Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lessons Learned
What did our experiences teach us? For one thing, we were glad to have kept an unchan-
ging UTC meeting time (1600) for our net rather than attempting to keep up with time zone
changes across the Pacific. This is especially true for boats of vastly different speeds and
staggered departure dates. We were also careful to start with a late enough time slot so as to
prevent the net meeting time from drifting into the wee hours of the morning once we made
westward progress and the appointed hour became earlier and earlier in terms of local time.
Having two net controllers share the burden also worked well on the POST net. Ideally, the
two controllers will also be fairly far apart, the better to receive other members of a far-
flung group. In general, 6 MHz would have been a better choice than 8 MHz given the tim-
ing of our net and the great range between boats. 8 MHz also seems to create more interfer-
ence with other on-board electronics (such as autopilots) on many boats, but one of our
members could not receive this frequency on their SSB set. It also pays to check for over-
laps before publicizing your net and to set an alternative frequency. We encountered a hic-
cup when our net started to overlap with chitchat from a nearby fishing fleet on 12 MHz
later in the passage.
Finally, small radio nets allow each crew to put forward individual wishes, such as what to
do in case of a repeated “no-show.” On the other hand, members should reach some con-
sensus on which weather conditions to report and how exactly to measure them (for ex-
ample, true or apparent wind direction, and how to measure wave height) before these be-
come subjects of wearisome (or entertaining) discussion over the air.
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