Communication in the middle of the Atlantic
Hi there,
we just had coffee and some biscuits. The wind has died down and so we only make around 6 knots. We donated some coffee to the god of winds and so let keep our fingers crossed that we again get around 20 knots of wind.
It is strange but you also get used to the fact that our windvane is broken and you can judge the apparent wind quite well from the waves and the boat speed. We only reconfirm it a few times with the handheld anemometer.
Today it was my turn to be the netcontroller for group A, these are the yachts from 186 to 240 but due to the fact that we went south first we are quite a long distance away from the others and on channel 4c i can only hear half of the group. But i guessed this already in the last days and had spoken with Blonde Moment and Brindabella if they can step in and so after reading out the weather he took over the roll call. The schedule for such a SSB group is:
11:55 Radio silence on 4c (4.149 MHz) and VHF 16 and 77 to check for any vessel in distress or urgent things
12:00 Announcement of frequency changes
12:01 read out of the weather forecast
12:05 Position reporting roll call. Each station with SSB is called and asked if they want their position reported to the ARC headquarter in CowesAfter that informal chat about fishing, problems, food, weather and positions
12:45 5 minute listening watch on 6A (6 Mhz band)
12:50 5 minute listening watch on 8A (8 Mhz band)
Then in the next hour (1300) Group B and on 1400 group C is doing the same.
So if you want you can listen 3 hours to other boats and how they are doing if you have SSB. This is fun, interesting and also adds some safety if you are aware of your communication capabilities.Already now a few yachts had issues with either their internet broadband via satellite (the bigger boats) or their other satellite phones and now only rely on SSB and VHF but VHF has limited range compared to SSB.
On 8.122 Mhz i heard today there is also a german round of maritime stations. We might check that today or tomorrow at 08:00 and 20:00 UTC.
The watertank is now switched to the watermaker water and we keep the other 300Liter tank as spare with around 100 liter left in it. So if the 300L tank for the watermaker is now empty we need to run our Spectra Ventura 200 T again. It produces a little over 30 liters per hour consuming 8Ah for that.Today the solar panels produced around 110Ah (it is still putting in a little bit) but believe it or not due to our SSB activities we are running low on batteries.
So we might have to run the engines before the night. But let us wait until the evening.
we just had coffee and some biscuits. The wind has died down and so we only make around 6 knots. We donated some coffee to the god of winds and so let keep our fingers crossed that we again get around 20 knots of wind.
It is strange but you also get used to the fact that our windvane is broken and you can judge the apparent wind quite well from the waves and the boat speed. We only reconfirm it a few times with the handheld anemometer.
Today it was my turn to be the netcontroller for group A, these are the yachts from 186 to 240 but due to the fact that we went south first we are quite a long distance away from the others and on channel 4c i can only hear half of the group. But i guessed this already in the last days and had spoken with Blonde Moment and Brindabella if they can step in and so after reading out the weather he took over the roll call. The schedule for such a SSB group is:
11:55 Radio silence on 4c (4.149 MHz) and VHF 16 and 77 to check for any vessel in distress or urgent things
12:00 Announcement of frequency changes
12:01 read out of the weather forecast
12:05 Position reporting roll call. Each station with SSB is called and asked if they want their position reported to the ARC headquarter in CowesAfter that informal chat about fishing, problems, food, weather and positions
12:45 5 minute listening watch on 6A (6 Mhz band)
12:50 5 minute listening watch on 8A (8 Mhz band)
Then in the next hour (1300) Group B and on 1400 group C is doing the same.
So if you want you can listen 3 hours to other boats and how they are doing if you have SSB. This is fun, interesting and also adds some safety if you are aware of your communication capabilities.Already now a few yachts had issues with either their internet broadband via satellite (the bigger boats) or their other satellite phones and now only rely on SSB and VHF but VHF has limited range compared to SSB.
On 8.122 Mhz i heard today there is also a german round of maritime stations. We might check that today or tomorrow at 08:00 and 20:00 UTC.
The watertank is now switched to the watermaker water and we keep the other 300Liter tank as spare with around 100 liter left in it. So if the 300L tank for the watermaker is now empty we need to run our Spectra Ventura 200 T again. It produces a little over 30 liters per hour consuming 8Ah for that.Today the solar panels produced around 110Ah (it is still putting in a little bit) but believe it or not due to our SSB activities we are running low on batteries.
So we might have to run the engines before the night. But let us wait until the evening.
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