by Rich Wilson | Dec 29, 2016 | Q&A, Q&A - RichWilson, Q&A-RW-wk8
Dear Isabella, The fist time that I sailed into the Southern Ocean, I had a book about seabirds, and, of course, it had pictures of the birds, and descriptions of their behavior, and so i was able to identify the albatross. Plus I had a shipmate, Bill Biewenga, who...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 29, 2016 | Q&A, Q&A - RichWilson, Q&A-RW-wk8
Dear Maura, We have WiFi on board but only for our own ship’s network. I can access the internet through the satellite phone, but it is very, very expensive, and so I don’t look at the internet from here. There is so much to do on the boat, and so much to...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 27, 2016 | Q&A, Q&A - RichWilson, Q&A-RW-wk8
Dear Jack, We have 3 different satellite communication systems: Fixed Iridium (9.6kbaud), an Iridium OpenPort (128k baud) and a Fleet Broadband (250k baud rate). So I can telephone or email through any of these three systems. Interestingly, we have found that the best...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 27, 2016 | Q&A, Q&A - RichWilson, Q&A-RW-wk8
Dear Peter, I haven’t gotten soaked from the outside to the inside down to my skin yet, mostly because I have good foul weather gear (Musto) and because many of our operations are done inside the big coachroof over the cockpit. Of course we can fill the cockpit,...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 23, 2016 | Q&A, Q&A - RichWilson, Q&A-RW-wk7
Dear Valentin: That is an astute question, and the answer is yes, it is very difficult to get used to the changes of hours as we go so fast from west to east through time zones. 360 degrees of longitude in the world divided by 24 hours means a time zone every 15...
by Rich Wilson | Dec 23, 2016 | Q&A, Q&A - RichWilson, Q&A-RW-wk7
In fact we had an episode recently of Enda O’Coineen passing close to us. See Ship’s Log 12/20 for the details. The essence is that you do not want to be close to another boat since that skipper might be sleeping, or if the wind shifts the autopilot will...
