#01 – The beginning and the end
March 10, 2010
Menjangan Harbor, Bali

Menjangan Bay was still in the quiet morning light. I looked around at my other 14 companions gathering for the 7:30 am appointment in anticipation of our finale dive in Bali. A sea eagle flew overhead; a barracuda waited for us as we approached the mooring buoy in the middle of the harbor.

One by one we gathered around the mooring line in a circle holding hands at about 15’ below the surface. Once all were floating motionless in a state of readiness, Laser signaled us to descend. The mooring was held by cement blocks nestled in the silt/mud bottom at about 85’ – a cool inactive place to anchor large ships. There we placed a “blue marble” while visualizing our sailing ship Mir moored to the line after completing our upcoming voyage. This is both the first and it will be the last of many blue marbles we will place in the sea during our voyage from Malta to Bali in the summer of 2010. The voyage will take us across the Mediterranean, down the Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Java Sea and into the Menjangan Bay. A long voyage in uncertain times.

Our mission complete, we floated in unison back up to the surface and found ourselves eye to eye with a kingfisher poised on the floating mooring buoy watching us in the breathless stillness of the day.

-Abigail Alling

 #02 – Bezzina Shipyard May 30, 2010 Bezzina Shipyard, Malta The patter of rain woke me as it played along the deck of Mir. The calm of the morning and light rain was similar to the morning in Bali when we had placed the first marble at Mir’s future anchorage off Menjangan Resort. That marble is waiting for us – an underwater beacon marking our destination along the route from Malta to Bali. Today was the day when we would place the second marble in Malta to mark the beginning of this voyage. Gaetano greeted us at Bezzina Shipyard, the dock where we had worked and lived for 7 months and where we had first seen Mir. Marilou was her name then and she had been left for 5 years, neglected, torn apart, slowly being dissolved by the winds and waves. It was December of 2008 when we first saw Mir at this dock – Gaetano, the dockyard guard, had showed us to her. Without his guidance, we would not have known that the broken ship tied loosely at dock was the same elegant ship we had seen featured online for sale. Even a weed had sprouted from the wooden deck and another was flowering. Marilou had been waiting a long time for us and we promised to return to sail with her again. It was now 9 months since starting our work onboard and Marilou had been reborn as Mir. We walked the familiar dock reminiscing of our time. In a few days we would sail Mir and start the journey to the east. Laser tossed the blue marble into the water where Marilou once was and a magical line in our minds eye threaded this one with the one in Bali. The course was set, one chapter had come to a close and the voyage had begun. -Abigail Alling  

#03 – Leaving Malta June 11, 2010 Lat.: 34’30 – Long.: 20’46 Time: 12h40 We finally left Malta on June 7th and have now been at sea for four full days. Our plan is to drop one blue marble approximately every 250 miles of our journey from Malta to Singapore (as noted in the previous entries we already have a blue marble in the water in Malta where Mir was docked for five years, and in Bali where Mir will one day be moored).

Today we dropped our first offshore marble 284 miles SE of Malta. The timing of this first blue marble at sea was fortuitous because for the first time since our departure the wind was coming from the NW, which is what we have been patiently waiting for. So with the engine off, the sails full, and going a steady four knots, we threw the blue marble off of our stern, and now as I write this a half an hour later it is likely that it is still sinking into the abyss of over 2500 meters below us. Our voyage has officially begun, and by dropping this first marble we have marked that beginning. We no longer only have blue marbles marking the start and end points of this journey, but we now have begun the grand adventure of connecting the blue dots. – Sam Scott

#04 – First Times June 14, 2010 Lat.: 33’23 – Long.: 25’58 Time: 12h34 The three days between the dropping of our third blue marble and the dropping of our fourth blue marble the crew of Mir experienced a lot of firsts. We caught our first fish, celebrated our first birthday, and gathered for our first Sunday night dinner. As you can imagine the three days marked by the dropping of the two blue marbles were eventful and enjoyed by all. Our course has been plotted electronically by GPS and manually on charts and maps. The marbles mark significant points along the way that otherwise would have passed without as much as a second thought. Having dropped the marbles in Malta and Bali, we connected the beginning to the end. Now, it falls onto us, the crew of Mir, to fill the blanks in-between. If we continue to enjoy each day as we have on this voyage, then our task and our voyage from Malta to Singapore (and onwards to Bali) will be a success. As I see it, the blue marbles represent more than our blue planet. They also represent the group of us that have accepted the challenge of educating ourselves and our counterparts as to the necessity of the work we are choosing to do: respecting and protecting our “water-world.” – Woody Heffern  

#05 – Suez Canal June 24, 2010 Lat.: 49’61 – Long.: 19’07 Time: 12h50 The fifth blue marble was placed in the Suez Canal to mark our passage from the west into the east – an imaginary gateway that until recent history kept people from navigating between the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The canal, a 200-meter wide 121-mile long passageway, was first conceived of in 12th century BC by Pharaoh Ramesses II, and later by Cleopatra, Napoleon, the East India Company, as well as British and Anglo-French companies. It is an ingenious engineering marvel that held us gaping with wonder as we motored past ENORMOUS tankers and ships passing us just 50 meters off our port side. Our Egyptian pilot made a point to show us the location along the sand dunes where the “six day war” of 1967 had occurred between Israel and its neighboring Arab States. Moments later, as if to mark his words, we saw a machine gun resting on a tri-pod on top of golden sand dunes – a most remarkable image in the midst of this legendary isthmus. As we lay at anchor in peaceful Ismailia and listened to the Call to Prayer into the dawn, we rested in contemplation of what wonders our journey was to bring. – Abigail Alling