March 22, 2017
We must be cursed. Maybe it was some old lady that I failed to help across the street. She put a hex on me for my failing. Maybe it’s the universe saying “You have it too good. Here comes some crap to balance things a bit.” I don’t know. I just know there are things that could be better right now. Here’s the story.
First, shortly before leaving Hobart, our computer crashed. It looked like one of our hard disks failed. I tinkered with it for a little while (OK, more like a long while) and got it working. Part of getting it working was reinstalling Windows and its cursed updates. That broke other things. I’ll get to that in a minute.
After cruising the D’Entrecasteax Channel, we left Recherche Bay on the 60 mile trip to Port Davey. As usual, I’d plotted a course on the computer and as we were leaving the bay, I plugged it into our chartplotter. As is my routine, I scrolled along the route to make sure we weren’t going to have to sail over any rocks or islands and to my surprise, I found the Navionics chart data disappeared about half way to Port Davey. Crap! We were just leaving a bay with no internet so there was no way to update the charts (which shouldn’t have needed updating as I got everything we’d need this season some time ago).
We’d resolved to use our iPad (which does have the detail on its version of the Navionics charts) for our navigation needs. Cyndi’s optimism about possible stray internet waves convinced me to take a look and to my surprise, we found 4G service just outside bay. We slowed the boat to a crawl and I took about a half hour to install the Navionics chart updater software and re-download the charts we’d need.
That done, we still didn’t have the missing details. Oh well. The iPad it is then. A few hours out, as I was playing with the chartplotter, I turned on the “Fish n Chips” view. Surprise – charts! That’ll work. (Yes, Fish n Chips is its real name. I didn’t make that up. I couldn’t come up with something that lame! It took the expert marketing team at Navionics to think of that.) Issue #1 resolved.
Enter issue #2. This morning, with no internet anywhere in the extremely remote Port Davey, we turned on our satellite phone for a weather forecast. No joy. It seems updating Windows killed the simple little email program we use to send and receive email via the sat phone. I tried reinstalling it (clever me – I kept the install file). No joy. It needed an internet connection to install. Maybe a different email program? I had others I could try.
A program called iScribe installed just fine but wouldn’t connect a sat phone call to send the email weather request.
I tried making a call with the sat phone – a diagnostic first step. No joy. I got a message that said “emergency calls only!” I guess my minutes must have expired. I usually get a notice before that happens.
A trip trough my computer was fruitless as I couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t require an internet connection that would tell me when I purchased the most recent stack of sat phone minutes. Aaaaarggh!!!
I don’t think we’re doomed yet. I can probably send and receive email, including weather forecasts with the HF radio (HAM radio) via Winlink. I haven’t done it in a while because the sat phone is just so easy (usually). If all else fails, we’ll just listen to the VHF weather forecast. We don’t like it but if that’s all we can get, it’ll have to do.
But that might be problematic. We checked in with Tas Maritime Radio on our way here and told them we’d check in again when we arrived in Port Davey. So far, I haven’t been able to make contact with them. I’ve tried VHF (they assured me that they had good VHF reception from Port Davey), and I’ve tried the HF radio frequencies they monitor. No joy. Could our VHF have a problem? Could our HF radio also have a problem? (Not likely. The issue is probably just the mountains around us and the remoteness of this place.)
Do you see why I think this must be the result of a curse?
(Obviously, you won’t be reading this until sometime after our communication issues are resolved, but it feels good to whine about it now.)
Update: March 22, 2017
To be fair and balanced (what, you thought I was Fox News!?), I should report the stuff that’s going very well.
First, I’m surrounded by beauty (and I’m not just talking about Cyndi here!). Port Davey is truly amazing, and we’ve only just scratched the surface. Our first bay was at the base of a very large and very beautiful mountain. A short walk up a hill on the other side of the bay revealed stunning views of the pyramid islands near the entrance to this channel as well as an amazing view of Legacy at the base of Mount Stokes.
We timed things very well. Just a few days ago, this small bay had 40 boats, all part of an around Tasmania rally. They cleared out just before we got here.
And we did get our communication working via HAM radio. We’ve been able to get weather pretty easily. We’re not really liking the weather we see coming, but at least we know what’s ahead. -Rich
