The week started off with a couple of tropical storms passing by. Tropical Storm Ana, the first of the season, didn’t quite make it as far as the Bahamas but disintegrated somewhere off the coast of Cuba. The local Bimini weather wasn’t unaffected though and we had the first couple of days with a fair bit of wind and rough seas outside of the shelter of the island. Later in the week we were expecting Hurricane Bill to appear, but he veered north and we got the tail end of him over the next weekend. This week (and the next three weeks) are facilitated weeks being led by a young German couple, Veit and Andrea Lindau, who are from a group called Life Trust.

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In which we are descended upon by a miscellaneous selection of people, who by the end of the week are all best friends. And then the following week we have the pleasure of Aneeta and Peter Makena (spiritual singers from US/Germany), a couple that I’ve had contact with at various times over the past 30 years. We’ve also got the pleasure of Nipun and Sukhi who are staying on for an extra week to help out with running things, as one of the team has to head back to the mainland for personal reasons.

4th Aug seamans log - lost the forestay today. it actually snapped off at the top while we were unfurling the jib. we had a couple of halyards that we could tie off at the front to keep things in place and fortunately the sea wasn’t too heavy so we made it back in one piece. Then we had to haul down the broken forestay and detach the jib and furling gear

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Well, that was a fun week I said. Wait till next week, it’s family week said the others… and so it was with a certain amount of dread that I helped unload half a dozen families on the next Monday. But by the end of the week I’d fallen in love with them all, a great set of families and children and we’d all had a wonderful time and the kids are all spaced out from being with dolphins… I’m so busy I’m not finding time to keep the blog up to date, so I’ll settle with some pictures for now.

I’m sick. Fever and aches and pains. And I’d so much wanted to arrive here and hit the ground running and instead I’m kind of stumbling around… We arrive at about 09:30, have some welcome hugs and catch up on gossip, then go to the room to unpack. I lay down on the bed and pass out, burning hot. At some point in the afternoon the fever breaks and I emerge from the room in time for the 5pm meeting. Saturday’s are a day of cleaning up after the previous weeks participants, and meetings to discuss what needs to happen and how we’re all getting on. So I’ve missed the practical meeting and in the sharing meeting I’m kind of subdued and not a little spaced out.

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The Bimini Blog series of posts are about the summer of 2009, when my partner, Ajara, and I take three months to hangout and help in the Bahamas at a resort called Wildquest. Wildquest is a place run by Amlas and Atmo, two old friends of ours who had taken over the business about 6-7 years ago. We’d gone to visit them in 2007 and discussed coming back to be part of the team for a summer. And this year we’ve managed to free ourselves up for three months to be there.

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The last concert of the tour is in Basel, Switzerland. And, as usual with the Swiss concerts, is organized by [name removed], a wild crazy organizer who seems to be on the edge of having it all spiral out of control but somehow keeps it together. He’s setup a beautiful stage design for the event.

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I like Poland and was looking forward to the concert in Warsaw, which I’ve not visited before. So was a bit disconcerted to find that it had been voted the ugliest city in Europe by TripAdviser. It is indeed a rather unlovely city but after a short readup on the history of the place one can understand why. Completely razed to the ground in 1944 by order of Hitler and then finished off by the Russians. Who then helped to rebuild some of it under the communist regime using the best of Soviet architecture. Remarkably, the old town center, which was completely ignored by the Soviet era reconstruction, was rebuilt to the original photographs and drawings by private donations and nowadays looks like “the real thing”.

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Tonights concert is in the prestigious Berlin Philarmonie, in the Kammermusiksaal, which is normally used for chamber orchestras and is in the round, meaning the audience is sitting all around. It’s not particularly designed for a stage performance, more for an ensemble to be listened to and as such the acoustics of the hall are excellent, which, paradoxically, poses a problem. Deva and Miten require a neutral acoustic in a hall, so that they can create their sound without the hall effecting it, but in this case the very layout has an effect. We haul up their own Syrincs PA that we use for the voice workshops, but that just makes things worse. It creates a rather tense sound check and, as oftens happens, an inspired concert!

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Always a shock driving back into Germany. Suddenly the autobahn becomes a scene from James Bond, with Porsches or BMWs sniffing up my exhaust pipe and flashing lights at me to overtake. It’s strange, take a mild mannered German deputy bank manager, nice wife, a loving father to two kids and put him behind the wheel of a car on the autobahn and he turns into a speed freak, every car in front an enemy to do battle with. And drivers from Hamburg seem to be amongst the worst.

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In which we stay in a nice, but funky hotel near the center and play a concert waay out in the suburbs and wander around the city of many delights. Past experience has taught me that Amsterdam hotel rooms are tiny, if you have a large suitcase you can’t move. So it’s a great surprise to find our hotel (Hotel Plantage, www.hotelplantage.nl) has decent sized rooms and is located a short walk from the center of the city. It’s also pleasantly run-down and funky and run by a guy who used to run a hotel in the red-light district. Downstairs is a nice pub and cafe and around the corner is the university area. Van parking is a kilometer away, but it’s a nice stroll.

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