Yuk!

I don't know what but on the spur of the moment I typed Erbas's call sign into Google ...

Oh, I probably ought to start out by explaining what the call sign is for those of a non-nautical or non-HAM radio persuasion. Nearly* every radio station in the world has a totally unique call sign composed of letters and numbers. Older call signs were usually four characters, at least for maritime stations anyway, but they ran out years ago and now they're five characters.

(This, by the way, is the origin of those classic American radio stations such as "this is W-O-K-Y, the official Elvis station" etc. I made that one up by the way but you know what I mean! US law requires, or perhaps required, all US radio broadcasters to broadcast their official call sign regularly)

* I'm not sure whether this still applies to the big broadcasters in the UK and Europe. Certainly they used to have a call sign assigned - the first precursor to the BBC was a station called 2MT followed by another called 2LO, but things have moved on a bit since then!

Anyway, to get back on track, our call sign is an older four character one "2JDA" or Two Juliet Delta Alpha in phonetics. All well and good but typing it into Google I discovered that "2JDA" is apparently the designation of a "novel periplasmic polygalacturonic acid binding protein" (whatever the hell one of those is!" from the Yersinia enterolitica bacterium.

That didn't sound good! (My historical antenna started twitching for one thing, some sort of Yersinia baceria was, if my memory serves, otherwise known as the Black Death - cue horror music, pause for effect ......)

This one isn't quite that bad but if you get it you'll definitely become very familiar with every knothole on the back of the privy door (that's one for the Pratchett fans - for the philistines it means you'll be spending a lot of time in the smallest room)

I'm never going to feel quite the same about our call sign ever again

Happily, these days we can always be bang up to date and use the modern digital equivalent. The truly unmemorable 9 digits of our MMSI number 235077379

What's an MMSI number I hear you ask? It's effectively our VHF radio telephone number

I am utterly utterly hopeless at remembering telephone numbers!

Oh and all of this was sparked by the arrival of our lovely new calling cards ...

These will be handed out to anyone who needs or wants to know our email or blog address

I reckon a hundred of them should last a couple of decades then!

To Europe with travel insurance!

 

Our first passports!

Yes, odd though it may seem we've simply never had the need or the desire to travel beyond the shores of these sceptred isles. But now the time has come ...

We plan to attend the big annual extravaganza that is Oostende voor Anker (that is Ostend at Anchor in English, although technically and to be pedantic the boats on show are moored, not anchored!) at the end of May and that means, yikes, travelling to foreign lands where they don't speak English as a first language and the beer is a funny colour and, to be sensible for a moment, a certain amount of paperwork is required

Life is made somewhat complicated for the British yachtsman travelling to Europe due to our rather half hearted approach to being a member of the European Union. Now leaving aside the politics of whether the UK is better off in or out of the EU, there can be no argument that when it comes to travel we tend to get a lot of the drawbacks with virtually none of the benefits

As we don't have a National ID Card, Brits need a passport to travel to Europe. OK, not a show stopper but it required a certain amount of research (long story but some of the info needed was not readily to hand), a deal of form filling, a not insubstantial wadge of cash, the assistance of our good friend Pat of "Laurin" to countersign the forms and a trip to Peterborough for an interview.

Actually, I have to say that I found the whole process relatively straightforward and Her Majety's Passport Office staff friendly, helpful and extremely efficient. Given the need to prevent identity theft and other illegal activities, that you have to go through a certain amount of hoop jumping to obtain such an important document is totally understandable.

With the delightfully traditional looking, and traditionally worded, books in hand I turned my thoughts to other matters pertaining to travelling to the continent.

Usefully, included within the envelope with the passports, was a handy guide to travelling abroad. This pointed me at the EHIC (or European Health Insurance Card) web site where in no time at all I had applied for this essential document which will provide for essential healthcare should we fall ill whilst the other side of the North Sea

 However, the EHIC doesn't by any means cover every possible expense that might be associated with falling ill and the EHIC website makes it clear that travellers should also arrange travel insurance.

It does not, for example, cover the cost of repatriation to the UK. Nor, in another example, does it cover the cost of an ambulance in Belgium. It only covers 70% of medical costs in France, 75% in Belgium and so on. It may be a "must have" but it also smacks of being something of a false security blanket!

We do however have travel insurance through our Halifax Reward Account but I decided to take a look at the small print and therein I found a wee problem. The insurance covers us for the hazardous (their words, not mine) activity of sailing but only within "territorial waters". By international convention, ratified by the UK, territorial waters extend 12 miles from the mean low water line.

Crossing the channel from Dover to Calais (or Dunkirk as in fact we might skip Calais) is entirely within territorial waters. Crossing the North Sea back from the Netherlands to Harwich involves a good 60 miles, or about 15 hours, in international waters where our travel insurance does not apply

Now some might say I am a worrier, I would argue though that I am a thinker. I like to plan for every eventuality and then I can relax and enjoy myself in the knowledge that come what may I've got it covered.

And I positively do not like the idea as skipper that if one of us was taken ill some eight or ten hours outbound from a Dutch port I'd be worrying about the costs of turning back to the nearest assistance (or, for that matter, the consequences of accepting assistance from Dutch or Belgian rescue services)

Worse, if it was me that was taken seriously ill, that would leave Jane having to deal with a potential nightmare. I'm well aware, and very grateful, that a whole host of friends would rush to our assistance (as indeed would I to help them in the same circumstances). "Erbas" would be back across the North Sea and on her mooring in the blink of an eye, lifts, help, etc. etc. would be proffered on all sides and so on.

But none of that avoids the likelihood of racking up a fairly hefty bill. And the bottom line is that a bill of as little, for a given value of "little", as £4k or £5k would almost certainly force the sale of "Erbas" to cover it.

So a quick scout around turned up several one off and annual travel insurance policies for the sailing man, and woman. For about £50 to £60 I can obtain full cover of every eventuality and virtually ever cost associated with a medical emergency even in the middle of the North Sea. 

It would not only cover any gap between what EHIC covers and the actual charges, it would fully cover the cost of repatriation, flying out replacement crew, and a whole raft of other potential costs too.

That's an awful lot of peace of mind for a just £60!

A Winter Weekend

I needed to do some measuring up on a friends yacht for a new battery control panel I'm making them, Jane had the weekend off and we fancied a couple of nights on board so after Jane caught a few hours post night shift sleep, we headed down the wet and windy A14 / M11 to Essex on Saturday afternoon.

They sometimes include, in a popular saying, an umbrella amongst the most useless things on a boat. I have to disagree as I was pleased to remember there was such an item lurking in the boot of our car (and there are two on the boat for use by crew going ashore). It wasn't to keep the rain off us, it tucked nicely over the bags in the trolley!

All was well aboard Erbas, if rather chilly. It took a good while with the heating going full chat before she properly warmed up but by the time we wandered off up the road to the pub things were reasonably toasty.

Jane enjoyed her minted lamb, my starvation was satisfied with not much more than half my plate of scampi and chips. I find that happens more and more these days, I'm ravenously hungry until I start eating and then I run out of steam half way through the meal. Must be getting old!

We were back aboard pretty early and in bed, fast asleep, not long after! Well, I think Jane was actually asleep before her head hit the pillow, it took me a little longer but not much

Despite the howling wind, the rocking about (due to the howling wind) and the annoying sound of a loose halyard clanging against an alloy mast (there is always one twonk in a marina who doesn't bother frapping his halyards) we slept like logs and woke to a slightly drier but still breezy morning.

A fairly late breakfast of scrambled egg on toast was nicely timed as a text arrived from our friends to say they'd be aboard "Laurin" shortly. This is the boat I'm working on at Burnham so we toddled off down there for a couple of hours of chat and tape measuring.

Whilst there. Pat also very kindly did the countersigning thing on our passport applications and photographs. He even refrained from laughing at the photos, what a gent! It was even kinder as it was his birthday and the family were off for a birthday lunch we were keeping them from. It won't go unrewarded :)

That done, the Laurins headed off for the aforementioned lunch whilst Jane and I went for a wander round the Co-Op for the makings of a meal and a bottle of red. Some beef, a pre-prepared packet of casserole veg and a sachet of stock sorted out the meal and an Oxford Landing Merlot was selected as a suitable accompaniment.

Back aboard Erbas, I sparked up the laptop and fired up BBC i-player to see what there might be worth watching. Unlike the other "on demand" services, the BBC offering allows you to download the programme in advance which is very useful on a slow marina wi-fi as watching streaming video is often an exercise in extreme frustration due to the constant interruptions whilst it buffers the next few minutes of video.

There wasn't much doing in the films section but then I spotted "Wolf Hall", the acclaimed new period drama about Tudor England. We both like period dramas so I set the first episode of that to download.

My mission now was to dig the cockpit tent out of the locker and having done so I was slightly concerned to find it seems to have been suffering a bit of damp. I don't think any harm has been done, it just needs a good scrub come the spring I suspect (as does the sprayhood anyway) but we're going to have to consider clearing out lockers for the winter I think. Storage space is the issue though.

Anyway, it was quick work to get it up and that will allow me to address the issue of the starboard locker lid which is coming apart at the seams. Actually, it's the dummy bit of the lid which extends over the quarter berth so that the lid matches the longer locker on the port side that is coming apart. It needs removing, dismantling, cleaning up, glueing and cramping together again which is a job I can tackle over the coming weeks whilst I'm down working on other boats for money.

Meanwhile, Jane got the beef and stock on the simmer on the stove nice and early then an hour or so later we chucked in the veg. By now, the download was staggering along at about 30kb/s and maybe a third of the way through after getting on for two hours so I sparked up our 3 mi-fi dongle and switched to that. Off it went at a blistering pace and when it had finished I set episode two to download for good measure.

I couldn't help taking the mickey when Jane asked around six if it was too early to open the wine. I pointed out that this was a stupid question as it is never too early to open the wine! The wine was opened. Very nice too. The Australians may be the biggest whingers on the face of the earth (and they have the cheek to call us "whingeing Poms"!) but they do know how to make a decent red whinge, In fact, having come late in life to the grape and it being very much a case of "I don't know much about wine but I know what I like", I do much prefer antipodean wines over anyone elses.

We sorted out the seating and viewing arrangements, dished up the dinner and set the laptop to play Episode One. The meal was delicious and the drama was really rather good.

The only slight criticism we had of "Wolf Hall" was that, unlike, say, "The White Queen" from last year (which we have the DVD boxed set of, it was that good), if you didn't know the historical back story it was rather hard to follow. The characters just came and went without being introduced or explained either visually or in the dialogue.

As a result, we had a break of quarter of an hour between episodes during which I gave Jane a very abbreviated crash course in the history of Tudor England and the reign of Henry VIII from memory!

Then we watched episode two and I'm sure Jane appreciated it all the more thanks to my educational efforts. Well, she said she did anyway. The telly watched, the wine drunk, the hot water bottles hotted up, it was off to bed in the cosy v-berth and a much quieter night.

I was up at a reasonable hour and, leaving Jane to lie in as long as possible, made myself a coffee and set about updating the chart plotter. My subscription to Navionics update service "Freshest Data" having expired late last year I knew this was going to cost me a few quid but what I didn't expect was to have to download an entirely new set of charts.

This, however, proved to be the case. Our existing Navionics Gold charts are no more and now we have to have Navionics+ charts instead. "What's the difference?" you may ask? None at all as far as I can see. Oh Plus comes with "Sonar Charts", a more detailed set of depth contours based on user supplied soundings, but our Raymarine A50 chart plotter can't display them.

The niggling drawback was that this meant a massive download which all told took a couple of hours. To make matters worse, typically of Navionics, it was not possible to download the entire chart pack in one go, it took several bites at the cherry due to their system not allowing a big enough download to get the lot in one hit.

To add insult to injury, once I'd downloaded the charts I then still had to download the latest "freshest data"! I nearly spat the dummy when the chart plotter refused to load the charts.

That meant yet another download to update the chart plotter firmware to the latest version. Happily, after the update, it did read the chart cartridge and we were away and running again.

It remained only to pack up our gear and close down "Erbas" before making a frosty lunchtime run for home. I'll be back down within the fortnight as soon as the parts are in for the jobs I have on the go.

Sun, sea and .... ice????