DAY FIVE - RADIO PROBLEMS

The last 18 hours has been a difficult time. The first hint of trouble as a snowy, barely readable weather fax that I got yesterday morning. This was in contrast to the crystal clear ones that I've become accustomed to. I attributed to propagation problems even though the Honolulu station is extremely close.

Then I got a Sailmail from Brenda saying that she and Stephen had not received the "Day 4" report. I checked the Sailmail log file and sure enough there was an error where the base station had lost contact with my modem. I managed to send it out after several attempts.

I spoke with Richard and Jeff OK but when I tried to download a large grib file there were so many retries that the transmission was terminated.

There was another problem. Most of my outgoing messages were being rejected with the reply that the message had already been received. Every message that I send out has a message number one higher than the previous one.

I went to bed troubled by all of this.

This morning I managed to raise Don on "Summer Passage”. Don provides excellent weather and routing services. He could hear me but said that I was having radio problems. A boat that sounded like “Nellie One” is in my vicinity and he could hear them loud and clear whereas I sounded like I was transmitting with 5 watts of power instead of 50. He asked what equipment I had and he said that it is excellent gear and that I should check all of the connections to the tuner and the antenna.

This turned out to be very helpful because I turned my attention away from Sailmail and the Pactor modem to the radio. I exposed the back of the radio, checked all of the connections, and re-seated the antenna cable. This gave no improvement. I partially emptied the lazarette and checked the connections to the tuner and the grounding straps on the theory that shifting equipment may have dislodged something. No fault found.

I was stumped. All the connections looked good and the manual’s “troubleshooting” had yielded nothing.

Then I looked up at where the antenna cable is clamped to the backstay. It was well clamped but clamped to the crimp-on swage rather than the cable itself. This is how it had been with the Kenwood radio when I purchased the boat but then again its reception had been pretty marginal. I also remembered that Ron Dubois had commented that he usually clamps the antenna wire directly to the backstay wire and not the swage.

I moved the connection and my index of performance, the quality of incoming fax signals, was dramatically better. I then sent out a message and received several incoming ones - including the large grip file - with little problem.

The “I've already received this message” problem is still there but I think that I may know what the problem is. I'll need to speak with Jeff about it.

Richard was still becalmed last night and is in a terrible situation. Don of Summer Passage told him to expect a gale of 40-50 kt winds. Richard sounded extremely frustrated and I can understand why. He is heeding Don’s message to head east and not north ASAP.

And I got sobering news from Jeff. There are good SW winds several hundred miles east of Hawaii but nothing north. GO EAST was his advice. I also took his advice and got a large-scale grib file which showed a low at about 18 N and 55 W with good SW winds east of that.

Because it was dark after my session with Richard and Jeff I decided to continue sailing at 330 and tack in the morning. The boat was smoothly sailing at 4 kt with one reef in the mainsail and I saw no advantage in changing this. At about midnight I heard the boom bang. The wind was dying so I dropped the mainsail and switched to the autopilot. At about 2 AM I was awaken by the beep beep beep warning from the autopilot that it had given up. No wonder. Our boat speed was down to 1.3 kt. I tidied the sails and lay ahull.

This morning's first session from Don confirmed that there are now winds north or west of Hawaii and I can expect nothing useful for at least 18 hours.

OK, I should have gone east. But in my defense the doctrine is to make for the north to catch the westerlies. However, the weather this spring has been seriously out of wack and I can throw away the guide books and had better start relying on what is really happening weather wise.

The boat is still taking on water, which is a disappointment. Not huge amounts - maybe 10 or 15 liters a day. That's certainly much better than when Arnold and I were pumping every hour or two. I plan to investigate this very systematically during this passage. My first experiment has been to shut the engine water cooling inlet valve. I cannot see how any water can be entering via the chain locker and I will confirm this by emptying each sail locker and seeing if there is any moisture. If as I expect the problem does not lie in the front I'll start looking at the rear, e.g. stern gland and water outlet hoses.

I am getting plenty of sleep and am eating well. I have started reading Barack Obama’s book “Dreams of My Father” and I am amazed that providence has made a man of such intellect, insight, empathy, and sensitivity President of the USA.

The weather is dry, warm, and sunny. Honolulu reports a sea temperature of 77 F. If I had access to the boarding ladder I would be tempted to go for a swim (Why not? With this wind I can swim rings around the boat.) But it is just as well because with my luck I would dive into the jaws of the only tiger shark for miles.

I think I'll watch a movie tonight.