Radio Heaven

We've died and gone to radio heaven.

We've spent the better part of a week or so installing our new radios. First, we installed a new VHF radio. This one has AIS. The picture below shows the display that shows all the nearby vessels that are transmitting an AIS signal (commercial traffic typically), and some killer info...like how fast they are going, what direction they are headed, if and when they will collide with us. Simple things that make life SO much better. And hopefully, safer.

We toyed with getting an AIS receiver, that would plug into our chart plotter software. It would require an extra VHF antenna. No problem, we've already mounted a spare. But...when we're on a passage, we don't run our chart plotter continuously. Saving power. But we do keep our VHF on. So, this was a perfect solution.

Sadly, our old cockpit mic doesn't work with this unit, but no worries. The good folks at Standard Horizon are sending us a compatible one ASAP!!

The other uber-cool radio news is that we are working on a SSB radio!! Andy and Monica on SV Savannah sold us their old radio for a smokin' good price. We (well, mostly John) installed it in only three days (!) with a fair amount of course language that I attribute to years on job sites and fishing boats. But, bad language aside, guess what - it works, mostly!! We are still doing some testing, and it isn't perfect, but we're making great progress.

Life is good. Our projects are coming along well. Departure from Majuro is imminent.

Laysan Delivery - Passage Pics

As usual, we didn't take many pictures underway. But, here's a few pics of our passage.

We spent long hours at the helm. We passed the time by reading, watching movies, chatting, and eating!

 

Everyday, I checked in with the Pacific Seafarer's Net to report our position and weather info. They were a great group of people located all over the pacific, and talking with them on the radio each day was a highlight!

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Red-footed Boobies loved to hang out on the boat.

Lots of Updates...just not yet

We have lots to blog about. Like tons of awesome new gear. And fun trips. New friends. A birthday celebration. Samoan life. But...sadly, our computer has finally bit the dust. Died. *Hit the bed. So, it has been sent to Canada for a hopeful warranty replacement, and I'm now setting up our power-pig, back-up computer to be our emailing, blogging, navigating super-machine. It's not going well.

If you've sent email recently...thank you so much! Especially for all the awesome birthday greetings!! I'll be attempting to recover my email and address book, so I hope to respond to you all soon. 

Sat Phone Success

I've spent many, many hours over the past couple of weeks trying to set up our sat phone to send and receive emails and weather forecasts via our computer. What I thought would be a fairly simple task has turned out to be pull-out-my-hair frustrating. But I'm happy to report, that we have success!! Today I was able to request instant emailed forecasts, and weathergrib files (graphic images that show wind strength, wind direction and pressure isobars overlayed on a map). It is all compressed to be sent over very slow internet connections, such as our sat phone. Funny how such simple things can make me happy...