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Arkouda - Other observations regarding Friday the 13



As you may or may not know, sailors are a superstitious lot. They have all kinds of idioms, i.e., no soil on a boat (just heard that one in Cape Verde) never leave port on Friday, and I am sure many others. I am sure that Friday the 13th falls in there somewhere.

Besides the mishap of taking on water, and the boat that lost their mast (they are both doing very well, due to an outstanding crew) another boat had an engine fire that had started, been put out, and then re-ignighted. Scary stuff, but the boat and crew make it to Barbados safely. I had been smug about the lack of problems that we have had, only to wake up the gremlins that seem to reside in Arkouda's electrical system.

We noticed last night that our AIS was out. It had worked a few days ago when we passed close enough to sv Aspen to see her, electronically anyways. It is not the first time this has happened, and usually we just go and jiggle wires, re solder, and are okay again. Sean jiggled wires and viola, it was working fine. For a few minutes anyway. By the time I woke up at midnight the system was down again. It is not a big deal. We transited Greece and Italy with the exact same problem!

Both our GPS and AIS share the same antennae through a splitter, which at least is located in an easy to reach closet. Our VHF is transmitting, but not receiving. As we looked skyward to check the mast to make sure the antennae was present (it is) we realized that we lost our SSB antennae. We have been using the SAT phone for email and weather, so this is not a big deal. We have a spare handheld VHF's (multiple) so that is not a big deal, we just don't have quite the range that we did with the other. The AIS, on which I became overly dependent on is not essential either. Our radar works fine, we can see other boats headings and vectors. So I don't know the boat name, but it is not the end of the world.

We will keep jiggling wires to see if we can get it to work. My question is whether or not this would have occurred had I not read the Rally's letter of Friday the 13th mishaps. Since I was not aware of it being Friday the 13th, (although I have never been concerned about that date before) all the reports of other boats troubles. Did my acknowledgement of Friday the 13th allow this happen. More likely, I jinxed us by bragging about how great all the systems are working!

Still doing great, still an adventure!
Cynthia

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