Our
letter arrived today, two weeks after it was posted in UK, and we can
now leave for Magnetic Island 130 miles north from Airlie. If we
leave at midday tomorrow we estimate to arrive on Friday morning.
Note the lack of definites; it's a sailing boat and anything could
happen.
We
may have spent more time in the area than we'd planned (see above)
but we've used our time to do preliminary provisioning for Indonesia
and for David some a boat project or two. I've found an on-line
course to learn Indonesian and have been spending time trying to cram
some basic language before we arrive; just enough for hellos,
goodbyes, thanks and how much for the wood carving?
David,our
electrical engineer, has been concerned our newly fitted AIS system
isn't working as well as it should; our range for small craft being
less than 5 miles and 15 miles for commercial shipping. Some testing
of the health of the antennae on top of each mast, one for VHF, one
for AIS revealed the AIS antennae wasn't as healthy as the VHF
aerial. Swap the antennas and we have strong AIS signal but poor VHF.
The simple solution is to find and buy a new antennae. Not so simple
is finding a shop which stocks the correct antennae for our use. As
I write we have one ordered for collection in Cairns. Hopefully it
will arrive at the chandlers before we do.
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