Sunday 29 December 2013

Sailing Around Australia; Its all about the technology.



29/ 12 /2013 Sailing Around Australia; Technology

We are anchored in Two Peoples Bay, some 20 odd nautical miles from Albany.

While it is absolute paradise here. Our battle with technology has left me feeling
a bit isolated. Isolated, just 20 nautical miles from the “city” of Albany with a
population of some 20,000, can you imagine that?

Perhaps it was the fact that we were unable to get enough mobile phone
reception to make calls to our loved ones. Or is it because we really have been
taking the technology we have for granted. I mean boxing day would normally be
spent glued to the telly, watching the Melbourne test match cricket, with live
crosses to the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. But no, no signal so I had
to go without. I had to actually start manually reading a book.

On board we have a Raymarine Chart Plotter that informs us of our current GPS
position, it also has a 24 nautical mile radar, so we can see what’s around us, it
has all the charts or maps of Australia. New Zealand and Indonesia at least, it has
AIS which alerts us to other ships and boats in our area, what their names are
and their course and speed as well.

As back to that system, we have two ipads. One has an app called Navionics
which shows us a map, with google earth on the chart. This shows us not only
where we are but also what the area looks like from up above. This also shows us
where we are (position), Which course we are travelling in (heading) where we
have been (our Track) and also where we are going to (our route). The other
Ipad has an anchor watch alarm. That alerts us if our anchor is changing position
at all, in which case we may not be held fast in position and could drift on to the
beach or rocks etc…

Then we have a predict wind satellite receiver which will plot out track (as you
see at the top of this blog), allow us to receive weather reports and forecasts and
send basic emails from anywhere at anytime.

As back up to all that, we have a garmin hand held GPS, the boat has a emergency
position indicator beacon (EPIRB) and we each have personal EPIRBS and our
liferaft also has an EPIRB which will direct our position and information to a
rescue service in Canberra when activated.

We also each have our Iphone and a mac book laptop computer that we use
almost hourly it seems.

So while we saw all this as necessary, it is interesting to see the blank looks and
the restlessness that sets in to our sailing group when reception is unavailable.

I think about those pioneering folks who set off maybe 5 years ago when there
wasn’t much of this technology available and reception was far more sporadic. I
wonder what they did with their time if it wasn’t spent blogging, facebooking,
texting and instagramming.

On approach to Dillon Bay this morning I asked Eva on board Zofia, who was well in front of us what the anchorage was like. She replied that there were cars and people on the beach  and the best bit was there are five bars. No sooner did they hear that, the Urchin crew started ordering drinks all round. Eva exasperatingly added that there were not alcoholic bars but 5 bars of phone reception. Not sure which we would have preferred at that point.

It reminds me of a Californian guy called John. We met John in Port Denison on
our trip to the Abrohlis Islands.

John and his girlfriend had sailed to Western Australia on a very small old yacht
from California. The boat looked like a pint sized people smuggling boat. Not
flash at all. Most interesting was that they had no electricity on board. No Fridge.
No technology to speak of at all, except a small hand held GPS. Amazing!

So we are about to head off on the next leg of our sailing around Australia epic
adventure. I must finish my blog and upload while there is a small spec of
reception. Then I will spend the rest of the day making sure all the technology
and the back ups, plus all the other batteries are charged by our high tech solar
panels.

After that I think I will fire up my laptop and watch a movie, or maybe listen to a
talking book, because I find holding the book open while I am reading quite
tiring. What good is the technology if we don't use it.

 
You have to see the Meercat video on You Tube to understand... apparently.

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