More Off The Task List

Yesterday I cleared the bodega of everything that I will be taking with me.  I am relieved to find that the V berth and quarter berth areas of the boat are not excessively packed and access is reasonable.  As luck would have it I ran into Robert and Noe and I was able to tell Noe that he can have everything that is left in the bodega, on an all-or-nothing basis.  He'll find some useful things such as a clock radio, fan heater, and never-used extension cable.  I asked that he see me within a week.

I took the nifty manual washing machine that had served us so well in Tahiti and elsewhere to Mary at the office, who will include it in the charity auction at the end of the year.  She had never seen one before and said that it was "cute".  I think that the proceeds go to a children's hospital.

I then visited Seamar and made a final payment of $13 to cover my rent of the bodega until 27 October.  There I picked up 4 liters of engine coolant and some silicone sealant which I later used to seal the access to the emergency steering on the cockpit sole.

Today I had to wait in the boat for the arrival of Jose, who was to dive and swap out my zinc anodes.  That forced me to stay in the boat this morning which gave me opportunity to set up and test my Sailmail system.  The task involves connecting the Pactor modem and GPS antenna cables to USB ports on the laptop and informing the software.  Because my Toshiba has only two USB ports I dedicated one USB port to the high-traffic Pactor cable and the other to a Belkin 4-port USB hub. To that hub I plugged in the mouse and the GPS antenna.  Because port numbers are virtual and dynamic I had to establish which port number was being used for what.  I then brought up the Airmail 6 Sailmail software and told it the port numbers for the Pactor modem and the GPS.

After some fiddling I got the system up and decided to do a test transmission even though at 10 AM the sun was rather high and I was surrounded by the masts of boats, which further degrades radio propagation.  I went through the station at San Luis Obispo in California at 13915 kHz and to my surprise the connection was quick and transmission was fast at over 1500 bytes per minute.  This is amazing considering the conditions.  I sent out a test message to Australia and picked  up two messages, one from Perth and one from the Aussie sailboat Pyewacket  now in Queensland.  I like to attribute the good performance  to the Dynaplate RF ground shoe that was recently installed as well as the 30 mm separation that I recently established between the tuner cable and the backstay.  If my belief is justified it augers very well for my impending voyage. 

Jose showed up at 2 PM.  His brief was to change the "collar" zinc anode on the propeller shaft as well as the large screw-on anode at the end of the shaft.  He popped up out of the water and reported that the screw-on anode was in top condition and he had swapped out only the collar anode.  He then went back down and scraped clean the Dynaplate RF ground shoe.  (I had already cleaned the propeller for last week's sea trial.)

After Jose left I resumed my internet search for maritime radio transmissions.

My old friends Australian stations VMC (Charleville) and VMW (Wiluna) can provide me with radio weather faxes of the south polar region.  Chilean stations CBV out of Valparaiso and CBM out of Punta Arenas can provide comprehensive weather faxes for my entire journey to the Horn and beyond.  (I've noted the schedules and frequencies.)

Provided that my HF-Pactor-Sailmail system holds up I will have an excellent view if existing and predicted winds, waves, and even the limit of the ice pack.

I picked up some more information on the experience of the brother of a friend here who sailed out of La Paz a couple of years ago to round the Horn.  It was December and just past Easter Island he ran into a Category II hurricane and had to return to Easter Island for whatever shelter he could find.  Somewhere along the way he broke a finger while manipulating his outboard motor.  After a couple of months at Puerto Montt he sailed down the channels of Patagonia and through the Beagle Channel.  Near the  Falklands he got hit pretty hard again and arrived in Uruguay with only one functioning sail left: his mizzen sail, which he had rigged to his mainmast.

He was sailing a "budget" boat that for which he had paid only $35,000 and "probably" didn't have the electronic equipment for receiving weather faxes.  Regardless, I take my hat off to anyone who has made successful passage through the Patagonia  archipelago solo.