Thursday 28 July 2016

VHF testing on America's Cup Sunday

Much windier on Sunday, and as the tides were late, I took the opportunity to watch the second days racing on BT Sport..

Conditions were considerably better for foiling than they were the day before, so the racing was hot and furious..

Pic courtesy BT Sport
Look at that (following)...  they're doing about 26 or 27 knots...  that's 30 mph...  must be an amazing ride!

Pic courtesy BT Sport
So end of the third race, and Sir Ben had got a first and two seconds (the American's were hot today, much better starts in the last two races for sure) which gave him the event win by 1 point

Pic courtesy BT Sport
...but also catapulted him into overall lead after the 7 races so far - Oracle moved up a place and Emirates New Zealand dropped a place.. they definitely missed their usual helm (Pete Burling has gone to Rio for the Olympics) and suffered badly this weekend as a result..

Pic courtesy BT Sport
A celebratory cup of tea later, and I legged it down to the boat, but as it was grey, cold'ish, a late tide, and with generally uninspiring weather I took the fixed VHF with me to do some testing on the antenna rather than go sailing..  

As I mentioned in the last sailing post I'd connected everything up to the hand-held but was getting very little traffic so this was by way of trouble shooting to see if the issue was the antenna, or the connection to the hand-held...  wired up the fixed VHF to the ships 12v (hurrah - how good is it to report that?!), plugged in the antenna, and I can report I'm getting traffic (Ch 67, Ch 11 from QHM Portsmouth and Ch 80 including traffic from Port Solent which given the land masses between is pretty impressive!) so the antenna is good, but being low down I suspect the aspect of the boat is more important to its reception....  either way it's good to know it works, so I've bought forward plans to install the fixed VHF - the wire/cable is on it's way, and then it's time to do a little sanding and epoxying to put in place a batten to attach it to....  

2 comments:

  1. You are right Steve, us Kiwis are missing having Peter Burling on the helm - but Sir Ben is a formidable opponent, so it will be interesting to see the results when they compete against one another.
    With our daughter married to an Englishman and now living in the UK we are allowed a bet both ways!

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    1. Alden- it's a long way to the finish line, and it's not all done and dusted yet.. the BAR team are largely unaffected by Olympics call ups but all the others seem to be.. I wonder if Sir Ben planned for that eventuality??

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