A large proportion of cruisers are licensed ham radio operators. It's not surprising, since amateur radio allows communication over great distances, marine single-sideband (SSB) radios are very similar to and can be used as ham radios, and with new digital techniques and equipment, email can be sent for free (although at a slow rate). We had been planning to get our amateur licenses "someday" and had some study materials, but we didn't get motivated to start working on them until recently. But Pam and Pete, the hams we met in Hampton and then visited in Deltaville, encouraged us, and once we made up our mind to order an SSB we decided we might as well get our ham licenses.
We checked the ARRL website for the nearest exam places and dates, and found that the best for us would be October 16th. That gave us only just over a week to study, so we crammed like neither of us had done since grad school. The Technician Plus license, which was the level we decided to try for, requires two multiple choice exams and a 5 wpm Morse test. The multiple choice questions have to be drawn from a fixed question pool, so we studied those along with a book on amateur radio we'd bought back in Boulder. For the code, we found a program called Morse Academy via the ARRL site, and we spent hours practicing. By the time I took the actual test, I was dreaming in dits and dahs, but it must have worked. We don't have call signs yet -- still waiting on the FCC -- but now we are officially hams.
Morse code is actually kind of neat. The idea in learning it is to think of the letters as rhythms, rather than counting the dits and dahs. Some of the letters are easy for me to hear by their rhythms; for example, Q sounds like "here comes the bride", / is "shave and a haircut", and V is the first phrase of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Too bad not all the letters have such neat mnemonics! I get B and 6 confused easily, and X and P. Fortunately, before handing in the test I could do some "error correction"; it was obvious that HUS6AND was really HUSBAND, and B0 was 60, so I was able to pass. I can't imagine doing 20 wpm, as is required for the highest level of amateur license! However, in order to really make use of the HF ham bands, including sending and receiving email, we need to get the General class license, which requires 13 wpm. So we're still ditting and dahing in our spare time.
Most of the cruisers have already left Annapolis for points south. The morning VHF net dribbled slowly to a close, but we still listen to the VHF on and off during the day. Not that anybody ever calls us, but every once in a while we get to listen to a gem like this conversation (of which we only heard one side):
"Hey, sailboat, can you hear me?" [Note that this is not the usual method of hailing on the VHF. Or at least, not the approved method.]
"You on the sailboat, can you hear me?"
"I'm on the powerboat off to your starboard. Can you tell me where I am? I don't have any charts."
"You say this is the Magothy River? OK. How do I get to Baltimore?"
Well, he was only off by one river (and about 20 miles). But you would think he would have noticed that the entrance to the Magothy is kind of small for commercial shipping! (At this point the Coast Guard broke in and sternly instructed this lost soul that channel 16 is for calling only, and please to switch to a working channel, and that was the last I heard.)
The edge of hurricane Irene swept by Sunday, bringing a bit of rain and strong winds to Annapolis, but it hardly seemed like a hurricane from our perspective. But it will be nice when the remains of the system clear out of here, as sunny skies and light breezes are a lot more pleasant than clouds and gales when the temperature's barely in the 60's. We caved in and got two methods of heating the boat, one high-tech and one low: a small propane heater, and a clay flowerpot. I had read that a flowerpot on the stove over a burner set on low heat was a cheap way to heat a boat, but it doesn't seem to heat much more than the small area right around the stove. Unfortunately we're having trouble with the oven -- it doesn't seem to want to stay on -- or I'd be heating the boat by baking bread and muffins and cookies. So we use the little heater, which burns lots of propane and raises the temperature in the cabin to a tolerable 65 degrees or so. It's really tough getting out from under our down sleeping bags in the morning when it's below 60!
Although Irene didn't touch us much, we're a little concerned about the effect the storm had on North Carolina. Portions of the Intracoastal Waterway were damaged by Dennis and Floyd, and the channel was being redredged in several places. According to the reports we heard on the VHF net, one section of the ICW was only opened twice a day for boats to pass through, and the Dismal Swamp route through Virginia and northern North Carolina, which we had planned to take, was completely closed due to debris that had washed into the canal. Irene's rains may have set back the ongoing work and caused more problems. I'm sure some North Carolinians are about ready to move to Nevada -- after three hurricanes in two months, they've got to be sick of rain!
Our friends Vern and Kathy, who we met during hurricane Dennis and who were at Cape Fear when hurricane Floyd made landfall there, did not disappoint us. We heard from them that they had just made it home to Boca Raton when Irene came barrelling by. The 70mph winds made a mess of their patio furniture, but they had no major damage. We are convinced they are hurricane magnets and plan to put off visiting them until the season is over!
Our equipment arch gleams like a piece of fine jewelry -- unsurprising, since it cost about as much! We've installed our cockpit speakers and light, moved the stern light to the arch, and put lifting tackle on the motor lift arm and the dinghy lift loops. But we can't lift the dinghy until we clean off the bottom. It's truly disgusting with barnacles and slime -- no wonder we've been having trouble getting up on a plane -- and we don't want anyone else to see how bad it is! So, the dink's staying in the water until we get a chance to beach it over at Truxton Park, turn it over, and scrape all the yuck off.
If the dinghy's looking that bad, we know the prop's looking bad too. We'd noticed a lack of power and difficulty backing to starboard, and that's a sign that our prop is growing. Britt's waiting for some sunny weather so he can swim underneath the boat (with a wetsuit on, of course) and clean the prop.
Our goodies have started arriving this week -- a wind generator, a GPS, an SSB radio, and a boom brake (to keep the sail out for downwind sailing without the risk of an accidental gybe). We're probably not going to have time to install everything before we leave, but at least we'll have it all aboard so we can install things as we have time.
In the meantime, we're doing what we can with what we have. Britt installed a cleat for our jib furling line and started working on mounting the second VHF radio we bought for in the cockpit. I mounted a wine-glass rack in the liquor cabinet behind our table, and wired some indicator lights for the regulator and battery charger. We pumped all the fuel in tank #1 through our new offline filter and into tank #2. The empty tank didn't look cruddy at all, so we think (we hope!) that our troubles with the fuel system are over. We bought a bunch of food and somehow found places to store it all. We're both looking forward to heading south soon!