Captain's Log

February 15, 2003

Hello all,

After 20,000 miles or so of the Around Alone race I found a new pastime to literally brighten up my day. The little yellow light on my Sat C unit. Like that well know mantra ' you've got mail ' this little yellow light indicates a message is waiting to be picked up.

Why is it only now that I am seeing the light ?? First lets go into the communications that BTC Velocity has on board as a background. Communications are a very expensive part of this race and vary from US$ 3,000.00 to US$ 5,000.00 per leg. ( except Kojiro who I can only imagine how much he spends ) and in the Marine world the availability and types are a constant moving target. Here a summary of what I have on board. This get a little technical for non boaties so feel free to skip to the last two paragraphs !!

VHF Radio: This is the normal ' line of sight ' communications used between coastal shipping and when hailing a vessel offshore, normally when on a collision course and usually with no response from the freighter or fishing boat !!

Single Side Band SSB: This High and Medium frequency radio can communicate with another SSB unit anywhere in the world, if the atmospheric conditions permit and also has, if configured the availability to send email and obtain weather faxes. I have to admit that I only use my SSB to listen to the BBC or Radio Australia as you will see BTC Velocity has 3 other ways to communicate with the outside world.

Mini M: This small antenna ( 8 " x 6" ) is mounted externally and is basically a satellite phone, allowing Voce and Data transmission, with partial global coverage. To credit Inmarsarat ( the organization that operate Mini M and Sat C ) the coverage or foot print of Mini M is significantly larger than they advertise. When leaving South Africa the coverage map shows that the Mini M will cease working within 200 nm of the coast, I found it to be 1200 nm with similar differences approaching Australia and New Zealand.

Iridium: Thank goodness Iridium came back on line, as it is similar to Mini M except that it has global coverage, North Pole to South Pole, much smaller antenna, about the size of a large cell phone, and slightly faster transmission speeds. Best of all its approx 35 % cheaper than Mini M and with compression software its the number one small boat option out there.

Sat C: This is a great piece of basic satellite equipment. There is not the option of Voice transmission as with Mini M and Iridium, but it allows small messages to be sent and received relatively inexpensively ( charged by the character set not by the minute ) For this race and many others it has a polling feature and is the primary method that the Race Committee uses to locate our positions and therefore update the web site and fellow competitors of everyone's progress. Also the weather bureaus of the world send out weather warnings and forecasts in text format that can be received for free and are very useful to compare to other weather information downloaded from the web via Mini M or Iridium.

So how about the yellow light on the Sat C ?? As we all know Bill Gates has ,created a fantastic operating system that has a few ' features ' shall we say, that can be annoying until understood. My Sat C has not been able to receive mail since the beginning of the race and at every port a fix was tried that ended up not working completely. In South Africa we got close as I could send emails and receive the weather data, but could not receive regular communications. This is after trying to fix it in Newport and Torbay. Well success was found in New Zealand. My first class electronics expert from Australia, John Sterling, came over for a week and gave all my electrical and electronic systems an overhaul, and with him he had a document that said go into, Options, Configuration, Routing, and lo and behold the damm little box that was checked for incoming mail said " send incoming mail to printer " , guess what, I don't have a printer, so we checked the box, send to disk and it has worked ever since !!

So every 8 hours or so the little yellow light comes on, I fire up my laptop and down load the latest position of my competitors and more recently ice warnings. Its a light you just can't ignore and now there is one more item to brighten up my daily routine.

Regards,

Alan Paris
BTC Velocity