Tahiti Trip:
This is my first test submission from my SailMail account.
I’ll be using this AirMail program on the boat to write email, send it to my blog via SSB radio which should auto-post it to the ‘Trips’ category at sailorslifeforme.com. I hope to send daily log entries via this method during the trip, but if I skip a day or if the updates stop completely, don’t worry! It’s probably just an equipment failure, laptop failure, radio failure, electrical failure, propogation issue, or any combination of errors in this complicated system! If help is required, I have backup satellite comms available to get in touch with land.
As for contacting me, I have no access to the internet, no phone, and no post office. There are a couple options, however:
1) If it is important, I will have email contact to a land-based person of trust. They will have my email address and I will be able to check that once per day if SailMail is up and running. I will not give this address to just anybody since the connection is so slow. 15 characters can take up to 1 minute to download out there! Therefore, I am trying to limit the number of emails received. So if you mail my trusted person, they will pass the message if they feel it is important enough. The specific email address will be listed in a future post.
2) If you would like to try to make contact over the radio waves purely for the fun of it, I will be monitoring my marine radio every day of the trip from say, 8:00pm – 8:15pm Hawaii time (GMT-10) on frequency 12E (12,365Mhz). I will be attaching this info to the bottom of every update, so just check the most recent post in case I found a more reliable band. This should be a strong signal to/from Hawaii, Tahiti, and the West Coast, USA.
Departure is penciled in for June 1, 2014!