting outdoors mixing with Nature is a calming experience that puts our troubles into proper perspective. Troubled youths respond rapidly to a dose of Nature, just as do adults. The overwhelming power and intricate workings of the natural world reassure us we are not alone, that a greater force created the amazing wonder we call Earth.

So, if you know anyone who is struggling with their mental health and does not hike or sail, please share our online videos and bushwalking articles to introduce them to the outdoors. A bit of fresh air certainly can’t hurt. I know it helped me with my mental health when growing up in LA..

Anniversary 52

For decades, it has been our tradition to celebrate our marriage bonds alone, wrapped tightly together by Mother Nature and the Real World.

When celebrating our union ten years ago, we explored the high altitude forests south of the Gwydir Highway in the Gibraltar Rangers. Our YouTube clip shows a fun time in a beautiful setting, so we thought we’d go there again. This time to record the effects of last year’s firestorms. Going offtrack in our seventies, the easy contours of the high forest would help ease the burden of carrying supplies for six days surrounded by pure Nature.


Sorry, no video yet, but here are a few photographs.

Earth Connection
Building Skills-Strength-Knowledge and Self-Confidence while having Fun

It’s all about The Economy was loudly heard during the US election, and many will agree. But the 2J’s do not. We have lived half our married life surrounded by the wild kingdom and believe Planet Earth should be our No 1 priority. For our children’s future, and a better future, because there’s no Planet B and Earth is the greatest creation in all we perceive..

Tick-Tock – day by day this precious planet withers away ever-faster in a death spiral. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual. Jobs and Growth. Dig up more coal and oil, more of man’s pollution killing Earth and her creatures while world leaders dither with a problem beyond politics.

What About Us?

What Earth needs is a larger youth movement that speaks out for their right to inherit a wholesome planet.

Camp Connect

We recently inspected a large property with State Forest along one side and frontage along a fresh-water lake three kilometres long. We viewed the property with the fanciful idea of developing a camp where young people and those young at heart could connect to Earth while learning skills like orienteering, sailing, rowing, climbing, gymnastics and others to develop strength and balance. And these complemented by classes teaching the intricate and dependent role of Nature. Gaining skills at Camp Connect would build self-confidence with a love for the Natural Earth.

“There can be no greater legacy than giving young people the tools they need to save our planet.”
— Sir David Attenborough

Greater contact with the Natural World fosters a greater respect for Earth. That’s a powerful tool to help end land clearing and specie decimation, and could fire up discussion on an equitable solution to the human population explosion to ensure an excellent quality of life whilst respecting our planet’s environmental limits. These are issues politicians find difficult to address.
Tic-Toc.

Cruising Guides Ten Year Celebration

We are mighty pleased to announce that our Jack and Jude Cruising Guides have been serving the boating community for a decade now. What began after purchasing several expensive paperbound guides and finding them filled with adverts and disclaimers banning pertinent information, and one so out of date, the ancillary information was useless. We wondered why guides weren’t available in digital format. They’re so easy to update and cheap to produce. So we set about creating our first offline digital guide with the help of veteran SA sailors. Producing these guides has given us great pleasure. Sharing this information, knowing sailors are safer while finding exciting new places on Earth.

Cruising Guides Updated:

We have taken a magnify glass over our three guides, updating information and adding 15 new anchorages to the Tasmania Guide. You can download these from our website.

 

Amazing New Navigation Application

 

We are also proud to announce that we have helped in the development of an amazing new digital application for navigating the world.

This began a few years ago when Niki and Lauren stopped by for lunch with their little cutie, one-year-old Lulu. In a fun afternoon filled with déjà, strong bonds locked us to these Earth friendly folk who proposed building a community base anchorage website.
From that meeting, Zulu Waterways began.

ZULU OFFSHORE

But these two clever people had bigger ideas based on Jack and Jude’s electronic cruising guides. And they have worked assiduously to develop ZULU OFFSHORE, an amazing OFFLINE navigation application.

Zulu Offshore is available as iOS and Android apps.
 


The Zulu Offshore app offers a sophisticated platform for viewing information without requiring access to the internet. On devices with a GPS, it becomes an offline chart-plotter, displaying both the Zulu Community information and downloadable cruising guides. Our GUIDES are available at their map shop. You receive our PDF guide by email and our markers activated, letting you navigate to any of our waypoints, day or night, offline.

  • 50,000+ Markers
  • Satellite and Street Maps downloads
  • Navionics charts + Navigation
  • Markers added while offline
  • Downloadable Cruising Guides

This is how it works:

The Zulu database of information will get synced to your Zulu Offline app during the initial sync. This is saved to your device and viewable without a connection. Syncing regularly is recommended to keep your map populated with the most recent content.

For a limited time:

Activate all of our anchorage information on the Zulu Offshore App and receive a PDF copy of our guide for the cost of a cuppa.

Coral Pinnacle Discovered in Australia’s GBR

The underwater skyscraper missed in 120 years of surveys.

Newly discovered 500 meter detached reef adds to seven other detached reefs in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

Explorers of the Great Barrier Reef have discovered a giant pinnacle of coral 500 metres tall, taller than the Empire State Building.

On October 19, a team of scientists reported finding a detached coral feature that rises from the seabed to a height of nearly one-third of a mile. Its discoverers call it the first large new element of Australia’s famous reef system to be identified in more than 120 years.

Moreover, the new reef is flourishing, in contrast to many ill ones in the Great Barrier and around the globe. Corals in warm, polluted waters often suffer environmental stresses that can turn them white and, if prolonged, kill them off.

Now the Bad News: The Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half Its Corals

The Great Barrier Reef, one of Earth’s most precious habitats, lost half of its coral population in the last quarter-century, a decline that researchers in Australia said would continue unless drastic action is taken to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Jack and Jude first explored the GBR in 1974

We witnessed the greatest display of colourful marine life ever imagined, which amazed and humbled us. Now it breaks our heart, diving underwater in bleached bone-white dead coral. In our youth, the waters teemed with marine creatures. So many, taking a feed of fish was like taking a grain from a field of wheat. Today, taking a fish makes us feel more like the Reaper.

Researchers found almost every coral species had declined along the Great Barrier Reef.

Between 1995 and 2017, researchers found that almost every coral species had declined, and that colony sizes were smaller; there were fewer “big mamas,” or older large corals that produce baby corals; and there were fewer of those babies, which are vital to the reef’s future ability to breed.

“Our results show the ability of the Great Barrier Reef to recover — its resilience — is compromised compared to the past, because there are fewer babies, and fewer large breeding adults,” Dr. Andy Dietzel, the lead author of the study, said in a statement. The study was published on Wednesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Pilot Whales lured to their death in Macquarie Harbour

Tragically, a hungry pod of pilot whales zeroed in on a powerful presence of food and entered Hells Gate, all 420 of them. Once inside the dark tannin stained waters, they found their sonar returned vague images from the soft sand floor of Macquarie Harbour, which led some whales onto nearby shoals.

A major rescue operation jumped into action, but the frantic efforts by Parks, fish farm employees, and volunteers could only save a quarter of the mammals.

Here’s an account from a participant:

Trevor Norton

Macquarie Harbour Wildcare Acting President, Trevor Norton spends most of his time keeping his 20-metre yacht Stormbreaker shipshape and taking tourists up and down the wild Gordon River, which empties into Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s west coast.

But a few weeks ago, the Strahan local found himself part of a team of volunteers working to keep stranded pilot whales upright and cool until they could be returned to the ocean.

The experience has changed the way this son of a fisherman thinks about the marine mammals, which he said he previously regarded as “just another fish”.

“I was part of a team of Wildcare volunteers who assisted Parks and Wildlife, fish farm staff, and other Tasmanian volunteers in what turned to be a fairly successful rescue effort. It was an interesting and rewarding experience.

“They’re such a large animal, and obviously fairly intelligent, the whole process of being a human communicating so closely with another mammal like that on the beach, it’s just an amazing thing to do,” Mr Norton said.

“I kept thinking, Imagine if I were in the water and another animal was trying to keep me alive, and doing the same thing. What would I be thinking?”

The team Trevor was a part of tended to three whales on Friday, and all three survived.

“They seemed to know we were helping them.”

On the beach alongside the treacherous passage into Macquarie Harbour known as Hells Gates, the volunteer rescuers had to brace themselves against large waves that threatened to tip the whale over, while ensuring they themselves would not be crushed by the three-tonne animals.

Trevor stood near the side of a whale, avoiding the tail which can injure rescuers, with a bucket of cool water at the ready, and other volunteers were stationed near the animal’s head, washing sand out of its eyes.

He said each whale responded differently to its human helpers.

“Some were quite subdued, so you’re getting concerned about whether they’re on their last breath and dying, or whether they’re responding to you and saying, I’m OK, these land creatures are keeping me upright, helping me breathe, and keeping me cool.”

Trev Norton said that he felt like the whale was working with the volunteers.

“I was amazed how placid they were and amazed that they seemed to know we were helping them.”

“Their breathing is important, so when you’re putting buckets of water on them, I had to make sure I did it between breaths, waiting for them to take a breath and close their blowhole before I could dampen them down.

“It’s amazing how well the whole system worked, because each whale is almost a different project created by the different environment in each individual station.”

Trevor said he hoped the surviving pod did not become stranded again.

“I was telling each of them,” Right, you’ve got to tell all your offspring that Macquarie Harbour is a nasty spot. Don’t come in here and do this again!

Movie of the Month:

Watch this with your children. A life-changing experience.

For a fantastic close encounter with the kingdom of Earth, watch MY OCTOPUS TEACHER.
After years of swimming every day in the freezing ocean at the tip of Africa, Craig Foster meets an unlikely teacher, a young octopus who displays remarkable curiosity. Visiting her den and tracking her movements each day for months, he eventually wins the animal’s trust and they develop a never seen bond between human and wild animal.

My Octopus Teacher | Netflix Official Site

Jon Sanders makes landfall in Australia

A global pandemic and some of the worst ocean conditions experienced in decades have not stopped world renowned Australian yachtsman Jon Sanders AO OBE from reaching home soil on his record 11th solo circumnavigation of the world.

The 81-year-old sailing legend docked in the Queensland town of Bundaberg after battling three huge storms on the last leg of his journey.

The veteran sailor stared down some of the worst conditions he had seen in decades, with winds exceeding 120 km/hour battering his boat and causing damage to key navigation equipment.

The ferocity of the storms forced Sanders to sail with a bare mast, dragging a tyre as a sea-anchor, to keep the boat facing into the wind and waves. Despite his heroic efforts, his vessel Perie Banou II took on so much water that the engine flooded and couldn’t generate backup power or be used in an emergency.

As a result, Sanders completed his journey much like Captain James Cook–using only a paper chart and sextant for navigation.

Hip-hip-hooray! Huge Congraulations to Jon Sanders from Jack and Jude

Collecting Ocean Samples Enroute
Sanders sailed more than 40,000 km since leaving Fremantle almost a year ago on his journey to raise awareness of plastic pollution–one of the greatest health and environmental threats facing our planet.

Throughout the voyage Sanders has been collecting water samples for analysis by researchers at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. The results will build a more detailed picture of the plastic pollution across the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere.

Estimates suggest that plastic costs over US$2.2 trillion a year in environmental and social damage. This unacceptable cost to humanity led Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation to come on board as a supporter for Sanders’ solo circumnavigation of the globe.

You can learn about the #NoPlasticWaste campaign and follow Sanders’ voyage tracker at https://noplasticwaste.org/

The Ocean Cleanup of Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Ocean Cleanup, the Dutch non-profit organisation developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, presented their plan to go full circle in their mission: creating a product from the plastic they recovered from the ocean to help fund the continued cleanup.

The organisation has taken its first batch of plastic certified from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), recycled it, and turned it into something useful and durable: sunglasses.

Through a contribution of EUR/USD 199, supporters have the chance to own a piece of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and help fund the continuation of the cleanup, as 100% of the proceeds will go directly to the next cleanup operations.

Full Circle: turning trash into treasure to clean up more trash
They estimate each pair of sunglasses enables cleaning an equivalent of 24 football fields’ of the GPGP. When every pair from the first batch is claimed, that will equate to approximately 500,000 football fields of cleanup in the GPGP, allowing the organisation to use plastic to clean up even more plastic. – going full circle each time until they have achieved their mission: ridding the oceans of plastic.

The sunglasses are now available on The Ocean Cleanup’s website for a contribution of EUR/USD 199.