Jul 10, 2005 - 0515hrs UTC Frome

0515hrs 20 Jul 2005 UTC Frome
Sorry to be such a lousy correspondent – I’ve been driving around the south of England with HilaryAlex’s partner and Katherine’s mother and KatherineAlex’s daughter visiting relatives and trying to stay in touch with Icom in both Melbourne and UK as well as other people who may be involved in fixing the HFHigh Frequency – usually refers to HF radio which is long range digital radio that Berrimilla used to send all but a few of the logs on both circumnavigations. The radio was connected via a Pactor 3 digital modem to Alex’s laptop and used the Sailmail software application called Airmail to send emails and pull in emails, weather and GRIB files. Airmail also supports Iridium satellite telephone messaging and Alex used this as backup when the HF radio died approaching England.. There are no spare parts is the UK or Europe nor any new transceivers that could be cannibalised and it seems the manufacturers in Japan can’t get parts here in less than a month – apparently they containerise everything. I wonder how they stay in business. So the fallback is that Icom Melbourne is in contact with Icom UK and as of yesterday were indentifying the parts needed and will then send them to Icom UK. I hope they have them in stock, else we have a real problem. Final fallback option is that a friend who is flying over next Monday will bring them if it can be coordinated.

But it’s all cutting it very fine, so fingers firmly crossed. While we can start the FastnetFastnet Race: 608 mile biennial race from Cowes, UK, Isle of Wight, to the Fastnet Rock off Southern Ireland, finishing in Plymouth. Berrimilla took part in 2005 and 2009. without it, it would mean no gribWeather files. Graphics in Binary file: GRIB files associate a specific weather datum (eg wind velocity or atmospheric pressure) with a geographic position. Because the resulting file is a collection of these points they are extremely small and so ideal over slow links such as sailmail. weather and no email and no long distance communication. Not really what I would have liked.

Caro – where are you? Glad you’re wet again. Peter D – as far as I know we haven’t heard from you re your prize – do you want a signed shirt? If so, will have to wait till the coming home party! Looking forward to that.
John C, postcard half written – you know what it’s like…