Errata: For
"Brighton Drinking Club"
Read
"Brighton Sailing Club"

Ok we're net controllering again, worked a bit better this time, partly because Lucy Alice have the hang of minimalist relaying. We're still using 4kHz wich is theoretically good for a few hundred miles. This band is now known as the "Lucy Alice Band" since they're now only 200 odd miles away. Which means we can talk to them fine. Now we've other frequencies agreed as well as the 4kHz channels, we've 2 on 6kHz, 2 on 8Khz, and one on 12kHz. At the right time of day I'd theoretically be able to talk to the UK on 12kHz.

 
Pub's Open

The trouble is, the higher frequencies are better for long distance. But the bounce off the ionosphere. So they're no good for short distances. So if we do a radio check with a boat we can actually hear on 4kHz, they can't here us on 6 or 8. We can't reach the further boats on 4hHz to organises a radio check on a higher frequency cos they can't hear us. Catch 22.

So we stick to the Lucy Alice Band, and rely on them to relay. There half way to the middle of the fleet. The Front runners are in so we don't have to worry about reaching them. Miss Tippy, Bionic, Blue Magic, Jackamy and Natiboo are in. One other did make the net this morning, "Dropping Anchor Now" I won't say who cos errm, they were dropping off Fatu Hiva, which is not a port of entry. Launches into air guitar version of Breaking the Law by Judas Priest - think I've been at sea too long.

 
Here's today's plot.

Breaking
the Law

 Anyhoo, last night we ran quite well, 6ish knots. This morning we stopped completely. For about half an hour we were motoring. Couldn't run the radio net with the engine on though. Its hard enough to hear anyway. We were going to stick any old sail up in the hope of keeping the boat in the right direction. In the end we found enough breeze to refill the cruising chute we've been under the cruising chute on the opposite tack all day. Not fast 4.5 knots. But this afternoon some of that elusive current has turned up and decided to help. Nice.

 
Mines and Abbott Ale

 Its Sunday, since as any fool know, God made the world in 6 days and on the 7 he went sailing. On a slight aside he realised he'd made a mistake, and on the 8th day invented the dagger board thus proving the hobie cat is in fact heretical.

Enough about that, after sailing he probably went to the Pub, now normally I use the Brighton Drinking Club for my Sunday afternoon pub. Well its more sort of a lifetime hope that boat faeries do in fact exist and will put my boat away for me if I sit in the bar long enough. Not seen any yet, but I keep persevering. Since going to church out here would be tricky, I think you need to transubstaciate or somfin. Popes are hard to come by out here too. More to the point we can't have a church, not enough self righteous bigots, child molesters etc on board. That and its a small plastic boat, where the hell are we gonna burn witches? We can however simulate the pub....

Sunday afternoon down the pub, last week I had one of my precious 4 tins of Abbott ale. God look at that photo I need a hair cut.

Back on the old laptop thing, I'm really getting to know mine. After all this typing the keyboards picking up a shine that the old one had and this didn't develop on land. Mind you were heading for the next big test of my site. The first time I was in the Pacific, I caught 1024 week roll over of the GPS system, unlike the millennium bug it actually did something.

GPS receivers used to count weeks, early ones used a k to store that number. it could not store numbers bigger than 1024. Our back up one went titsup for this reason. Last time the primary key on the database that runs this site rolled passed 1024. I obviously assigned a large enough size to the key. I wonder how big, this is item number 2045. Coming up on the bik 2k.

 The Power management on this laptop is a real juggling act. I.E. the battery last forever if you're blogging it turns the CPU down. Try and do video rendering and it plummets like Alexander lemming. 2 hours v 6 hours. Uniquely charge time is variable too. If I'm re-rendering video for watching on the iPod Touch and its flat It uses too much juice off the mains to allow high speed battery charging. Interesting.