A Failure to Communicate

Every once in awhile, we have one of those days. I had a hot, unproductive, frustrating one earlier in the week. With so many holidays lately, we've had a hard time setting up our local communications, i.e. getting our little unlocked Australian phone to work in Trinidad. When we were here in December, we bought a SIM card, but only used it for data/internet/Skype in the iPad for a couple of days and then we were gone. We didn't need a phone then. Now we do. We pretty much get a new SIM and/or dongle in every country (Remember our trials in Luderitz, Namibia?) for internet and phone use. We've got several jobs to be done on Nine of Cups here and getting in touch with tradesmen and suppliers is nearly impossible without a phone. Internet here at Power Boats, though not great, is free, so voice and text is all we need. We put December's SIM card into our phone and nada. We waited out the 4-day Easter holiday and I was determined that we'd get the phone sorted before the Shouter Baptist holiday. Everyone was slow to get back to work after the long weekend. David was waiting for a mechanic to show up (yet another story), so I walked over to Crew's Inn … about a mile or so away … to the BMobile shop to get a new SIM.

Western Main Road, on which Power Boat is situated, is two lanes … hot, dry and dusty … with little shade and a well-worn path along the side for pedestrians. Power Boats is situated on one side of Chaguaramas Bay and Crew's Inn, another marina where several shops are located, is situated on the other side. A good pitcher could throw a ball from one marina to the other. The mile-long hike requires walking to the end of bay on one side and coming around in a big U-turn to the other side. Unfortunately, there is no view of the water … only parched, dry grass and passing traffic. I plodded along past the street side of a couple more marinas … Coral Cove and Tropical … and finally entered the long entrance drive towards Crew's Inn, past Customs and Immigration and up the hill to the little shops at the Shipwright Building.

Actually, I had four goals on my mission list. The phone was #1 and I headed there first. Karla was helping several visiting crew at the time and I (impatiently) waited my turn. After some juggling of the SIM card between phones, she told me our SIM card had no credit, but was still active. Our little red antiquated Australian phone was the problem. We could either use the SIM card in the iPad again, or buy a new phone. Ugh! I decided to buy a phone. “May I have your passport, please?” Hmmm …. I brought my credit card and cash, but no passport. With much reassurance, cajoling and bullshitting, I managed to convince Karla that I'd e-mail my passport info to her ASAP, but I needed to buy the phone on this trip. “Please don't send me all the way back to the boat!” I pleaded. I convinced her and ended up with a Huawei Y3 smartphone for TT$200 (about US$33). Now, I needed to buy some voice/text credit. Karla apologized … she had no BMobile “top up” vouchers available in her BMobile shop. I needed to go elsewhere, maybe Massy's Supermarket, to buy some credit. I left with a new, but still unusable, phone.

The second goal on my list was to stop at the boat graphics shop and see about getting Nine of Cups' name back on the transom. Since we have had the topsides painted, we are a “no-name” boat. The shop door was locked and they were closed up tight with 9am showing as their reopening time. The next day was a holiday. Maybe we'd see them later in the week. Scratch #2 on the list.

Goal 3 was to stop in at Members Only, say hi to Jesse and Sharon Rose and try to arrange a couple of tours for Lin's visit. Members Only is the cruisers go-to resource for trips, tours, taxis and just about anything else. They were supposed to be in the office till Noon, but they'd already left and weren't returning. No one else could help. I hadn't topped up the phone yet, and didn't even know my new number, so I couldn't leave my contact info. I'd send an email. Scratch #3 on the list.

Over to Massy's Express market to buy a top up voucher as well as the ingredients for dinner. With the fridge out, we've been buying our victuals daily and Massy's has the best selection without heading into town on the bus. BLTs … one of David's favorites … was on the menu and I rounded up the turkey bacon, tomatoes and lettuce and a few other odds and ends. “Where's the bread?” I asked. “The truck hasn't come yet after the holidays. No bread. Maybe later.” I bought what I had along with a few incidentals and the top-up voucher, stuffed everything into my backpack and trudged back to the boat.

I was hot and sweaty when I slowly climbed the ladder. I descended into the cool of the boat and chugged a bottle of water. Having struck out on 2.5 of 4 goals for the trip, I quickly got the new phone out to add the credit I'd just bought. How? It wasn't intuitive. I got out the manual … it was in Spanish. My Spanish is pretty rusty. I left it for David to figure out and headed down to the Dockside Market for a loaf of bread. They were out. I climbed the ladder once again. David was grousing over the phone. We finally figured how to enter the credit, but kept getting an error message before it would accept the voucher. As promised, I emailed my passport info to Karla and asked if she could help with the problem.

In an hour or so, Karla responded to my e-mail. She would only be there till 3pm and then closed the next day for the holiday. I needed to return with the phone so she could help. Really? David's mechanic had shown up, but another fiberglass guy had not. He was coming “anytime now”. It was already after 2pm. I packed up and begrudgingly headed back to the BMobile shop, cursing and sweating all the way. Karla had no English instruction manuals and didn't think she could get one. (She suggested I should download what I needed from the internet … it was “greener”.) She fixed the problem with the phone, loaded the credit and gave me a mini-tutorial on using the phone which I immediately spaced out. We were good to go. I poked my head into Massy's again just to see if some bread might have arrived. Nope.

I stopped at a tiny off-the-road shop on the way back. The clerk was asleep … literally … with her head down on the counter. The shop shelves were nearly empty, but on the rack at the back of the store, I spied one loaf of plain old sliced white bread. I woke her up to pay for it.

The new phone works. David was able to make a call. It's nothing like the iPhone Lin gave to us, so we're learning to drive all over again. I'll try to download the Op Manual the next time we have a clear internet signal. I'm happy to say, we are no long incommunicado AND we have yet another phone to add to our burgeoning collection.

As as side note …

Before we left the States, we gave everyone our Trini cell phone number just in case of emergencies. In actuality, it appears we were giving them our Namibia phone number which was taped to the back of our old phone. Sorry folks! See what happens with a few months off the boat! Or was that an early April Fool's Day joke? Yeah...that's what it was.

For last year's April Fool's day joke, check this out.

The Blue View - HF Radio Ground Systems

In the last Blue View, I talked about a typical marine HF radio setup, consisting of the radio, an automatic antenna tuner and a long line antenna. As I mentioned, the wire of the antenna is only half of the antenna. To transmit any distance, a good ground plane or counterpoise is also needed. On a land based antenna, the earth is sometimes used as the ground plane, but often a network of wires is run radially out from the base of the antenna, and this type of ground system is called a counterpoise. On a boat, the seawater acts as a great ground plane as long as there is a good connection between the antenna ground and the water.

If the boat is steel, all that needs to be done is to connect the antenna ground to the hull. I'm not sure whether the hull would be classified a counterpoise or a good ground connection. More likely, it is some of both.

On plastic or wooden boats, making a ground connection or counterpoise is slightly more complicated. One method is to attach a large ground plate to the outside of the hull under the water line. It is held in place with large bolts through the hull, then the antenna ground is connected to it using a wide copper strap.

A variation of this is to use a copper strap to connect the ground to one or more bronze thru-hulls. This method is most effective if the thru- hull is located close to the antenna ground, ideally 3-4 feet, but a maximum of 10-15 feet, and the conductor to make the connection is a wide – 3” or more – copper strap. Gordon West, arguably the foremost expert on marine radios, is a proponent of this system.

Another method is to construct a counterpoise by running as many copper straps as possible from the antenna ground, and connecting metal tanks, lead keels and other various metal objects together. Steel lifelines, stanchions and even the mast can be included. This can be a very effective counterpoise, but it is difficult to add all that copper. In addition, since copper and seawater don't go together well, the copper should be protected from corrosion, especially anywhere that the copper strap might come in contact with seawater – like the bilge for example. Some installers encapsulate the copper straps in epoxy and bond it to the hull. We also saw one boat that had a blister problem, and was having the gel coat stripped. Before the new epoxy barrier coat was applied, they bonded a copper mesh to the hull. Unfortunately, we didn't keep in touch with the owners, so we don't know how well the counterpoise worked nor whether there were any long term bonding problems.

A third method is a commercial product, the KISS_SSB, that uses a number of wires of various lengths bundled together and connected to the antenna. The wires are all contained in a flexible tube about the size of a garden hose. The manufacturer claims that the various lengths of wire are finely tuned to make sure the radio transmits well on all the marine and HAM frequencies between 2Mhz and 28 Mhz. It is somewhat costly ~$150, but very easy to install. A heavy wire is used to connect the wires to the antenna ground, and then the bundle of wires can be routed under the cabin sole or in a lazarette locker. The manufacturer's website has lots of endorsements, and those of our friends who have installed them claim their transmission ability has improved. Other knowledgeable experts (whose opinions I respect, BTW) insist that the device can't possibly work as claimed. There are several forums devoted to the topic, resulting in a number of heated discussions between the proponents and the detractors. The only performance testing I've seen was done by John (KA4WJA) on the s/v Annie Laurie. He used a spectrum analyzer to measure the the return loss/VSWR/resonance of a transmitter equipped with the KISS-SSB counterpoise as the transmitter was swept throughout the frequency range of 1.5Mhz to 28.5Mhz. His conclusion was that it would probably work great on three or four frequencies and have a marginal performance throughout the rest of the range. His opinion: “If you just grab some wire out of a dumpster, cut it into a few random lengths (between 12' and 35'), attach a ring terminal to the end of the group of wires...you HAVE made an antenna counterpoise for FREE that works as well as (or better than) the KISS....and if you need to buy some wire, it'll cost you < $5.... “.

So, there is the opinion of several experts as well as John's test results saying it can't and doesn't perform as claimed by the manufacturer versus the actual real world, albeit subjective, experience of a number of actual users claiming it is great. I love it!

Meanwhile, what did we do? Sixteen years ago, when we first started cruising, I read everything I could and decided to use the second method. I bought 100 feet of 3” copper strap and connected all my fuel and water tanks together, as well as a few thru-hulls, and attached it all to the antenna ground. This has worked reasonably well for us over the years, but some segments of the copper have started to deteriorate. Nine of Cups is currently on the hard in Trinidad, and one of the items on my to-do list is to replace the thru-hull for the port cockpit drain. As long as I will be scrunched head down into the lower reaches of the engine compartment, I plan to run a copper strap directly from the antenna tuner to this thru-hull and see whether there is any improvement in our transmission range.

I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the next blog when I'll talk about alternative antennas.

Highlights of our South Atlantic Crossing

Once again, we interrupt our regularly scheduled French Guiana blog posts to interject some highlights of our South Atlantic Crossing. I always take photos en route and Gentry suggested we also do some short video clips of day-to-day life aboard while on passage. Highlights included our week's stay at St. Helena Island, touring the island, meeting up with old friends and being coerced by the Captain into climbing the 699 steps of Jacob's Ladder.

We witnessed countless sunrises and sunsets and one green flash.

Crossing the Prime Meridian into the Western Hemisphere, and crossing the Equator back to the Northern Hemisphere were momentous occasions. And, of course, we can't forget all those flying fish in the scuppers and especially Bob the Stink's visit.

We spent hours one night lying on the aft deck, munching popcorn and observing the super blood moon eclipse. The photos weren't great being as we were on a rocking boat and it was dark and all, but hey …

A brown noddy hitchhiked a ride one night.

It's hard to explain what everyday life aboard is like. With that in mind, David compiled a short video to give you an idea of how we spent our time at sea. Hope you enjoy it.