This means that we are usually awakened at dawn with a violent rocking of the boat as the panga drivers come into the lagoon. Then we can hear them giving one another directions as they maneuver around our boats, and then we get the violent rocking motion again as each one departs. With at least a dozen pangas participating in this “full moon” event, we usually just sit up in bed and read from 5AM to 7AM, at which time they finally depart. Then we grab a few more minutes of sleep until the Amigo Net comes on at 8AM, and are usually finished with our first cup of coffee for the morning when the local net comes on in Barra de Navidad at 9AM.
I have been asked what a “net” is all about; so those who already know can skip this part. There are wide area nets (such as the Amigo Net) and usually a local net at the major ports. The Amigo Net is an HF (High Frequency) net that is conducted by cruisers on the West Coast of Mexico. Since HF radio signals can travel a long distance, it is listened to all along the coast. The Amigo Net is a communication method for helping one another out, making sure that emergencies are handled, and passing status and weather to one another. It is conducted by a “net controller” who is someone who volunteers to control the communication process, say one day a week, and other cruisers take responsibility for one of the other days of the week. This is a very structured process that includes a predefined protocol, both for controlling the net and participating in the net.
For example, all nets usually start out with a call on the frequency announcing the net and making sure that other radiophiles are not already communicating on the network. If they are, they are asked nicely to move on to another frequency, since some dozens of cruisers will be dialing into the frequency from 8AM to 9AM Central time (so it is actually 6AM) in the Pacific Time Zone. The reason for the timing on this is that most cruisers are in the Mountain or Central time zone once they get beyond Cabo San Lucas, and long range communications are improved when the sun comes up; so it is best to hold it during the early daylight where most of the cruisers are located. The next step is to define the rules of the net, which amount to no speaking unless you announce your boat name first and wait to be recognized.
The net follows a common protocol as follows:
1) First there is a call for anyone with emergency or priority traffic, and the controller waits to hear if anyone responds. “Traffic” refers to communications. Usually there is nothing said, but sometimes there is a call to locate a boat that has been missing for awhile. In many cases this is initiated by a frantic family member who expected to hear something from the cruiser at a specific time, but it can also be put out by the coast guard asking for information as the whereabouts of the boat. When this has happened, someone usually speaks up from the boat itself, or from another boat, who announces that the boat in question is anchored next to them.
2) The next call is for cruisers needing assistance of any kind that may not be life-threatening, but could be serious. One cruiser who was on the Baja Ha Ha with us from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas announced that he had a leak in the bottom of his boat that amounted to a gallon an hour, but that he was able to pump the water out and keep going. He was the subject of every day’s net after that until we reached Cabo San Lucas and he could have the boat hauled and repaired.
3) Next is a call for cruisers to check in who are underway from one place to another. It is felt that these cruisers should have priority in case they have limited time to spend on the radio while they are sailing their boat. The check-in follows a fairly strict format as shown below:
Our boat: “Aurora”
Controller: “Aurora, come ahead with your check-in.”
Our Boat:
Identification: “This is the sailing vessel, Aurora, Whiskey Delta Delta 7480.”
We mention that we are a sailing vessel because there is a motor vessel named Aurora that has been more or less traveling down south with us and several other vessels. Our Marine ID is WDD7480 and it needs to be spoken at the start of every transmission and every 10 minutes, if we continue talking.
Location: “We are departing Barra de Navidad today for Zihuatanejo.”
Personnel: “There are two of us onboard, Jim and Sheilagh”
Weather: “The wind is currently blowing at 15 knots from the Northeast with occasional whitecaps (normal with 15-knot winds) and the swells are approximately 2 feet (that’s the size of the swells from the bottom to the top of a swell and is also consistent with 15 knots of wind).”
This gives other sailors some idea of the actual weather being encountered enroute versus the forecast they will get later in the Amigo Net broadcast.
Traffic: “We have no traffic.”
This means that we have no messages to pass to someone else on the Amigo Net. Naturally, if we had a message for another cruiser we would say we had traffic.
Sign-off: "This is Aurora standing by on the Amigo Net frequency.”
Controller: “Aurora, thank you for your check-in. Does anyone have traffic for Aurora?”
He waits to hear the name of a boat, indicating that it would like to speak with Aurora. If he hears nothing he asks for the next check-in. If a boat calls in, he will answer the boat name and tell them to go ahead with their traffic for Aurora. The other boat will then call, “Aurora, Aurora, Aurora, this is Manana.” It is common protocol to repeat the name of the boat being called three times, and then follow with your own boat name. We will respond and they will either pass a short message or ask us to get on another frequency at a specific time to talk more at length.
That’s enough on communications for this blog. I’ll go into the local communications net on a subsequent blog. I don’t want to make these blogs sound too much like a training course for cruisers.
We are heading out today from Barra de Navidad to Zihuatanejo and will be setting sail just before dusk. The reason for out late start is that the trip will take about 36 hours (at least two nights) and we want to time it so we will get there in the morning. If we left in the morning here, we would be getting there after dark, and it is dangerous to be entering a new port at night. We usually like to take day trips and stay at intermediate locations overnight, but there is only one good port about 4 hours south (we covered that in an earlier blog when we went to Bahia Manzanillo last week to mail a package), and then there is nothing for the next 180 miles.
This is a good time to go because the weather is stable, although there is little real wind this time of year on the Mexican Riviera (which is why people want to vacation here); so we may be motoring quite a bit. There is a short sentence in the cruising guide for this leg of the trip that says “drug smugglers also ply these waters, so some yatistas [that’s us] opt to buddy boat between Manzanillo and Ixtapa.” It turns out that there is a fairly large celebration in Zihuatanejo in a few days, and there are several cruisers who will be making the trip in the same time frame for this event – making it a bit safer than if we were to go alone. Before we leave, here are a couple of shots of the lagoon at Barra de Navidad – a very large lagoon as you can see.
Upper left: the large hotel and the entrance – at the right: the opposite view with a few of the 35 boats anchored here
Friday we checked out with the Port Captain, letting him know we were going next to Zihuatanejo on Sunday (today). This is a fairly loose check-in process, but we don’t dare show up at the Port Captain in Zihuatanejo without having checked out with this one. Most of us don’t believe that the Mexican port authority could really locate anyone in an emergency, but they do make out duplicate copies of our check-in and check-out, stamp both sets, and give us a stamped copy, keeping one for their files. I would be very surprised if someone enters the information from the form into a centralized computer system that would let someone enter our boat name and know where we had last checked in. So why do they require the paperwork? I think they want to keep folks employed as much as possible. I have yet to see any port official go through a marina or an anchorage to see what boats were there and make sure they have all checked in. Only the marina staff does that to insure they are being paid for the dock space. In some of the larger ports, the marina manager actually reports our arrivals and departures to the port captain in lieu of our having to do so.
Friday night we got together with a number of other cruisers in a deserted palapa next to a dilapidated dock next to the golf course. Everyone brought “finger food” and their own drinks, and we shared boat cards and experiences for a couple of hours. It’s nice to put the faces of the cruisers to their boat name and get to know a bit about them. One of the boat names is AirOps, which is a term associated with carrier landings, and it turns out the owner was an A7 pilot whose last command was handling the Air Operations on the Kitty Hawk. We talked about naval aviation, the navy, and even some glider flying in the course of our discussion. We had both been through survival and POW training, along with Vietnam duty, so we had a lot to talk about. Another cruiser had been living near Lake of the Pines for the past few years, not more than a few stones’ throw from where we lived for the past seven years. It was very enjoyable to learn why different cruisers were living aboard their boats and seeing the world from that vantage point. Some are only interested in cruising up and down Mexico, others are planning to go through the Panama Canal and into the Gulf of Mexico, and several of us are planning to set sail from Zihuatanejo for the South Pacific.
Sheilagh and I are thinking very seriously of going to the South Pacific in March or April – the best time to make the trip across the Pacific. There will be a meeting of cruisers in Zihuatanejo on February 5th who are interested in going across the Pacific, where we can share information. The sailing magazine, Latitude 38, sponsors the meeting in Zihuatanejo and in Puerto Vallarta, so they can collect people’s backgrounds and have a future source for articles in their magazine. Apparently the Marquesan Tourist Bureau will be sending representatives to the meeting to answer our questions and invite us to come spend our money there. This annual migration of cruisers from the West Coast to the South Pacific has been labeled the “Pacific Puddle Jump,” apparently to play down the enormity of the undertaking. The presence of a number of other boats who will be making the trip at the same time should provide more safety in numbers. We’ll let you know what we learn in a later blog.
This morning I noticed that the dinghy needed a lot of air in the right side; so I took a look with another cruiser who had come alongside to say goodby, and we discovered a leak under water. Sheilagh and I immediately hoisted it up onto our boat, turned it over, and used soapy water in a spray bottle to find the source of the leak. We used the mixture on the rest of the bottom of the boat and found nothing else. The patching takes about 30 – 45 minutes, most of the time taken to let the glue dry on the patch and the boat before applying the patch to the boat. There always seems to be something to do! Here’s a picture of our dinghy, which we covered with green hand prints to discourage those who might want to take it. How do you conceal a stolen life raft that looks like this?
Our dinghy on the beach at Manzanilla in Bahia Tenacatita
More later . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment