Day 6: What happened when we lost our sat coms
Well, well, well… you will not be reading this before we are in signal range, which won’t happen until we reach the Azores at least a week from now.
There are so many reasons why I am bummed out that you won’t read this in real-time, and I even considered stopping the daily offshore blog. But Anett thought that I would forget half of what happened by the time we make it to Horta (and she is right), so here is today’s update, on Saturday, July 3rd at 8 PM.
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Saturday, July 3rd, 9 PM
36°55'01''N - 51°46'38''W
The one thing that is guaranteed to happen on an offshore passage this long, is that stuff is going to break.
Our job before departure is to have a solid risk management plan, making sure that we either have redundancy in case of a critical system failure, as well spare parts or tools to repair anything that could break.
We’ve had a great passage since we left Bermuda with no incidents to report until this morning at 3:45 AM.
Whenever I take over a watch from Ryan, I do not set an alarm, as I enjoy having him waking me up with a cuddle (yes I am that kind of person), and he sometimes let me sleep a little longer than planned.
But there was no extra sleep or cuddle this morning when he came to wake me up. Instead, the first thing he told me is: "We have lost the Iridium Go."
The Iridium Go is by far our favorite piece of kit offshore. It works as a router that provides us with enough satellite internet on our phones and tablets that we can download weather forecasts, send/receive text messages, and send/receive basic text emails.
We use it to communicate with our friends and family when we are far away offshore, but more importantly, it is how we receive updates from our weather routers. Even MORE importantly, we would use it as a sat phone in case of an emergency, to call our shore support.
We got our Iridium Go through Predict Wind, and on top of all its functions, our unit allows us to transmit our position onto the live tracker of the page that you are currently visiting (and that now does not work anymore).
Last night at around 8 PM our time, the little red dot indicating our current position stopped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and in the same run, we had lost our line of communication with the land-based world.
No more emails, no more texts, no more phone calls.
No more contact with our shore support, no more weather forecasts, no more weather routing, and no more work emails.
The only mean of communication we now have with the world outside of Polar Seal is through the VHF that we just replaced in Bermuda (and thanks god we did!). But our VHF has a relatively short range and unless another boat comes within 10-15 miles of our position, we won’t be able to communicate.
So it is now 5 AM, Ryan is back to bed as I am in the cockpit trying to figure out what happened, and the Iridium Go just keeps rebooting, re-initializing, and acting stupid.
Our first reaction is frustration, obviously.
Our satellite communications brought us a lot of valuable information for our passage, and being in touch with the land when we are in the middle of the ocean provides an unequaled sense of safety.
But honestly, we aren’t too worried about not getting weather forecasts anymore, or emails, or contact with our weather routers (although, over a week away from destination, that would be nice).
Before our Iridium Go died, we had downloaded a solid weather forecast that almost covered almost the rest of our passage. It will get outdated soon, as forecasts are pretty much useless after 5 days, but it gives us an indication of how things might develop. We also received some good instructions from our weather routers, and we have enough fuel to motor to Horta if the wind dies in a few days.
So far our wind is great, we are making really good progress Eastwards and the forecast is good. Losing our satellite communications sucks, but it isn’t a mission-critical system, and by all means, we are having a great passage.
We will be fine.
No, what we are VERY worried about, is you. You who may see our track stop without any news or way to make sure that we are OK.
We know that a lot of you reading this update will have thought about the likelihood of a satcoms failure, will look us up on Marine Traffic or Vessel Finder premium to find our AIS satellite signal, and may even calculate a probably ETA based on our latest position and boat speed.
But I think about our family and friends that aren’t familiar with sailing at all, who most likely do not know about Vessel Finder or Marine Traffic or satellite AIS signals, and how scary this moment may be for them. I have no idea, and it is nerve-wracking.
Before we left, I briefed our shore support Willem (who happens to be Anett’s husband) and told him: “In case our tracker stops and you can’t get ahold of us, the most likely scenario is that we have lost our satellite communications, and as long as our EPIRB hasn’t been activated, your job is to tell everyone that we are OK”
But to our families and friends, losing sight of our position is probably as worrying as an activated EPIRB.
Anyone who knows us, knows that we have spent A LOT of money on safety and rescue gear that we hope we will never have to use. I think that our family and friends know that we are very conservative when it comes to safety, redundancy, and the integrity of our equipment.
But they don’t know the difference between our track disappearing in the ocean and the activation of our EPIRB. I mean, for all I know, I don't think that they even know what an EPIRB is.
So while we aren’t worried for our sake, we feel very bad for putting our families and friends through this.
If Ryan was at sea without me and the track stopped all of a sudden and I could not reach him, even though I know exactly what could have happened, I know that my mind would wander to the worst-case scenarios.
I don’t know exactly at what point someone will start asking themselves questions, and I am hoping it won’t take the entire 8 days that we have left until we reach Horta for them to be reassured. I am hoping that Willem or someone looks us up on AIS and posts our position on social media.
I am hoping that we can come by a ship soon enough and ask them to send our shore support a quick message saying that we’re OK.
The Iridium Go and our live tracker’s purpose was to reassure our families, and now I feel it has created the exact opposite.
Damn you Iridium Go. Consider yourself demoted from your position as our favorite piece of kit.
Soundtrack of the day: Kreepa - Oh no