So what have I been doing by way of preparation? Research mainly. Finding out about ... stuff. What it costs, who I have to send which forms to, how long it takes. Stuff is complicated!
Apart from that, and the ordinary booking tickets and accommodation and so on, I have:
- Purchased a sextant and a couple of 'celestial navigation for idiots' type books,
- Sat and passed the Victorian Boat Licence test,
- Booked in to sit the Marine Radio operator's Certificate exam (tomorrow).
- Purchased a satellite phone.
I hear you, muttering away: "Why would he buy a sextant?" Hasn't he heard of a GPS?" Well, smarty pants, I have heard of GPS ... esses. So there. And I found out that they work really well. As long as as there is electricity available. Then they become expensive and ugly paperweights. So the fallback measures are to have a flash all bells and whistles GPS/Chart-plotter as the day to day unit. Then I made sure that the satellite phone that I'm buying also has a GPS function. So if the main one fails I can still get my position from that. It wont show me pretty maps, or how far away the nearest ATM is, but I will be able to plot my position on a chart. And the final fallback, in case that fails too, is a sextant. Damn tricky things to operate though. Or more to the point, the procedures and calculations that you have to do after you've operated it are damn tricky. Thus the books. So I've been reading. (Yup, is true!) And even practising. I don't intend to try to become a super accurate master navigator, but as third layer emergency measure it should be feasible to put myself close enough to a landfall to be able to see it. That's the theory, anyway.
The happy part of the buying-a-sextant story is that after doing a heap of research, I'd discovered that the range of plastic sextants available (pretty brass ones cost a heap) fell into super-basic, at $100, basic at $200, and slightly-pretty-and-user-friendly ones at $600. I decided on the $200 basic model and bought one from a USA marine supplies dealer. When it arrived I discovered that they had sent me the $600 model. After a not very brief wrangle with my conscience I emailed them and informed them of their mistake, offering them the chance to send me the basic one if they wanted to and I would return the first one. They wrote back thanking me for my honesty and told me to keep the upgrade. Pretty nice, I thought. So thank you, Southern Marine of Florida USA. If ever I'm in Jupiter, Florida, I'll drop by.
The boat licence experience was a bit disheartening. I decided to do the test in conjunction with a training course through a Registered Training Organisation that I wont name. When I got to the venue they had put up a number of posters around the walls. "Hmm", I thought, "these posters have information that would surely be useful hints (answers actually) during the test. I guess they'll take them down or cover them when we do the test." Nope. But at least the test papers have random set of questions on them right? Yes, all 40 of us had exactly the same set of random questions. I see... But it was done under test conditions right? Sure, if by "test conditions" you mean the 'supervisors' all left the room and people were openly consulting each other (and the posters) about the answers. There was a family sitting behind me and from what I heard, Mum was getting her answers from Dad, and doing her test and the daughter's as well! Oh yeah, boat licences are making a big difference to marine safety in Victoria. Not.
The satellite phone was a big, and expensive, decision. I tracked one down on eBlah for a meagre $550, and paid for it in late December. It hasn't arrived yet. I'm not nervous ... still got 15 days to go, after all. The 'pro' part of the decision was to have a means to get daily weather maps emailed to me. They'll cost about $2 each to download, but make a big difference in safety. This is also 'the theory'. I finally went for it when I realised that the unit I was looking at has, as I mentioned earlier, a GPS function built in to it. This means that I didn't have to fork out for a back up GPS unit so the price seemed a bit less daunting. The process of reading the weather maps means that I have to have a working laptop on board though, so I probably haven't saved much after all. Laptops operate very reliably in humid salty air, don't they? So I'm taking 2 (2nd hand) laptops.
So I will have (if it all works to plan) a means to send and receive emails. I haven't decided on which email service to use yet, so I can't tell you what the address will be. I'll post it up here when I know what it is. If you feel like sending an email to me duing the trip, please don't attach any big ... attachments. And use 'plain text' rather than HTML if you know how to do that. Downloading big emails will cost me ... a lot! I'll also be able to receive phone calls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if you don't mind paying several dollars per minute to talk to me. Good news is that there is apparently a system whereby you can send me SMS for free! I haven't tested it yet (haven't got the &*^%$! phone yet, have I?) but the access is here
Well, I'm off to do some revision for this Marine Radio test tomorrow. (Maybe there'll be posters?) Feel free to ask questions using the comments box. Or comments. Or ... whatever.
I'll tell you a bit about the 'big picture' of this project in the next post. (Filled with anticipation now, aren't you?)
Ciao
W.
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