Change of plans

Well, we had our annual holiday and first proper cruise on Sarah G over the last two weeks and very enjoyable it proved. A full account will follow shortly. However, as seems to be the way of our holidays, we took some big decisions and one of them is that we are going to have to withdraw from the Azores race.

Various changes in circumstances and the increasing complexity of complying with the regulations for the race have forced this decision.

We are now going to focus our efforts on our long term cruising plans in the Medditerrinean in 2012.

Watch this space and here is a picture of one of our pleasanter evenings in the upper reaches of the Fal.

AIS installed and working

Well, we have finally done it and the bloody thing is now installed and working. We actually did the deed over last weekend and wound up not sailing anywhere but it is now done. The unit is on the bulkhead, the splitter is on the side next to the chart table sailing instruments and the switch panel. We had to run an extension from it to the AIS unit itself and finally, I had to thread the wire from the GPS aerial on the pushpit through all the cockpit lockers, along the quarter berth and finally behind the switch panel and bookshelf but it is all in and working.

We start our holiday this weekend so will be trying it out for real now. Off the boat, I have become addicted to the AIS tracking web site

Marine Traffic

Keep an eye out for us.

On a side issue, congratulations to fellow AZAB entrant Marco Naninni who has just successfully completed his 1000 mile qualifying passage for the Route du Rhum

Marco Naninni

More AIS blues

The saga of the AIS transponder continues. We have concluded that the process of running a second aerial up the mast and getting it two meters away from the other one is not likely to be a goer. So, we have bought a Comar splitter. Now the problem is to install the splitter.

A lot of head scratching later and we have decided that the only practical place to fit it is immediately above the bookshelf. This means lots of hole drilling as we not only have to fit it but also get the co-axial cables routed. There are however different sorts of co-ax connections. The VHF has a PL-259 socket and thankfully, the cable coming out of the splitter has a nice PL-259 connector crimped onto it. However, the AIS cable has a BNC bayonet connector while the AIS unit has a PL-259. It transpires that a BNC to PL-259 adaptor is not an easy thing to find and no chandler stocks them. Grrr.

Thankfully all is not lost thanks to a Ham Radio site who do stock them. Martin Lynch and Sons. They sell everything possible to do with radios and can be found on:

Martin Lynch & Son

Hopefully, that will bring an end to it and we will really be able to test the thing out though I still have to work out how to get the GPS element wired from the pushpit to the chart table. I suspect that this will need lots of cable ties and contortions into uncomfortable positions in the cockpit lockers. Watch this space.

Bit of a slow time at the moment

Not a lot has been happening recently. We had hoped to get down to Sarah G last weekend and try out the cruising chute properly on a short trip to Fowey but were defeated by rowdy neighbours keeping us awake till the early hours of the morning.

We will be down next on the weekend of the 31 July but have guests aboard so will not be going far. We do however hope to finally get the AIS transponder working. After a bit more reading it seems that having two aerials on the masthead really would be a bad idea unless we rigged up some complicated contraption to give them 2 meters separation which really would make us look like the roof a cold war embassy. Instead we are going to put a splitter in and run the VHF and AIS off the same aerial. Reports seem to say that this will work well enough.


And so it goes on. We are planning a long weekend in Falmouth at the middle of August with the objective of fitting the Aries. We will also leave here there for a week and start our holiday from Falmouth rather than Torpoint. Here is a picture of her dried out and also one of me looking not very heroic on the foredeck.

Got a Satellite Phone

The whole business of an Iridium satellite phone was looking highly vexatious. A new one is around £1300 plus air time which is way out of my price league. Second hand ones do not seem to appear in the yachting press. They do however appear quite regularly on Ebay and I was lucky enough to get one for £250 odd on there. It is of course an old 9500 series which is now out of production and does not support data connections.


However for my purposes, it is fine and will serve it's purpose perfectly. I have purchased an airtime deal from mailasail so will be testing it this weekend.

The phone it self is wonderfully retro compared to today's mobile phones. It is styled like mobiles from it's era which is the mid nineties and is also about five times bigger than most phones today. It even has the meaningless flip down cover for the key pad as inspired by the star trek films.

Met one of the Jester Challenge entrants

Gus Davidson who had entered Jester Challenge now works in the same office as me and I was lucky enough to have a bit of a chat with him today which was both an honour and also very enjoyable. I have nothing but admiration for anyone prepared to set out across an ocean and to do so in a boat so much smaller than we are planning is even more awe inspiring. He undertook the project to raise money for McMillan Cancer Care. His website is below

Gus Davidson

Meanwhile our plans continue to come together ever so slowly.

Still in the race

We have heard back from Colin Drummond on the RCYC committee and his pronouncement is that so long as the second qualifier with the full 500 miles we will be deemed to have qualified to enter. I would still very much like to enter if we can though I will not be devastated if it does transpire that we have to withdraw.

As outlined earlier, there are various plan B scenarios. My favourite would be to take a couple of months but leave it will August or even September and work the boat round to Gibraltar or similar ready for our Mediterannean cruise in 2012.

We shall just have to see.