Problems with Sailmail

Hello Folks,

I have not been able to use Sailmail for 3 days because of technical problems at the S Africa station. The folks at SAMMNet have been giving me whatever assistance they can.

I must rely on stations a long distance away, such as Chile, the Red Sea, and Brunei. This morning I managed to send out two short messages through Chile at a rate of 96 bytes a minute. One was a message to Sailmail Technical Support asking them to fix the problem as a matter of urgency.

Until the problem is resolved I'll have to work by the following regime in order to minimize the Sailmail traffic:

1. I will continue writing my daily blogs but will not send any of them out for now. Once the normal Sailmail service is restored I will send out the accumulated blogs 1 or 2 at a time.
2. I will request no grib files or weather information because it represents too much incoming data. I will rely on SAMMNet for my weather information.
3. I ask that no messages be sent to my Sailmail address. I can't read them now and a long queue of incoming messages could take hours to clear
4. I will try to regularly issue brief messages giving my situation and position

At 1030 UTC on Sat 9 March my position was 37S46, 020E07. I was clear of the Aghulas bank and motoring to the south due to the strong current and weak wind. My target is lat 40S to pick up the west winds and current.

All is well with the boat and myself.

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