Tuesday, January 26, 2016

January 22, 2016 Single Side Band Radio contacts

Friday, Jan 22
Dave was up early enough to catch Chis Parker on the Single Side Band radio at 6:30 am.  I was up in time to hear the local Cruiser’s Net on the VHF channel 68 at 8:15.  They always give a weather report.  Saturday sounds the worst with winds out of the west at 25-35 k with gusts to 50k.  They had community announcements and business advertisements.  I was the only one for “open mike”.  I asked if anyone knew where the custom’s office was at Treasure Cay.  We were told it was a short taxi ride to the airport for Custom’s.  We knew it would be a taxi ride in Marsh Harbor, so we’ll probably just go there on Monday.  The larger office can give you a 6 month permit instead of a 3 month. 

We had a lazy day of cooking and logging maintenance in a new data base we started this year called HanDbase.  This is what the people who operate Active Captain use.  They like it because everything is in their phone.  It’s hard to trust that you won’t lose the information, but a written log can be lost, too.  We had some rain off and on, but not the winds we were expecting. 

Gloria and I had arranged to contact each other on the Single Side Band radio at noon today, just for the experience.  At noon, I heard her calling me on the frequency we had chosen to use.  I could hear her, but she said I was faint.  They were having a storm there and so it may not be transmitting very well.  But at least she knows we made it and we connected.  Then I sent out a couple e-mails through our SSB radio.  I let Brian Killion and Cheryl Ulmer, our float plan people, know we were settled and why we moved beyond Green Turtle Cay.  We also sent one to Gary to see how things turned out.  He made it back to the US by 6:00 am and Tow Boat US took him to the marina he had left Wednesday morning.  He was having his fuel polished to remove any debris and hopefully that will take care of his problems.  And he thanked us for our help.  We really hope to see him in the Bahamas soon. 

The wind started kicking up around 10:00 pm to 30k.  It was coming out of the north instead of the west and our stern was heading to shore.  Not good. 

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