Pacific Crossing
Magdelena Bay, Baja Peninsula, Mexico - February 19th 2011
Magdalena Bay, Baja Peninsula. Image source: Google Earth
After 600 nm heading south in 5 days, we are seeing some system failures with our electronics.
Firstly the boats PC crapped out. This happened once in Alaska last year, but this time we are at sea and no friendly expert help available.
The PC is there to drive my MaxSea Time Zero navigation programme. We got the PC working again after downloading Windows, but alas my MaxSea can’t be found with all my charts.
We are not flying blind of course as I have two other systems, Navnet reading off C-Map charts, but it is very clunky and unsophisticated, and I just love my MaxSea TZ tools.
The second problem is the Sat Phone runs a PBX system throughout the boat via a docking station connected to a large aerial, and now that has gone on the blink, so the phone has to be undocked and taken outside if I want to receive or make a call.
And finally my Iridium 9555 backup Sat phone will not allow me to connect to emails via the internet for some strange reason.
I hope to hell that I can find someone to fix all of this in Cabo San Lucas, or La Paz, otherwise I’m going to have to fly someone down from the US to help out.
Marg and I have John Thomley along with us, and you would have to go a long way to find a nicer and more capable bloke.
John looked after SKIE in San Diego for us for the 4 months we were home, and Margaret has been cooking up some great meals for us and John can’t get the smile off his face.
She is I must admit, a great cook, and when I ask her how she learnt to cook this, it is always her Mum and Grandmum, but with her interpretation adapted to meet my love of chilli and curry.
It is fairly well known amongst boaters that the two most important things to have on a boat are duct tape, and cable ties. I believe the 3rd one is Blue Tack as it allowed me to secure my three hockey puck aerials out the pilothouse window and onto the brow as a temporary measure.
Also my docked Sat phone has this small connector that was bent and not making contact, and no matter how much probing, squeezing and prodding I did, it still wouldn’t make contact, but at 0300 one morning I sat bolt upright in bed with a brainwave. Could I lassoo that little sucker with dental floss into position then put the phone into its cradle? Yes bingo – it worked. My son in law Mick has a name for this concept, but it’s not politically correct to mention it here.
Conditions for our 36 hour trip from Ilse Cedros to Baia Magdalena has been up there with some of the best I have ever experienced. No wind, flat seas, and better still it’s getting warmer.
We are currently 50 miles offshore, and have only seen one boat all day, and have heard not one single word on channel 16 on the VHF. This is in great contrast to the US , Canada, and Oz.
We are in a part of the world that is still 3rd World, and the Mexicans don’t even respond to Maydays so I’m told, so I better get used to it for where we are going it’s going to get worse.