When I logged on tonight I discovered that the Lost DSSA Carrier had been found in the Pyriveae EC-K b41-3 system. That was only 1800Ly away, so a lazy few jumps later I arrived.

Just a few jumps later I arrived at WP2: Thuecheae MT-Q e5-8 (The Seldowitch Nebula).

Naturally, these always look best from the closest nearby system:

I will probably explore nearby systems looking for first footfall biological scans. In the Caspian Explorer, "nearby" could be quite a way!

The second POI was Truechoae FL-P b5-8 B 1 (Tartarus’s Inferno), a world orbiting less than 2Ls from its parent star.

It's hot, but not as hot as Skardee 1!

I took the opportunity to get out in the SRV for a bit and fill up the Tungsten and Vanadium buckets. Plus a little Zirconium.

First stop tonight was Truechoae KP-D d13-8 where planet 2 a "Iris Sunrise" was identified as an interesting place to visit. It didn't seem very interesting to me. The rings were very thin and free of dust.

Of greater interest was the fact that the Cannon EDMC plugin identified planet 5 b as having 4 unscanned biologicals. The tubus is worthwhile, but the tussock, stratum and bacterium are not.

Last stop for the night was Pro Broae HR-N e6-21 (Broae Nebula), taking 12 jumps since the last nebula.

Only two more POIs tomorrow night before arriving at WP2.

It only took 12 jumps to get to Preia Byoea VU-X e1-42 (The Astral Shroud Nebula).

Next is Pro Broae HR-N e6-21 (Broae Nebula).

38 jumps later I arrived at Auphails QI-B e12 (Viruna) which is a black hole in the center of a small planetary nebula. The best view is from the nearby Auphails AX-Y b6-6 system.

Next stop is Preia Byoea VU-X e1-42 (The Astral Shroud Nebula).

I read about a Notable Stellar Phenomena having been found in Roedaae JO-G a10-1 only 46Ly from Rendezvous Point, so I popped over for a look.

You drop immediately into inky dark clouds, with lightning all around. There were some Lividum Bullet Molluscs floating about, but you needed to be careful as the lightning would occasionally start attacking your shields!

The thunder can be heard out to 30km and the clouds fades from view at 90km.

I now need to start heading off to the next waypoint. The first stop will be Auphails QI-B e12 (Viruna).

The official Rendezvous Rally 2 was held at 2AM my local time on Rendezvous Point 3 c. I missed that (obviously), but I decided to visit it anyway.

I have also never used EDCoPilot for SRV racing, so it was a learning experience there. In fact, I had to reinstall EDCoPilot due to an SSD failure a few months ago. That meant a certain amount of setup and configuring before I was happy.

Most disappointing was that when I visited the course yesterday the local star was low-ish on the horizon. I didn't know if it was rising or setting, but visiting today answered that question. It was setting and the course was now in darkness.

Driving in the dark is not enjoyable. I wish I had been able to do the course yesterday. On my first attempt I got 72nd place in 24m10s. However, after going afk for a couple of hours I came back to find Alec Turner (of course!) had set a time of 4m31s. I know "flyve-ing" is fast, but that's ridiculous. It's averaging over 114m/s!

Next was to visit the "Hill Climb" on Eactainds MA-T b3-1 starting at 30.84/-144.8 and ending at 30.9/-144.57 (roughly a 70deg bearing from the start).

It's about a 5.5km horizontal and 4.5km vertical challenge. Easy in an SRV, less so on foot.

From 2km away, even the Caspian Explorer starts looking small.

I completed it in about 30min, with lots of jet boosts and backsliding.

I saw one other commander while I was scaling the mountain - I saw their Caspian Explorer leave.

Before I logged off last night I decided on a change of plan. Instead of hitching a lift on a carrier - I'd fly the whole way. Therefore I switched to my Caspian Explorer and undocked, ready to start off the next night.

The Caspian Explorer is a fantastic ship for travelling. Especially when you load it up with extra fuel tanks!

I plotted my course from Spoihaae XE-X d2-9 to Rendezvous Point, starting with Spansh to get an idea of the distance and selected a system roughly half way - Braireau OM-V d2-6942, 13811Ly away.

Then I plotted a course using the galaxy map and got a 38-jump route and set off. My Caspian Explorer has huge fuel reserves (288T), so I didn't need to refuel at any point, except when I was 4 jumps short I noticed an M-class just a couple of hundred light-seconds away and so took the opportunity to fill the tanks, which took a few minutes, even at 1245kg/s!

The second half turned weird. Rendezvous Point is 13805Ly away, but the in-game plotter came up with a 174-jump route! I decided to set off anyway and stop to reconsider when either the next system stopped being a neutron star, or when the jump distance dropped significantly below the usual 370Ly.

I suspect the issue is a quirk in the galaxy where areas roughly aligned with the Bubble are prevented from having neutron stars.

After only 3 jumps the galaxy map route turned into non-neutron stars with short jumps, so I switched to Spansh and proceeded one jump at a time.

After a total of 94 jumps over 2.5 hours and 29,535.65Ly (27,610.54Ly straight line) I arrived at Rendezvous Point.

The last time I was in this system was for the Distant Worlds 1 Expedition on 13-Mar-3302 (2012).