When we were hit by the gale on our way to the Philippines, we made the decision to alert the maritime rescue authorities to our predicament, as drifting without the ability to maneuver a boat in a very busy sea area is inherently dangerous (for us, but also for the other vessels). Would there later have been a need to issue any automatic emergency alerts (which thankfully there was not), those would have gone to the authorities in Finland where our boat is registered, so we chose to include the Finnish authorities in our alert at the outset. We are very pleased to have done so, as we received efficient and empathetic support from them over a communications system that the local authorities were unable to use to get messages through to us. However, the involvement of the Finnish authorities has led to our trip becoming an item of interest for the media in Finland, up to the point that our previous blog post about the Philippines leg of our journey has been quoted by the local press. We have therefore reluctantly had to make the decision not to elaborate further on the events from that leg on this blog. Instead, you can ask us over a cold beer or glass of wine next time we meet!
To that end, this blog post is about radios (again), but I will keep it short this time. We are over the moon as we managed to get our MF/HF (i.e. long-range) radio to finally work together with our pactor modem, and successfully sent the first email through our radio! It seems like some sort of small miracle to be able to send emails through radio waves. We can now send and receive emails basically for free through private radio stations while we are at sea. These emails cannot be long, and cannot contain images or attachments, but will certainly work as reassurance to family and friends that all is well with us. We are now trying to sort out a way to update this blog (with very concise posts) through our radio while underway.
