Input and output

Alex speaks in acronyms these days. This past weekend he’s been wrangling with the AIS, and the DSC on the VHF and, I believe, the MMSI. Today’s challenge is snipping and soldering the BNC and the PL-259, two different types of co-axial plugs for aerials and the GPS, he tells me. He mentioned something about NMEA 0183 or NMEA 2000 – which was it?

Each morning he sets off after breakfast, his old blue bag of tricks slung over his shoulder. I know not to expect him back before dark. Each morning I remind him he needs to eat during the day, and he grabs a banana and a Coke. Nothing else. I ask if he needs me to help and every day so far he’s said no. There’s not enough room, he says, which is true. It’s also true that I don’t know enough to be useful. It’s frustrating and, to use an old feminist term, disempowering to be so completely befuddled by the language of electronics and data transmission. I satisfied my need to be productive yesterday by finding ways to use our endless supply of kaffir limes and Thai eggplants, hard and round as golf balls, which are growing like natives in our small inner-city plot.


Until now, my expertise in radio communications has needed to extend only as far as operating the VHF (the marine network which operates up and down the coast and depends on line-of-sight communication between radio towers). But with the upgrades, which include Sail Mail and the satellite phone plan, talking at sea gets a whole lot more complex.
Sea Talk is something else. It’s the Raymarine “life tag” system we’ve bought. The idea is that we each have an electronic wrist band and if either of us strays further than a certain distance from the cockpit, or if our wrist band is submerged in water for more than 10 seconds, an ear-splitting siren goes off. At that instant, the position of the “man overboard” is automatically marked on the chart plotter. Both the siren and the GPS position give the person left on board a better chance of fishing their mate’s body out of the sea, hopefully alive.
When I first saw these gizmos on our friends Dave and Melinda, who sail a sleek John Sayer-designed yacht called Sassoon, my eyes lit up. Sailing two up, as we do mostly, has its risks, especially since I am so new to the game and have almost everything to learn. You can solve a lot by throwing money at a yacht. Hence Alex’s back-breaking labour below decks. But it’s not all about the money. We’ll be much safer when we know more about the sea, and the weather, which means doing the sea miles.


Speaking of having sea miles under your belt, we’re waiting for news from Hobart where our Alaskan buddies Mike and Alisa, and wonder boy Elias, lately of the sailing vessel Pelagic, have temporarily taken up residence while they grow more crew. These guys are the real deal, old-style adventurer-cruisers. In June 2007, having quit their jobs, sold their house and fitted their ten-month-old firstborn into his wet weather gear, they sailed out of Kodiak in their well-seasoned Crealock 37, bound for Australia. The mind boggles. You can follow their story on their addictive blog Once in a Lifetime or wait till the book comes out (Boat Books should be so lucky). Mike, a born writer, has just finished the first draft, cause for huge excitement at any time, but right now the attention’s all on Alisa, who is ready to give birth (too).

We first came across Pelagic last September at Horseshoe Bay, around the back of Magnetic Island. Alisa, thinking we were from Hobart (as you would, with the boat registered there – but that’s another story) rowed over with Elias to check us out. She was in early pregnancy, and gave off megawatts of pure joy. In exchange for a bunch of New Yorker magazines we’d finished with; she rowed back with a new translation of Anna Karenina. What a girl! We caught up with the Pelagic crew again, very briefly, at Gary's Anchorage in the Great Sandy Strait (that's where they are in the picture above) and persuaded them to consider visiting Sydney on their way to Tasmania. They did, and it was great. Mike, Alisa and Elias spent a few days hanging out with us and the Tribe over New Year before pressing on to the deep south.  They are both marine biologists and attracted to the cool natural offering of islands in high latitudes, so who could argue with Tasmania? They’ve taken a house-sit in Hobart, and are getting Pelagic ready to sell. They figure they’ll need a bigger boat when child No 2 arrives. He’s late. He doesn’t know it, but his parents are already anxious to be back at sea.