Friendly people over here
Door: Petra
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Fred Bouter en Hans de Jong
06 Juni 2012 | Portugal, Vila do Porto
Dagsluiting 6 juni 2012
This time’ day closing will be in English. Because special guest Jor Camara will be copied in on the original.’
One of the previous issues of this bulletin mentioned the sad loss of the Blokker egg timer, which I had acquired from the Blokker Gouda branch at € 4.95. I had explained the importance of this tool. It allows us to take a nap every now and then, but when set to a certain value will ring, thus waking up the weary officer of the watch. The time frame within which the clock will ring is 15 minutes.
This is a well calculated value based on the following. If we visually check our surrounding sea area every 15 minutes at an average visual range of 10 nautical miles and do not see any traffic, head on courses of our yacht and a freightship at a total closing speed of 24 knots will bring the two 6 nautical miles closer to each other within and will be picked up when the watchman does his next visual scan. There is an extra safety margin of 4 nautical miles that takes care of higher speeds or a lower meteorological visual range or the fact that the running lights of the on comer do not range further than 5 nautical miles. However in this latter case an accident will happen anyway.
The 15 minutes may be varied by the watch officer at his discretion to a lower value never to a higher.
So we did have the egg timer to measure the next 15 minutes and ring waking up the watch officer dozes of during the night or day and remind him of the fact that he is to make his next visual scan. Not having the alarm would mean the watch officer would not be allowed to doze of because nothing would wake him and the yacht would be sailing along like a blind object.
Now it takes two to tango, it is not only the yacht that must take precautions, the big ship on its part may use its radar which allows for radar reflections from the yachts radar reflector to be picked up. This will work if the ship’s radar has been switched on, which is not always the case.
Secondly the To Windward shows her own identification light which is visible in a sea area with a radius of 3 nautical miles.
The awake cycle of the watch officer has been designed based on the following philosophy as a last resort safety measure when all else fails or is not working and To Windward by herself would have to take measures to prevent an accident.
Radar on the big ship is not on or the weather is so bad that the radar echo from the To Windward disappears in radar echoes caused by reflection from waves or rain
Visual Watch keeping on the big ship fails to detect To Windward
Some statistics:
Between Bermuda and Santa Maria we have sighted about 10 ships.
None were head on or in any other way dangerous to us. One ore carrier steered towards us from the stern. After he had had a good look and we had had a nice chat via the VHF radio on the weather and on the economic situation which compelled him to go slow to conserve fuel they steered away
and continued their way. And still we cannot do without an alarm clock as we cannot accept a duty officer who sleeps all through the night.
So first thing we did was try and buy a new one on the day that we arrived at Santa Maria. No luck yesterday 5 June, ah well try another day. This try today was not a lucky shot either until I had walked all the way from the centre of Vila do Porto to the Fire Brigades facilities to give it a try at the two neighbouring shops.
This is where Jor comes in, at first because of his proficiency in English and later on when he passed me in his car. I was on my way back into town, disappointed again. Jor stopped and asked if I had found what I looked for. When I told him no. he said hop in the car and we will do a search around. We visited a fair number of shops but the results were all nil. After a big modern radio shop Jor decided to visit one more shop to ask but had already set his sight nas a last resort to go and visit the Chinese shop. The shop before the Chinese gave us hope that an egg timer could be found on the island since the secretary had bought hers from the Chinese shop in the form of a strawberry. We left her with the promise that if the Chinese could not deliver we could buy her strawberry.
China delivered and the two crewmembers on board of To Windward feel so much safer during the rest of their trip further into Portugal.
Ada and Akko on their trip around the world called into Santa Maria as well and told us just the other day that the island is so pretty and its inhabitants so friendly that they more or less congratulated us on our arrival there.
Apart from a strange money exchange issue at the ferry terminal we will speak highly of Santa Maria and its inhabitants and will send all travellers in need of help to Jor Camara at the airport where this station manager resides and in passing hands out little green ribbons promoting GreenSpirit Azores.
In the last minute of our encounter we found out about each other’s background nin the aeronautical industry.
PS. While I was racing around with Jor, Hans had found out about the Chinese shop as well. He had decided that he would not buy until we had seen each other again.
This time’ day closing will be in English. Because special guest Jor Camara will be copied in on the original.’
One of the previous issues of this bulletin mentioned the sad loss of the Blokker egg timer, which I had acquired from the Blokker Gouda branch at € 4.95. I had explained the importance of this tool. It allows us to take a nap every now and then, but when set to a certain value will ring, thus waking up the weary officer of the watch. The time frame within which the clock will ring is 15 minutes.
This is a well calculated value based on the following. If we visually check our surrounding sea area every 15 minutes at an average visual range of 10 nautical miles and do not see any traffic, head on courses of our yacht and a freightship at a total closing speed of 24 knots will bring the two 6 nautical miles closer to each other within and will be picked up when the watchman does his next visual scan. There is an extra safety margin of 4 nautical miles that takes care of higher speeds or a lower meteorological visual range or the fact that the running lights of the on comer do not range further than 5 nautical miles. However in this latter case an accident will happen anyway.
The 15 minutes may be varied by the watch officer at his discretion to a lower value never to a higher.
So we did have the egg timer to measure the next 15 minutes and ring waking up the watch officer dozes of during the night or day and remind him of the fact that he is to make his next visual scan. Not having the alarm would mean the watch officer would not be allowed to doze of because nothing would wake him and the yacht would be sailing along like a blind object.
Now it takes two to tango, it is not only the yacht that must take precautions, the big ship on its part may use its radar which allows for radar reflections from the yachts radar reflector to be picked up. This will work if the ship’s radar has been switched on, which is not always the case.
Secondly the To Windward shows her own identification light which is visible in a sea area with a radius of 3 nautical miles.
The awake cycle of the watch officer has been designed based on the following philosophy as a last resort safety measure when all else fails or is not working and To Windward by herself would have to take measures to prevent an accident.
Radar on the big ship is not on or the weather is so bad that the radar echo from the To Windward disappears in radar echoes caused by reflection from waves or rain
Visual Watch keeping on the big ship fails to detect To Windward
Some statistics:
Between Bermuda and Santa Maria we have sighted about 10 ships.
None were head on or in any other way dangerous to us. One ore carrier steered towards us from the stern. After he had had a good look and we had had a nice chat via the VHF radio on the weather and on the economic situation which compelled him to go slow to conserve fuel they steered away
and continued their way. And still we cannot do without an alarm clock as we cannot accept a duty officer who sleeps all through the night.
So first thing we did was try and buy a new one on the day that we arrived at Santa Maria. No luck yesterday 5 June, ah well try another day. This try today was not a lucky shot either until I had walked all the way from the centre of Vila do Porto to the Fire Brigades facilities to give it a try at the two neighbouring shops.
This is where Jor comes in, at first because of his proficiency in English and later on when he passed me in his car. I was on my way back into town, disappointed again. Jor stopped and asked if I had found what I looked for. When I told him no. he said hop in the car and we will do a search around. We visited a fair number of shops but the results were all nil. After a big modern radio shop Jor decided to visit one more shop to ask but had already set his sight nas a last resort to go and visit the Chinese shop. The shop before the Chinese gave us hope that an egg timer could be found on the island since the secretary had bought hers from the Chinese shop in the form of a strawberry. We left her with the promise that if the Chinese could not deliver we could buy her strawberry.
China delivered and the two crewmembers on board of To Windward feel so much safer during the rest of their trip further into Portugal.
Ada and Akko on their trip around the world called into Santa Maria as well and told us just the other day that the island is so pretty and its inhabitants so friendly that they more or less congratulated us on our arrival there.
Apart from a strange money exchange issue at the ferry terminal we will speak highly of Santa Maria and its inhabitants and will send all travellers in need of help to Jor Camara at the airport where this station manager resides and in passing hands out little green ribbons promoting GreenSpirit Azores.
In the last minute of our encounter we found out about each other’s background nin the aeronautical industry.
PS. While I was racing around with Jor, Hans had found out about the Chinese shop as well. He had decided that he would not buy until we had seen each other again.
Reageer op dit reisverslag
Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
