VIDEO FRIDAY!

Ahhh…the land of fast internet! This is the 36 minute sequel to our Mexico to Marquesas Passage Diary (our most watched video to date it turns out) and the third passage diary we’ve made. We did better on the sound this time.

Settle down and come ride with us for 3000 miles in the South Pacific.

Go directly to the video on our youtube channel here.

This is the 4th video in the “A Taste of…” video series we’ve been working on as we’ve been cruising. First, the Marquesas, then the Societies, then traveling backward in time to British Columbia and now, what I think is our best so far, A Taste of Tonga. And in case you are wondering, the drone footage is from a friend, not our own (unfortunately).

Direct link to the video on youtube here

Not an actual instructional video, but it would have been nice to have seen someone do it before we tried for the first time. We gravity filled our propane tank throughout French Polynesia and here we are doing it on Taravai Island (in Mangareva Atoll, Gambier Archipelago, French Polynesia).

Direct link to the video here.

VIDEO FRIDAY

This is not one of our videos but a video from the Cabrinha Quest - a charter/owner kiteboarding/surfer catamaran who does some really cool stuff schlepping around kiteboard pros and average kiters plus professional photographers and videographers. Pete Cabrinha wrote and narrated this video and it says so much of what I want to say myself about cruising/vagabonding.

The video is full of amazing footage worth watching but it is Pete's points about nature and remoteness that I feel like sharing with everyone.

You can go to the video directly on youtube here

There were many points that resonated with me. The two that really stick out are:

- The joy of unplugging from the internet. I love the internet, blogging and social media. I also love the fact that my life involves binges of internet and then periods where I am disconnected. I don’t think I would enjoy social media very much if I were always connected to it. The periods of time when I am disconnected are important to me deeply. People often suggest ways I can be more connected to social media while at anchor (e.g., buying local SIM cards, etc) and although I am certain I will occasionally do that, I resist that full-time, every day connectivity.

- The way that connecting with a person from a different culture via a sport is powerful. We made good friends on the water through kiteboarding and spear fishing while in French Polynesia and these connections with people living ashore felt more authentic for us than other connections we made because we shared a common passion with the person.

The super attentive or supremely bored might have noticed that we haven’t mentioned our use of our Google Ad money in a while. This is because, when our main computer died, we decided to save our Ad pennies up for a new workhorse laptop. We had several hand-me-down netbooks from family and those sufficed for navigation, airmail and weather, email and photo/blog posting. However, I was unable to edit video which is why we have taken such a long hiatus from posting any until recently.

We have a new computer (woohoo!) – with enough memory and processing power to make videos lickety split and a large screen for use as our in boat “television”. With a DC-DC voltage converter in hand and freeware in hand we are back in business.

Thank you all again for putting up with the ads on the blog, and for occasionally visiting the vendors. The rewards are real for us and I hope by putting them toward a new computer with which I can continue making silly movies, the rewards will be real for you as well.

Are you more interested in looking at this post because it has the word ‘boob’ in it? On average, I bet you are – I know I am.

We were at a friends house with fast internet in Tahiti (a rarity) and we were streaming youtube videos which we rarely get to do. Being a compulsive list creator and data collector, I was keeping track of the videos of South Pacific ocean passages which we enjoyed watching.

While perusing SV Delos great videos we noticed an amusing fact. They had split their Pacific crossing video into parts, labeled 1,2, & 3, all uploaded on the same date, but the parts had vastly different numbers of views. Actually, the parts had similar views except one video which had  almost 10 times the number of views – the one with a thumbnail picture that included a woman in a bikini.

Having been a scientist in a former life, I set out to make a  terribly controlled test of the theory that it was boobs in the thumbnail that increased the views. Only having one South Pacific passage video to work with of our own, I used a within subject, longitudinal case study.

We had 15 months of view data on our video with a thumbnail that did not include boobs. In early December, I changed the thumbnail to include me in a bikini. Now, note, I was already in the video in a bikini (um, its HOT out there at the equator – believe me, sometimes the bikini was only put on because the camera was coming out). I took a screen shot that was already in the original video and changed the thumbnail (the still image you see on a search, or in a suggested video screen) to include boobs. In the graphs below the pink/red line is the boob data and the blue line is the pre-boob data – axis units held constant.

In the 3 months since we have made that change, we have had as many minutes watched as we had in the preceding 15 months and we have had 2/3 as many views which, with only 1/5 as much time, with no natural or artificial changes, you would expect 1/5 as many views. Did I mention that our youtube viewers are 90% male?

HOLY BOOB EFFECT!

Of course, to finish the test, to show that this is not the normal curve of a videos gain in popularity, or the effect of some other non-boob factor, I should now remove the thumbnail and replace it with a third option, something without boobs but appetizing nonetheless… but I think I’ll stop while the results fit my theory ;)

VIDEO FRIDAY and also, your moment of zen. A *big* thank you to SV Namaste for taking several of our videos back to the US of A and uploading them with fast internet.

This video is aerial footage, taken with a GoPro on our Blade Trigger kiteboarding kite, of one of our anchorages in the Tuamotus. If you put the video on the highest quality play you can see the coral under the water, the sand banks, and Estrellita floating in the middle of the beauty. Enjoy – we did!