November 26

Today I was supposed to on a boat a ridiculously long time. 9-6. That's 9 hours. On boat. Without a toilet. For those of you who know how often Mamaw has to pee, you can understand my concern. Apparently protocol is to kinda hang over the side and pee or squat over a bucket.

Neither sound particularly glamourous or ideal.

But... when we got to the boat this morning at like 9:15, one of the engines was kaput. Out of commission. So we sat there for like 3 hours while the mechanic came and tried to fix. Some problem involving the battery, the starter, and stripping of something. All I know is that we left and were told to return after lunch.

So we did. We arrived back at the boat at like 1:15. Dorien tried to turn on the engines and...the other one wouldn't work. This was real life. But after a short 45 minute struggle, we were off!

The goal of the day was the track a shark. A few of the sharks in the harbour have acoustic tags that can be tracked by a machine that we have. Basically we drove around and every so often we put the receiver in the water to see if a shark was close. A "ping" would be a success.

After driving for, oh, 3-3.5 hours were had no success. Bummer. However, we did park by the chum boat and see a 4.5 meter shark. (Cool.)

Let's be honest, I'm not upset that my shift of tracking was cut short. I also have another to look forward to from 5pm-2am tomorrow. That's very late for Mamaw. Maybe I'll make it.