To:
Charles Ramcharan
Hi All,
Wally was not able to make contact with Peter on Friday, so no position
from then. On Saturday morning, however, we had a "ham-fest". Wally
(W9RFW) was on the air as usual, I made contact with a ham operator here
in Baton Rouge (Russ Allor N5ADF) who kindly let me talk with the crew,
and Matt called my cousins Tom and Paula Esser (????EM) in McHenry,
Illinois. Tom used old-fashioned ingenuity to allow Matt to talk to
Rosi on the boat - he put the phone up to the speaker so Matt could hear
what was being said, and he put the phone up to the mike so Matt could
talk - and it worked!! Matt and I told Rosi about the new grandson, so
the cat's finally out of the bag in the Atlantic :).
We also got some more information about the trip:
They are finally having some good weather after four days of storms.
Wind at the time of the call was 10mph from the southwest. They have
contact with Herb the weather guy every day. (see email: 17 May 99)
Two days ago they were in the middle of a Navy fleet - I don't know how
they managed to get into the middle or why they would want to be the,
but, apparently, it was safe. They even talked with one of the ships
over the radio. They were also flown over by a Marine Corps Chinook
helicopter (big LOUD helicopter - see this site for pictures of similar
'copters:
http://www.boeing.com/rotorcraft/military/ch47d/ch47dphotos.htm ).
Peter also mentioned something about being surrounded by a "fleet" of
Portugese Man o' Wars with their sails up
(http://www.aloha.com/~lifeguards/portugue.html - this site has a
diagram of this jellyfish, with a nice description, but I prefer the
nice pictures in the Peterson guide to the Atlantic Seashore). This was
probably not the best location to do "Man overboard" emergency drills...
Even though the boat has automatic steerage from the wind vane, they
still have to keep watch all the time for any obstacles. Obstacles can
be big cargo containers that may have fallen off a ship, or they may be
the big ship itself. Sometimes, a big cargo ship may not notice the
radar signal from a relatively tiny sailboat, and therefore it is always
safest to have someone on watch at all times. When we were on the
radio, I wanted to know who got the graveyard watch shift - apparently
they share this time slot with Rosi first, then Peter and then Jim in
the morning.
Peter said that they haven't gotten any fish to bite on his line, but 2
flying fish flew on board (a fairly common occurrence out there from
what I gather). I wanted to know if they ate them because they make for
excellent eating. The crew thought they were too small to eat...
Well, thank you again to all the ham operators who helped us with the
ham-fest on Saturday. It was really a special experience for all of us
:-)!
Alles Gouda - as they say,
Yvonne
1451 miles to Horta
Latitude: 37 degrees 6.2 minutes N
Longitude: 60 degrees 13.7 minutes W
