Morning and we 30 miles off Cabo after a good run over night
Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Wed 13 Jan 2010 18:37
(23:01.489N 110:15.590W),we will be in and anchored by mid afternoon, we
will be ashore for dinner, and margaritas, (pay back time on our fishing
competition). Last night it was very calm, we had a luxury launch from
Newport come close to us, we could see him on AIS (Automatic Indication
System) and he could see us, and we were able to directly call him on the
bridge by boat name and had a good conversation, same with a cruise liner
who was heading down on us, they all can see us, and we can contact them.
This is vast improvement over just radar but we still find that at night we
run with both radar and AIS on, but there is no doubt in the future AIS will
become a critical part of your navigation equipment like it has become in
Europe. If you are looking at one get both a transponder and receiver and
make sure it connects to your chart platter we have ours connected via NEMA
into our Raymarine chart plotter and it works well.
As we approach the final point the currents seems to be all over the place,
wind has dead astern and we have 6 foot rolling seas, we are filling our
water tanks at the moment running the water maker out at sea, this has
worked well, and been a great device converting Sea water into drinking
water at 24 gallons an hour, this has mean unlimited showers and washing up,
I think Steve has liked this luxury and is using a lot water when we catch
fish as we going through more than I do with the family, but we will see how
it goes into a routine once the family is on. But I would not leave town
without:
1/ Water maker, the bigger the better, avoid electric ones as they just
consume power, run off either main engine, or generator, 2/ Hot water on
demand, 3/ Aft hot and cold shower, also the big swim step off the back has
been worth while. The heating was critical at the top half of this trip, we
have not used it on the second half as we now in warm water, and in shorts
and no shirts all the time. On communication the Sat Phone has worked well
the 9555 Iridium is great small, and everything included for email etc,
simple and works!!!, I am still to see any value out of the SSB (single side
band) as I get all mail, weather through the sat phone in less than a
minute, and the SSB just is a pain to get information, (time will tell how
useful this becomes).
But it is very gratifying to see that all the changes we have made over the
years to the boat have worked as planned and made a big difference to make
the trip more comfortable.
Cheers