Preparations

Some piccies of Nick making friends with some wires, Brian setting up his workshop on the pontoon, Clare and Mike sprucing up the fenders and the boys (Henry and James) settling in.

More teething problems

Well, I can see I need to get better at this blogging lark. Been a bit busy though. Am currently sitting in Nick's flat with very little furniture. We had a massive sale on ebay and people keep arriving to collect a chair or a table, or even the odd scooter! It's very strange and very final.

Well, we finally got our hands on the wind-vane (it was a long and funny story as we knew it would be involving lots of beaurocracy, some lovely men and half a dozen screwdrivers at midnight at Stansted airport ) and the generator, and though neither are actually working yet, they will be soon. The wind-vane has seen better days and needs some work though dad and Nick managed to take it apart and repairs are underway. Mum and I spent some time working on the charts puzzling over places we'd never heard of and coastlines we didn't recognise. Last count was 175 and we need quite a few more for the Pacific. If nothing else, my geography has improved since we began this escapede! Nick spent last week (and quite alot of money I understand) working on the power side of things and has wired up most of the systems with some help from Brian (his dad). For many days all Kika's surfaces were littered with wires and tools and living aboard peacefully was quite a challenge. Her comfort was tested last week when my sister and family came down to visit and we had 7 sleeping aboard. She passed (I think!) So we know it can be done just incase we have a plethora of visitors at any time! We even have 2 heads (loos) - a Ladies and a Gents! She's more luxurious than the flat!

So, I am going down to the boat on Friday to move stuff aboard, we move out of the flat on Sunday and our home is then Kika.

Teething Problems

Things are really coming together. The wind generator arrived yesterday and Fed Ex tried to deliver the wind vane today (they sound similar but are SO different and we need them both) . The wind generator gives us power from the wind and the wind vane helps helm the boat. Both big, essential additions to Kika which will reduce the stress and strains of a long voyage. We still don't have the wind vane but it's within our reach which is closer than we thought it would ever be. We found it on ebay and all seemed well at first, but early on, things went awry. The sellers we're uncommunicative and unhelpful when it didn't arrive. As time went on, they relinquished all responsibility and accused Nick of attempted fraud over the non-delivery. It seems Fed Ex have saved the day, though lets not count our chickens cos neither of us have laid eyes on it yet. It's very existence has assumed mythical proportions with us - I'm sure it will be disappointing when it finally arrives.

Kika:

Weather links

Below are some weather sites we've found useful. It's useful when we're in an Internet cafe without our bookmarks. Most of the links have been lifted directly from Frank Singleton's site

• Meteo France GDMSS sea area forecast. We've found Meteo France to be the most consistently accurate forecast we use. The forecast gives a 48 hour outlook. Its updated 9.00 and 21.00 utc
• NOAA´s National Weather Service, specifically:
  • NOAA North Atlantic briefing
  • North Atlantic forecast
  • Offshore waters forecast for the southwest and tropical north Atlantic and Caribbean Sea
    
  • Fax charts for the NW Atlantic
  • US National Hurricane Center
• The US Navy has a great public weather site. The wealth of information can be a little overwelming, the main links I use are:
  • Atlantic surface wind predictions
  • Wind and significant wave height predictions
  • Tropical Atlantic wind speeds
  • Unclassified US Navy weather charts
• Weather online Trade Winds Zone 1
• UK Met office satellite imagery
• PDF of 'Worldwide Marine Radiofacsimile Broadcast Schedules'
• Fax schedule links
  
• Windguru was helpful while we were storm bound in Barbate
  
• Pacific
  
  • Fax wind/wave charts - Tropical East Pacific
  
  

Map Help

The map can be accessed through the map links on the right-hand-side of the blog:

The three links are as follows:

• View map displays a map in the blog.
• Open map in new window opens a popup window containing the map. The window can be resized to show a larger map.
• Using the map displays this help information you are reading now.

The map defaults to showing our latest position, which in the image below was Tenerife:

Clicking on the view blog entry in the associated information 'bubble' will display the blog entry for that position; in this example the entry for Tenerife.

Note: While reading these instructions it might be useful to open a
map window and try what is being described in the text in the map window. Click here to open a map.

Basic map functionality

Moving the map

Click and drag on the map with your mouse to move the map. For example in image of the Canary Islands below, La Gomera, to the west of Tenerife, is not visible. Dragging the map to the right will show La Gomera. Alternatively the arrows at the top left hand-side of the screen can be clicked to move the map position.

Viewing a location

Another way to navigate around the map is to use the Location and Section selectors. Click on the Location selector to show a list of blog entries. Selecting one of these entries will centre the map at the location of the entry.

Viewing a section

Different sections can be viewed, for example in the image below the passage to the Canaries has been selected:

Satellite views and the zoom control

The map allows you to select a satellite view, using the buttons at the top right of the map:

Its also possible to zoom-in, the zoom controls are on the left side of the map:

The + and - buttons zoom in and out respectively or the slider can be picked up and dragged

Enjoy....

Map

Open map in own window