Some time ago I found an old wiro notebook in a drawer. A scruffy wiro bound notebook with a photo of 2 men in a kayak with a bear on the front cover. In that notebook I found terrible sketches drawn in pencil made while travelling in 1991. One sketch leapt out at me. It was a rough pencil sketch of Mt Ararat from a backpacking trip to eastern Turkey. The sketch really surprised me – it was a very basic pencil sketch, drawn using a .5mm technical pencil on a cheap notepad. The sketch is just black and white… To my surprise the sounds and smells of the day came flooding back. Meeting some Kurdish goat herders and their flock near the base of Mt Ararat, about 10km from the Iranian border on a bright sunny but cool, alpine day. Along with memories of driving across the mountain steppe in an old Renault 19 and the smells of chai and coffee in a Doğubayazıt pasta solunu. It all came back come flooding back! Why did it evoke such vivid memories? I’m not really sure to be honest. Maybe t...
The Volvo Ocean Race has race arrived in Auckland. I sketched them at the event base yesterday morning where they were already up on cradles for service. Elevated like this I thought they looked more aeronautical than nautical.
The yachts set off on Leg 4 of the race from Hainan Island, China, on February 8th. From what I can tell they then traveled east across the top of the Philippines before heading southward, past exotic sounding Micronesian islands like Pohnpei and Kosrei, then the Melanesian islands of Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
You would have to wonder if after 3 weeks without a shower they would have been tempted to stop off at a coral atoll for some cerviche and a hot shower.
Interestingly they all arrived in port within hours of each other. First in port was the Spanish yacht MAPFRE, followed 4 minutes later by Abu Dhabi (the overall leader) and Dongfeng (that's Dongfen in the sketch top left).
They'll all be back in the water on Saturday morning for an in-port race, before leaving on March 15 heading around Cape Horn for Itajai, Brazil.
Comments