Oct 17, 2005 - 2230hrs UTC │Power problem

2230hrs 17 Oct 2005 UTC ??’??”S ???’??”E Ref 450

[ed: feast then famine.  Just as the sailmail problems were sorted we have a huge problem.  Read on….] disaster. generator has failed – prob. bearings. no spare. have approx 80 ltrs usable diesel + v. limited sunlight for solar. will assess over 48 hours – meantime 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. only for 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.. will send 1 short satcom update daily. power 4 watermaker + instruments only.. diversion capetown not feasible within orig project – may aim for fremantle.. will report in next 12 hours. bummer. love to all.