It sounds like a crude form of Morse code on your single sideband transceiver. The interfering signal is strong enough to disrupt fax reception, render voice reception unintelligible, and bring your onboard e-mail to a halt. It seems to occur all across the bands, stronger on some frequencies, weaker on others. Turn off your 12-volt refrigeration and if the interference stops immediately, read on — this article is for you.
Cowboys and their horses; voyagers and their dinghies — these are natural companions. A voyager must have a sturdy vessel to cross the seas, but once safely at anchor in some romantic port, without a dinghy, that foreign shore will still be just a dream.
Can you imagine what sailing was like before the winch came on board? Not me. Just the thought of hauling in a feisty genoa by hand makes my back hurt. It is easily the most versatile piece of equipment on the boat, and whoever invented this mechanical marvel deserves to be in the Sailing Hall of Fame.
We decided to add a Pactor modem to the HF SSB set up on board ourWarwick Cardinal 46, Skylax. This piece of radio gear allows us to send and receive small emails while out at sea and out of range of mobile communications. Here are some considerations when setting up this system:
We've all heard about sailboats being heeled over to clear bridges but few have ever done it, particularly when the mast height of Bluejacket, a 42-foot Ted Brewer-designed cutter, is 63 feet and bridge clearances up the river are 55 feet. It's one thing to inch it along under a single bridge with full 55-gallon water drums hung out on the end of a boom or spinnaker pole, or using a twin outboard pulling on the spinnaker halyard; it's another thing altogether to secure the cutter alongside and hold it over for 15 miles, doing 4 to 5 knots, in order to clear five bridges.
Many boats are equipped with 12-volt DC-powered refrigeration. While it's convenient to leave the refrigeration operating when the boat is at a shore-power-equipped dock, if shore power fails or is disconnected, the refrigeration system will continue to operate, drawing power from the battery bank.
We wanted to increase the battery capacity on Andiamo, our Wauquiez Pretorien 35, so we'd have the amp-hours to power our radar, autopilot, HF radio, refrigeration, instruments and lights. ds. Just fill in the table and add the loads up. Be sure to prepare two separate totals — one for passages and one for staying at anchor. It's amazing how an amp here and a few watts there add up to a lot of amp-hours!