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View of the city from Nautila at Akerselva, Hovedøya, Oslo, 5.45 am today.

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- co-curating conditions for an art project creating opening responses to marine research and data

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Soon travelling to Liverpool to join Etienne Gernez Academic Co-ordinator at Protei, who will be talking over Skype at Oggcamp about their Open Source Sailing drone project.  It's part of the Currently.no project I'm doing with Ross Dalziel, a research group between Liverpool and Oslo developing open responses to the marine sciences. (Sorry, not much time, so I cut and pasted some text from the OSC link). I've only had a brief RL meeting with Etienne - in Oslo last week, so it'll be great to have another one.

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Follow the Rainbow

If you want to find out where Nautila is moored, just look out over the water across to Hovedøya while the sun is out and its raining - which has happened several times a day for the past month. The end of the rainbow that falls into the trees will guide you there.

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Strawberry decoy

There are an unusual number of poisonous jellyfish milling around in the water this year. One morning I threw some withering strawberries overboard. Almost immediately the jelly fish began to gather around and consume them. Very uncanny - but then again, now I know what to do if I want to take a swim without becoming entangled in jellyfish tentacles.

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Summer residence

For about a month Nautila has been situated at Akerselva Boat Society on the little island of Hovedøya just five minutes on the ferry from the mainland in central Oslo. 

The position offers the opposite view of my winter residence, and I now look out onto the city; the Opera House and the construction of the barcode buildings and transport networks on the other side of the water.

There have been very few visitors to this unique island and its geological, biological and cultural wonders due to the the very wet summer, affording me morning and evening swims on the virtually deserted small beaches that are scattered across it. 

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This is the captain of the P&O line ferry, "Chitral", that brought me to England from Japan in 1966. He bares a startling resemblance to the mascot I inherited when I bought Nautila, only he looks more jolly. I think you can see Gibraltar in the background.

- Photo: Peter Steggell.

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This is possibly my favourite music video ever. 

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Seaweed soap project

Seaweed soap can be made from a combination of seaweed, sea water and glycerol. Obviously, the water and seaweed should come from an unpolluted source.

I envisage making soap from different marine environments. Each soap sample will come with information about its source/location, and the level of pollution in the water it came from. It will be graded and stamped according to its toxic status/cleanliness.

The public will be offered a chance to sample the soaps in a makeshift onboard or on-the-shore solar shower.

(I just saw that Bellona will shortly be holding a conference about the sustainable utilization of algae as a resource: http://www.alger2012.no/ )

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Gardening onboard

Nautila has been undergoing a renovation and upgrade process which has taken much more time than expected, hence the lack of blog posts. In the meantime I've been dreaming about what I'll do during the summer period to find out more about adapting a landlubbers habits to those of a live-aboard. Hence the gardening theme. 

I just read that rosemary, one of my favourite herbs for cooking, is relatively salt resistent. Also, I like the idea of a hydroponic garden adatped for cruising conditions,  as depicted in this nutty video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL-vvJWcEYU&

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Lazy mascot is put to work

I inherited this mascot when I purchased Nautila, but never really got on with him. He always seemed to be lying down asleep. So I put hom to work as the bearer of the thermometer. Now we get on much better. He can be placed both inside and out. Very useful.

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Featherless

On the subject of birds, I have banded seagulls from perching on my boat because they also use it as a toilet. Which reminds me; I went to see an exhibition, "Return to home", by the Norwegian artist Anders Eiebakke. The exhibition was centred around self-built surveillance drones, one of them fashioned in the guise of a seagull. In addition was a map of the intended flight path of the seagull, also functioning as the director's instructions for aerial photography.

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Feathered friends

I started to feed this trio of young swans with leftover bread in the mornings and evenings. When they disappeared a duck took their place, and then came her partner. They wait for me to wake up and come home in the evening. 

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Sunday dinner

This man caught a bagfull of mackerel next to Nautila, and then the catch of the day; a very decent sized trout. I really should get a fishing rod.

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The surface of the water froze over around my boat (and the previously featured pole!) for the first time on Sunday. YIKES! I looked on the echosounder and the underwater temperature has fallen from 3°c to 1°c. A bit concerned about pipes and tubes freezing and breaking, I open the floor hatches so that they can warm up from time to time.

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-8°c

It's -8°c. Water temperature 1°c below the surface. Calm sea. Big islands of ice float by. At 2am I switched on the echosounder to discover a very large shoal fish (almost certainly mackerel) passing under my boat. 

For the first time since moving to Nautila the water is crystal clear. (A good day for a swim). I can see what's below the surface. This pole actually reaches down 24m to the sea bed (though it doesn't look that way).