Hilton Head Island: equipment; changes to main site; ships in bad weather; many, many marathons

 

 

For my birthday Carol gave me the Icom M94D handheld VHF I requested.  I already have an Icom handheld VHF, but this is the first to include AIS tracking.

I unboxed the radio and found that almost nothing about it except turning it on and off is intuitive or obvious.  I turned it on and immediately got a series of piercing beeps and a flashing ‘Collision Warning’ on the screen.  I pushed the Clear button and thankfully it stopped, only to resume after a short interval.  I turned the radio off and began to read the 75 page instruction book.  It is not necessary to read it all because the radio does a great many things I don’t need and won’t use including setting waypoints.  I do that in my navigation apps on my iPhone and iPad.

Once I had learned how to turn the volume up and down and change channels and how to display the AIS screen and control its functions, I found that there is a boat in the marina with an AIS transmitter constantly on.  This is what the radio determined was too close to me and likely to result in a collision.  It had no way of knowing that I was on the third story of a building on shore and reasonably safe.

From the porch of our condo I received signals from a dozen ships and boats.  I do not know yet what I would receive from GANNET’s considerably lower elevation or if AIS will be useful to me.  We will find out.

Here is a link to a review of the radio:

https://boattest.com/node/104875

One of the dozens of magazines that I can read through Apple News+ is the British YACHTING WORLD.  In the current issue they ran tests of five small outboards in the 3 hp range.  Three were gasoline and two electric.  One of the electric was Torqeedo and the other a Spirit Evo of which I had not known.  The reviewer liked the electric outboards for the same reasons I do and he preferred the Chinese made Spirit over the Torqeedo because of its larger battery and because its propeller if left in the water while under sail at four knots or more free wheels and recharges the battery.  This would make some noise, but is a very good idea.  Were I buying an electric outboard now I would give careful consideration to the Spirit Evo.

https://fourseas.com/spirit-1-0-evo/

I have added my 80th birthday photo to the immodest page of pictures of myself on the main site and reorganized the page so that the captions can now all be seen.  I have also made minor changes to some of those captions and to the page that was labeled ‘condominium’ and is now called ‘Evanston’.  I will soon add a Hilton Head Island page as this is now my land home.  The picture at the top of this entry is of last night’s lingering sunset which I watched while sipping cava on the porch.  You may already be bored with such sunsets, I am not and there will be more.

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/webb2.html

From Larry comes a link to a video of dramatic footage of ships and yachts in bad weather.  I thank him.   The sailboat near the pier caused an involuntary expletive.  What were those fools doing anywhere near that spot?  They survived only through dumb luck.  Dump being the operative word.  I would have been heading straight out to sea before I got anywhere near such waves.

Of another scene I quote Larry:  ‘Note the guys on the rock steady aircraft carrier laughing at the rough ride of a destroyer escort. I remember doing the same.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZSM5ZbdpWw

Big boat sailors are cruel.

Two days ago I read of the remarkable achievement of Alyssa Clark in setting a woman’s world record by running a full marathon every day for 95 consecutive days.  Almost incredible that her body could recover day after day after day.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/14/us/vermont-runner-world-record-trnd/index.html

I did not even know there is such a record, but reasoned that if there is one for women there is one for men.  Indeed there is.  It is held by the Spaniard Ricardo Abad Martinez who ran a full marathon every day for 607 days.  That does not seem humanly possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Abad

I note that neither of them played violin in a symphony orchestra in the evening after running their marathon as my friend Tim has done twice.

I also note that when I set what was then the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation in a monohull in EGREGIOUS I didn’t even notify Guinness.  I felt no need of their validation.  Somehow they learned of the voyage and contacted me.