September 8, 2014
Place: Langkawi

While the rest of the Southern Hemisphere welcomes Spring, the Shamouner’s are hoping to say goodbye to the monsoon rains of Langkawi and welcome the warm trade winds of Bali, Indonesia.

Shamoun has had a tough few weeks of maintenance in the yard repairing the damage from the telephone pole we hit in the Malacca Straits. Things are coming together and after a few more surveys and sea trials, we hope to be headed for Bali quite soon.

In and amongst working really hard, the Shamoun team has found the time to take part in the ALS icebucket challenge. The challenge involves people getting doused with buckets of ice water on video, posting that video to social media, then nominating others to do the same, all in an effort to raise ALS awareness.  People can either accept the challenge or make a donation to an ALS Charity of their choice, or do both.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Motor Neuron Disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.
Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body.
The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons affects the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement.
With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed and ALS eventually leads to death.

The Shamoun team created our own video, which got quite a bit of attention, and we donated money to the ALS foundation. We also donated money to the J9 foundation in South Africa, which was founded by one of South Africa’s rugby hero’s Joost van der Westhuisen, who also suffers from the disease.

In our “Going Green” effort Shamoun has implemented the use of Bobble Bottles, which has dramatically decreased our plastic wastage. The bottle contains a built in charcoal filter so we can use regular tap water instead of disposable plastic water bottles. We’re hoping to try and make other aspects of boat living eco-friendly too.

The end of September sees Shamoun saying goodbye to a few more crewmembers. Jocie Tysoe, Pat Dorsey and Coraline Vitti. Jocie has decided to go brush up on her schooling and is taking on a Yacht Masters course – GOOD LUCK and congrats! Pat and Coraline are returning to their normal lives as they were just kindly helping out while some of our crew had holiday.
Thank you all very much, best of luck with your new adventures and we hope to bump into you at some point in the future!

Regards,
The Shamoun Team