Weatherfax

The wonders of technology.

After yesterdays half way party the wind finally built….and built until it ended up
giving me a soaking I wasn’t expecting. I think I ended up with two reefs in the main
and the heavy weather jib up. The wind continued through the night and then as we got
further into today it decreased until maximum sail was back up. Then we went full
circle and once again later this afternoon I was drifting with not a breath of air.

To keep me entertained today I have had Banjaard and De Franschman within VHF range. It
appears that Jon has spent all his iridium credit and is incommunicado with the outside
world. He called me up and we had a chat about it. I then relayed a message back to
RWYC, blogstar and rang Jons home leaving a message to give him some more phone credit.
Its taken all day and I think we are nearly there. I have had a few phone calls from
Jon’s family asking Jon for information about phone numbers, sim card numbers and
service providers which I then would relay back to Jon on VHF etc etc etc I’m sure you
get the picture. After all our efforts I think we are still snookered for the time
being as it take two working days for minutes to be credited and it being a Saturday
doesn’t help.

Bart and Jon eventually got so close that I heard them chatting on the radio – “if I
come round your port side you can take a good photo, then you can come round and do the
same for me’ I tell you this OSTAR is very hard work. Did you realise fewer people have
done the OSTAR than climbed Everest. Racing the OSTAR and doing a mid Atlantic photo
shoot is seriously hard core – these guys are tough let me tell you.

Anyway as the wind dropped its always a good opportunity to have a clean up and get on
top of a few things, whether washing, sleeping, eating or in my case drying out last
nights wasted kite launch. I then spent the rest of the time playing with my HF radio
receiver. It not something I have used much but wanted to bring with me as I thought it
would be useful if I lost all sat comms – I nearly did during the first few days. I can
listen into any frequency and pick up most things that travel as far as the middle of
the Atlantic – in particular Weatherfax. So for an experiment I thought I would try and
download the Halifax Ice report. A great little test and it would result in a great
nugget of information that I could use in the next few days. I tuned in and picked up a
few charts – great fun. This is real boys toys type technology. I love it. You tune
into a blip, beeping noise and then asked your computer to decode it and make this
noise into a picture. The technology is ages old but its great fun and you feel like
you are tuning into aliens from another planet and awaiting there first message. So a
few practise goes on some of the weather info they send and now I am all ready for the
ice chart. It not till 10.22 so I had some dinner, tweak the sails and waited.
Computer all set up, radio on, audio cable plugged into the laptop and waiting for the
start signal…..waiting….waiting…blip..blip…beep.beep..shhhhhhsssssccccccrrrrr…..and it
starts. Line by line its appearing the first time I have ever used this bit of kit for
something useful on the boat. Normally I just play with it at home on the kitchen
table. How exciting ….line by line… whats it going to look like, is it the same as the
Canadian chart? How much ice is there? Ok, there is enough to make out what looks like
a crescent shape…oh no it’s a ‘C’…then an ‘H’ and before I know it, its printed the
word CHART….what next CHART – Ice Patrol, or CHART, Ice Analysis….What is it going to
say…here it comes line by line CHART N and then there is an O and then a T…CHART NOT..I
wait and see the excitement killing me….CHART NOT AVAILABLE.

Hey at least I tried – it looks like I will be downloading it over sat comms anyway!

On another subject I saw a group of whales yesterday. About 6 or7 all coming straight
for me. They weren’t that big about 20 foot but they were definitly coming to check me
out. I was running the engine to charge the batteries and it obviously caught there
interest – a little unnerving for me. And today I had a group of dolphins join me too.

Rigth as its such a lovely quite evening and there is a nice steady breeze I am going
to make the most of it and have a decent nights sleep. That means peel the waterproofs
and boots off and sleep in a sleeping bag on a bunk, something I haven’t done enough of
so far.

Catch up tomorrow.

Will and Elmarleen

Lat:44.59N
Lon:41.26W

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