Friends, relatives and others ('angling', or waiting for an invite) please take note:- We expect our guests to earn their keep, so good marine electrical / mechanical abilities are essential - and / or a good degree of cooking skills should be considered a must!
This visit we took along Pam & Doug - Colin's Sister and
her husband.
Dougie is a great natural sailor (he was a
crew member in the infamous '79 Fastnet Race), again
we felt we needed to be with like-minded people, if only for them
to talk some sanity back into us?
An additional benefit was the fact that they would report back; in an unbiased way, to Colin's Mum & Dad; who are obviously very keen to find out how 'suitable' the boat is going to be, and if we will actually be OK living onboard?
Dick had provided us with a
new remote-controlled rotator for the Satellite dish (essential
equipment on any boat)! But more importantly the active antennae
for the SSB receiver and a host of connectors to link it all
together. Doug and Colin managed to work out fitting the
replacement rotator, not too easy as the boat's original cabling
had one green wire, ALL the others were black! We then
discovered at least two satellites that we can pick up OK with
our dish; sadly very little program material in English, but we
are hopeful of better things when we can spend more time
investigating.
The SSB aerial was disappointing, only because we could not
find a soldering-iron aboard. Colin was convinced we had
used one on the February visit? The antennae uses it's Co-Axial
feeder cable to supply 12-volts up to the amplifier, built into
the aerial base. The connections have to be soldered,
otherwise this DC-feed will never get there.
We did manage to test out the little Nasa HF-3 using it's
supplied 'long-wire' strung between the hand-rail & pulpit.
We are happy to say the the BBC World-Service came in fine. We
assume that in the UK; the transmitting aerials are directional
to Europe, as reception is far better out there? As we were not
able to solder up the cabling for the PC connection either, we
could not test Weather-Fax & Navtex, but the signals were all
there OK - Another job for the next trip.