JPS Tech Issues (Jock Proximity Syndrome)

A frustrating morning. I woke up at about 0600 to find we were heading NW with the sails unhappy. I got up and brought her back to about 060 but the wind was now SE so we were pretty much close hauled, not being able to point very high with the jury rig. The wind was only about 10 knots and we were only making about 2.3 knots. Looking at my chartplotter to see how long we’d been going in the wrong direction indicated it had been around an hour. The weather is overcast with smur, - dreich.

I made a cup of tea and tried to exchange e mails. I’d been unable to last night. The program on the ipad has an icon you press and it then tries to exchange e mails, once you’ve pressed it it tells you a couple of useless things like: communicating, communication protocol is maxwell, and then it delays for a bit. Then it says ‘Dialling’ and around 324 milliseconds prior to this the satellite drops the connection, it’s as if it is waiting for the program to decide to dial and, just as it decides, it drops the connection.

It does this on occasions, in the past I’ve tried shutting the program down, shutting the ipad down, shutting the iridium network down etc and on re starting I’ve decided that none of these actually help, it’s just a question of trying again. Normally now I try 10 times and then give up and try again later. What’s particularly annoying is that even when it is misbehaving like this, if I want to download weather it generally works, so the system itself is ok. To be fair it sometimes needs a couple of attempts at the weather but mostly it works fine first time. Anyway this morning it just wasn’t having it. I’ve tried dozens of times now it’s just not working. Whether it’s the weather I’m not sure, sometimes I wonder if it’s the rolling, the weather or just ‘jock proximity syndrome’ and think it’s probably the latter. Whilst this was on going I thought I’d transfer a beautiful picture of my bread from my telephone to my ipad. Normally I just ‘air drop’ it. This morning both ipad and telephone refuse to believe that the other is switched on, or in the vicinity. Dozens of times. B.......! I’ve tried turning bluetooth on and off, the machines themselves off and on, nothing.

I thought it would be better to give up with technology for a bit and make some breakfast. I spoiled myself as we’ve plenty of eggs still and made some fried potatoes, scrambled egg and toast. That at least was lovely. Coming back to the tech stuff, it’s all still misbehaving. I think I just need a teenager to try, then it would work fine, but there are few in the area.

Anyway yesterday we did 80 miles over the ground with 69 coming off our distance to go, currently we’re 347 miles to Campbeltown. I’m only using Campbeltown as a waypoint at the moment in case I pop in there for fuel but suspect I’ll not need to, it’s about another 32 miles to the Kyles from there.

Meantime the wind has veered a little and we’re now up to 3.5 knots again maybe I’ll try the sat connection again too.

I made bread yesterday and it was much more successful than last time. I need to bring a loaf tin on the boat, the quiche dishes don’t make for a satisfactory shape. A photo may or may not be attached depending on whether the apple or iridium technology decides to start working again first.

I had a surprisingly good risotto for dinner (chorizo and salami with the ubiquitous butternut) and even left some for today with some mandarin oranges and evaporated milk for pudding.

As the wind went astern last night I brought the jib into the cabin and sewed up the patch I’d put on where it was starting to come adrift, hopefully that’ll keep us going for a few days now.

I also tried putting a fishing line out, I’d bought some lures in Plymouth so put a couple of fresh ones, imitation sand eels, on along with a couple of spinners and tuby feather type hooks. Nothing biting so far.

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Sorry - no picture of Jock's misshapen bread arrived.

In other news, Charlene and Bobby on AJ Wanderlust should get to the finish line in Rhode Island late tonight or early tomorrow EST - well done both! Ertan on Lazy Otter has moved from Horta to Porta Delgada in the Azores to continue repairs. Guido on Hannah is on a southerly route about half way across. Ertan and Guido are very jealous of AJ Wanderlust!

If Jock can maintain his speed and direction, he could arrive back in Tighnabruaich this weekend. Obviously there's still a long way to go but once in sight of land, Freya should be able to be tracked on AIS sites like marinetraffic.com.