Fathers Day 50:26.2N 10:13.1W
Ellatrout3
Sun 19 Jun 2016 16:33
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Three comforting messages from three daughters
brightens my day. Unfortunately the weather doing it's best to dampen my.
We have grey leaden skies, rising wind and rising sea with heavy rain. One thing
about going against the wind you can go below and leave the hatch open but with
a following wind and heavy rain the hatch has to be closed and you are shut
in.
With regard to my chart plotter not working
propperly I had a worrying few hours yesterday when I realised the full
implications. You see since the introduction of AIS (Automatic Identification
System) I believe the attitude of the watch keepers on ships has changed ( they
won't admit it of course) but before AIS they only saw other ships on radar, a
blip on a screen, and had to carefully work out the course and direction of that
ship to avoid collision. Now, with AIS an approaching vessel transmits it's
speed and direction and the receiving vessels computor calculates the Closest
Point of Approach (CPA). Around each vessel is a safety circle and if the
approaching vessel is going to enter that circle within a short time (Time
to CPA) an alarm is sounded. My safety circle is 2 miles in
diameter and my safety time is 24 minutes. This means that if a ship is going to
come within a mile of me in the next 24 minutes my dangerous target alarm goes
off. Now the watch keeper on the ship doesn't have to work out a blip on a
screen and lookout for fishing boats and small ships he thinks everybody has got
AIS and are transmitting there position. I don't have a transmitter, just a
receiver and rely on keeping out of their way.
Now with my Plotter not working properly, I'd
turned it on and off several times, i.e. rebooted it to no avail, and with
it still not calculating the CPA I started to look for the best route to
avoid the most shipping. Basically I decided it was to keep away from the
turning points at Tusker, SE Ireland and Milford Haven so planned a course up
the middle of the Irish Sea rather than cross it diagonally. I reverted to my
old watch system of sleep for only an hour and then checking. On one occassion
there was a ship shown on the screen so the AIS was detecting the ships but
the plotter was not calculating whether it was a risk or not. In
desparation I turned everything electrical on the ship off, the plotter, the
instruments , the radio and the steering, so for a short while the tiller was
just held but not steered. When I turn it all on again by all
the wonders (or dammed cusidness) of technology it all came back life; what
a relief!!!!
Why does it do this, all that worry and
there was nothing seriously wrong it just didn't want to play for a while.
AAH!?
Poppa/Dad/Roger
Ps. before I could send the above the ship
called for attention, she was being overpowered. That was an hour and a half
ago, since then I've taken the mainsail down removed the goose winged
jib and we are now running before the wind in the pouring rain with a tiny
bit of jib and a huge following sea. The forecast is it will ease through the
evening but remaining strong overnight i.e. about force 5. Everything inside the
boat is soaking wet - we need some sun to dry out before we get to
Pwllheli.
PDR
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