When you are hot and homesick, cramped and weary, fed up with tinned meat, maggots in the rice and 30-second showers, it is the small gestures that make the difference. Gestures like this one, for instance.
"Hi Rebecca," the message read. "This is Claire here. I go to Ballyboughal school. Some of my friends in school have been chosen to send e-mails to you from our school but I was not chosen. So I decided to send you one myself. I am eight years old and I'm in third class. Every day in school we check the Internet for news of your whereabouts."
Claire Cronin - a self-confessed Boyzone and Spice Girls fan with an intense curiosity about hammerhead sharks - is just one of many Irish school pupils caught up in the global circumnavigation on the Coveney ketch, Golden Apple, which is raising funds for the Chernobyl Children's Project. Unfortunately, the young shore supporters don't hold cheque-books or offshore accounts. Now over halfway around the world, the crew members have achieved a quarter of their target of £1 million set by their late father, Hugh Coveney.
It is a sum that many fundraisers would be proud of, but the Coveneys are anxious to raise more. Part of the problem, as their brother and former skipper, Simon Coveney, acknowledges, is the difficulty that non-sailing people have in relating to life at sea on a timber yacht. The perception is that this is a rich kids' holiday. The reality of harsh, co-oped-up conditions, limited food, lack of privacy, long lonely watches, uncertain weather and hazardous seas is hard to transmit.
It is particularly difficult when the contributions to the crew's website are, of necessity, upbeat and cheerful. Having set sail from Darwin, Australia, on September 9th, with several friends from Ireland who had joined for this leg, the vessel dropped anchor in Benoa harbour, Bali, on September 19th. It was a frustrating passage, with no wind and lots of engine work.
After several days in port, the heat began to get to them, as there is no air-conditioning on board. Tony, the chef, decided to spend the night up on deck, trading possible mosquito bites for a welcome breath of wind. He slept well until 2.30 a.m. when he was woken by a flash of lightning and the greatest downpour of rain he has ever experienced. "I tried to ignore it at first, but once I could feel the water running into my sleeping bag that was enough."
The crew intends to leave Bali on Wednesday after several days of scraping, sanding, painting and stocking up, and are bound for Borneo. Given the risk of pirates in the South China Sea, the plan is to sail in tandem with another vessel - an American yacht with a family of five on board and armed with a couple of guns. They first met the 45-foot vessel, Magic, in the Caribbean.
The Sail Chernobyl website can be found at http://aardvarkipl.com/ccp/sail-chernobyl. Donations to the project can be made through Allied Irish Banks, South Mall, Cork, account number 11100050.