Eleventh stop is Polo Harbour in the Boewnst KS-S c20-959 system. 85 jumps from Death Spiral and 17,590LY from Sol.

This trip was also uneventful. It took about 90 minutes to get here. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I should be in Colonia by the end of the day if all goes well.

Tenth stop is Death Spiral in the Blaa Phoe NC-D d12-230 system. 108 jumps from Gandharvi and 16,361LY from Sol.

This leg of the trip was uneventful. It took just shy of 2 hour to get here. The special feature is that a gas giant passes through a white dwarf star. I took a few screen shots and moved on to Polo Harbour to get back on track with my trip to Colonia.

Ninth stop Gandharvi, 38 jumps from The Crux and 15,620LY from Sol.

My ship was damage from heat and I had collected quite a bit of cartographic data so I decided to stop at the nearest station to repair and unload my cartographic data. My landing pad was right next to the mail slot so when I slowed down to land I got rear ended by an NPC ship taking my hull down about 1/3rd. I’m pushing 4 hours of real flight time between the last two stops so being destroyed would have really sucked, especially since the last station I docked at was 263 jumps away so probably close to 8 hours of flight time. I managed to collect over 1 million in cartographic data since the start of my trip confirming that by not “honking” would still give me an unfair advantage in Colonia as a start. If I was to honk at each system even with a basic discovery scanner I would arrive with millions. Now that I reset my travel clock I am 6,407LY to Colonia. I have 4 more stops to make but I am getting much closer to my final destination. I’ll count this leg as an hour as I updated everything, repaired and docked for the day. At this point I have exactly 900 jumps and about 19 hours invested. Looks like I blew my goal but the math was pretty close. I just didn’t anticipate time landing and checking out the sites. Since joining the Enigma Expedition I have been sidetracking to various sites and zig-zagging quite a bit. Once I hit Polo Harbour I will be back on track.

Eighth stop The Crux in the Nuekuae AA-A h52 star system. 171 jumps from the Guardian Ruins and 15,148LY from Sol.

This is the longest single leg of the journey. I didn’t run into any problems. I did get dropped off in a system not near any stars so I had to “honk” to find a star to re-fuel. Since the system was unexplored I explored it. I also scanned the black hole and the next leg was pretty long so I am going to make a side trip to a station about 800LY away in the Gandharvi system. The trip took about 3 hours.

Seventh stop Guardian Ruins in the Skaudai AM-B d14-138 star system. 4 jumps away also 11,797LY from Sol.

Turns out that this is the shortest leg of the trip. I’m going to count it as 60 minutes as it took me a while to locate the planet due to my very short range scanners. I was able to find the planet by scanning the very last gas giant in range and then traveling out to it and scanning again lighting up the 7th planets and an 8th planet. I found the ruins but since I left my SRV behind to save weight I was unable to enjoy the sites up close. I am 10,218LY to Colonia so I am a touch over half way there.

Sixth stop Sacaqawea Space Port in the Skaudai CH-B d14-34 star system. 151 jumps from the Pru Aescs HW-S b31-2 system and 11,797LY from Sol, about half way there.

This trip took me about 2.5 hours. Looks like I can maintain about 1 jump a minute without “honking” and jumping hot. I got 2 messages, the first was a promotion to “Scout” and the 2nd was an invite for Felicity Farseer. Since this is a planetary landing I am unable to apply my new rank decal to my ship. Felicity is a borderline required engineer if you wish to make the trip to Colonia. Skipping her will more than double the time it takes for me to get to my destination. I am not quite half way there yet and I have made 687 jumps and traveled for 14 hours of real time.

Fifth stop Pru Aescs HW-S b31-2 (Conflux Abandoned Settlements). 84 jumps from the Rohini system and 9,656LY from Sol.

Change of plans, I just joined the Enigma Expedition and will follow that route for the remainder of the trip. I may make a side trip to stations on my original list if they are close. Nothing unusual was encountered. I did see an Unregistered Comms Beacon but I didn’t get any information from it. Since I only had a basic discovery scanner I was unable to find the landing site. The trip took about 90 minutes so I will continue to the next stop Sacaqawea Space Port to unload my cartographic data and stage for the next stop on the Enigma Expedition.

Fourth stop Eudaemon Anchorage and Eudoxus Hithe in the Rohini star system. 68 jumps from Eagle’s Landing and 7,692LY from Sol.

This appears to be a side trip as I will travel 1,342LY for a net gain of about 675LY closer to Colonia. The big difference is that I have an Orbital Station and an Orbital Outpost to visit instead of a planetary outpost. I hope I’ll be able to access the Livery page and maybe see if there is any ship outfitting or even ships available at this location as the planetary landings so far have none. The trip was quick and un-eventful and both stations were visible after a “honk”. I chose to dock at the larger Starport. After repairs and turning in stellar cartography I was at 354,201 credits. They did have ship outfitting of almost every component I could think of for a sidewinder, including AFMS’s, planetary scanners and even an advanced discovery scanner. I thought long and hard about adding an AFMS to my empty shield slot but they require materials to operate and I do not have any mining capability or SRV’s available to restock so I will just rely on stations to fix up my sidewinder. There was no A or B rated components and I have a feeling since the station is run by the Colonia Console they were sold at a markup but that will be the norm once I arrive in Colonia. A shipyard is not available… yet. I was able to access Livery and add the “Mostly Aimless” logo to the hood of my ship. The paint is starting to fade and it looks real nice. It took about 90 minutes to make the trip, the shortest I will probably have to make.

Third stop Eagle's Landing in the Eagle Sector IR-W d1-117 star system. 141 jumps from Amundsen Terminal and 7,018LY from Sol.

I’m really getting the hang of flying “hot”. The Sidewinder really impresses me with its ability to handle high heat. I only overheated twice this trip and it was the longest one to date. I covered about 3,000LY in about 2.5 hours. A new record. When I finally hit my destination system I “honked” and didn’t see any stations to land at. I proceeded to find the Navigation beacon and scan that. It displayed that Eagle’s Landing was about 4,300Ls away from the Nav beacon. After landing, repairing and selling my cartographic data I had 315,469 credits. I also received a message from Colonia Council that I was now “Cordial” with them.

Second stop Amundsen Terminal in the Lagoon Sector NI-S b4-10 star system. 130 jumps from Hillary Depot and 4,481LY from Sol.

About 90 minutes into my trip Comcast kept crashing. I would find myself away from a star on half tank of fuel, after the jump I would be almost empty but facing a fresh star to re-fuel at. I got lucky as I always got disconnected on a full tank leaving me with half tank to make the next jump blind. Once the connection settled down I just got flat out risky. I never throttled down during the jump and didn’t check the next system for a scoopable star as the flight computer was hitting 100%. Because I was flying much faster my scooping time was reduced and on Orange stars I would lose fuel and on White and Yellow stars I could make up the difference. I also had to dive much deeper into the star to hit max scoop rate and hold it there longer. Since I was using a 2D power plant I didn’t have much heat resistance and the ship ran very hot, sometimes overheating. I also didn’t wait to finish scooping if the tank was full and jumped much closer to the star than usual, again causing overheat issues. Because I was walking a very thin line trying to scoop as much fuel as possible and diving deeper and deeper into stars I eventually hit a star and got knocked out of supercruise, damaging the hull and having to wait on a FSD cooldown. Once the cooldown was over and I engaged supercruise I immediately shot to over 100% heat and damaged the ship even further trying to escape the heat of the star. The end result is I baked myself a little bit and I had to pay repair cost but it was worth it. It took me about 3.5 hours to arrive at Amundsen Terminal. After repairs and selling cartographic data I was at 168,868 credits.