Day minus 8

The "ham" in me
I am running out of pictures to post.
This one is from last week but it shows the cabin of the Star with Carly, Pat, Ryan, Andy and Mark. Star has a 14’ wide beam but the designers put in a lot of storage so the cabin is not as wide as Dave’s boat which only has a 12’ beam. Nonetheless, it is comfortable and the four of us should be comfortable on the crossings. Mark has designed a watch schedule that has all of us awake from 10 AM to 6 PM. The first watch, which will probably be me and Kurt, will be from 6 PM until 2 AM. The second watch by Mark and Andy will be from 2 AM to 10 AM. During the 8 hours, at least one person will be on deck and they will do a binoculars look around every 20 minutes. They will also be required to respond to radio communications during the watch.
Yesterday evening I received a fax of my general license ham radio “certificate of successful completion”. I had taken and passed this test in early February but could not get the license because at that time the rules required that I also pass a 5 word-per-minute Morse code test. I found I could do about 3 words a minute but got brain lock when it went faster. This requirement was abandoned by the FCC on February 24 - yesterday - so with the certificate, $15 and the proper form I was able to upgrade my technician license to a general license. This is a huge benefit for Star since it will allow us to use the lower frequencies (the famous 20 meter band) that bounce off the ionosphere and can give radio communication for thousands of miles. This is definitely a good thing when the boat is thousands of miles from shore.
The rest of the day was spent washing the boat and putting away extra gear in preparation for the trip. We still have a few more maintenance items to complete and Mark now expects that we will leave on or about March 8.