3 April

Long-Term Ocean Climate Observations (LOCO) – D301/302

Cruise Diary – 3^rdApril 2006	Hoornders launching a message in a bottle Painting in one of the bottles
Monday - Today we even had rain and in the late afternoon it became too cold to sit outside on the deck. The weather really differs from the previous period. Although the Discovery sailed at only some 30 miles from the coast of Madagascar, we could not see the shoreline. Now we sail away from the coast again, to the south-east of Madagascar, where tomorrow a new series of CTD stations and mooring recovery starts. Four us live in the village den Hoorn on Texel. In that village, artists started a campaign to raise money for an old, classical, organ that is installed in a church that will be rebuild into apartments. The funds that are raised are used to install the organ in a workplace (atelier) of one of the artists. They intend to organize concerts regularly once the organ is installed. One of their fund raising actions is that they spread 'messages in a bottle', mainly on the North Sea, using local fishermen. All these messages contain a small painting from one of the artists and a request to sent some money to the 'Organ fund'.
	They asked us to launch also such 'messages in a bottle' during our cruise in the Indian Ocean and gave us 20 of these filled bottles. Thus, we regularly throw one of these bottles into the ocean and/or use the small paintings as an ornament in the laboratories. The inhabitants of den Hoorn and an example of such a small painting are shown on the pictures above.
Reading…