Pre Season newsletter for Gulf Harbour Radio and yit.co.nz
By now all our cruising boats are no doubt prepped and ready to roll. We hope this has included a good check of your radio! We have enjoyed a wonderful summer on Chameleon but I am writing this in a good SW gale at Kawau Island so I know winter is fast approaching. Down in Wellington YIT Dani and Mike have Mirabilis on the hard and are struggling with weather that is not helpful for getting boat work done so we hope you were ahead of this cold change..
Gulf Harbour Radio is tuned up and ready to switch on May 1st.
Much evaluation of the alternate frequencies offered to us has resulted in our staying with 8752kHz as the main frequency with the alternative frequencies being 8779 and 8297. There are others which maybe used if the season propagation changes!
Please program these as if the dreaded radar strikes you will not be able to hear where you should move to. At the start of the season we will begin as usual at 1915UTC which is 7.15am NZST, with David’s weather roundup at 1930UTC. We are on air Monday through Saturday. Later in the season we will move the sked times as some cruisers have reported hearing difficulty at these times. If you have problems please tell us on air or email us at weather@ghradio.co.nz. Please note that we will be away traveling in Asia for all of August and back on air September 7th.
We will be using your reports on www.yit.co.nz to find out where boats are and focus the weather forecasts accordingly. We particularly appreciate those that get up early and post these before we start the net as that enables a good check on the accuracy of the wx models David uses. Those boats with no on board email can call in their position but make sure your register on YIT BEFORE you leave. The minimum information we need is boat name and permanent crew names, boat type and length, boat registration and home port, and the land email for both yourselves and your emergency contact. You can tell those following your progress on YIT that Patricia usually has updated your boat info by 2000UTC (8am NZST). I should also mention that I can phone any landline number to pass a message so it would be good to have these numbers on your boat page as sometimes it is hard to hear.
Our 8MHz frequency is difficult for boats still in NZ but we are available by email. David has updated his paper covering the factors to consider for the passage from NZ. On www.yit.co.nz click on ‘weather’ and select the NZ to the Islands option. The late season TCs have given cause for pause. If you are going to ask questions either before you go or while planning inter island passages please make sure you have your cruise speed and ETA ready as it is too time consuming for us to check each of your YIT pages. Before you leave NZ wait until after 5pm so that he has the latest model runs. It gets busy so please respect that he will reply to GHR/YIT supporters first. Please also tell him if you are using a professional router as that means he does not have to spend so much time on a reply.
We are not on the radio on Sundays but you have the BobGram on Sunday night. Bob McDavitt, now retired from NZ MetService, produces a full roundup of South Pacific weather via email each Sunday so be sure to subscribe to this. Contact bob@metbob.com. Those with the fantastic phone system in Fiji will be able to get the full graphics version. The links are fantastic for those with a more in depth wx interest.
Congratulations to those that have recently passed their ham license. Hopefully there will be another opportunity for upgrading or obtaining this next season. Make sure you have downloaded the latest version of the WL2K stations as two of the good ones for our region have had some changes. VK2SYD has had a frequency change and ZL2ABN is back on air this year. Both are good stations. Also remember Tony’s Maritime net on 14315 at 2100UTC as there are relay stations in both NZ and Australia which is useful if I have not been able to hear you in the morning or if you want to make contact with another boat.
By the time you read this the Sea Mercy boats will have arrived in Vanuatu. The lead boat is Chez Nous. They have come from Fiji and have had to deal with significant bureaucracy but great that all is underway with help to the more remote outer islands. We are thrilled to hear that some boats from here are going direct to Vanuatu as they will bring a welcome diversion to the clean up process. No doubt they have contributions of collected items and anything related to school, kitchen, garden and fishing will be welcomed. Be sure to catch one of the festivals as they bring needed income to the villages. Our favourite is the Back to My Roots festival in N Ambrym which this year is August 20-22. More information is on The Rocket Guide web site, cruising-vanuatu.com. The digital Rocket Guides to Vanuatu and New Caledonia are awesome so make sure you have these before you leave.
We strongly advise you to check in with NZ Maritime Radio when on passage. Propagation is usually better early evening so that is when we called but they are there 24/7. Call on any of the emergency frequencies, 4125, 6215, 8291, 12290 and 16420- and they will move you to a working frequency for your report. They have great ears and are your source of any help if needed whether it be medical or otherwise and they have the RCC right next door through the wall. Email your boats details and intentions before you leave. maritime@kordia.co.nz
We have enjoyed meeting many of you over this wonderful summer. It has been great to put faces to voices and as I write this, watching the rain gusts sweep down Bon Accord Harbour it is indeed time to think about escaping for the winter. The crew of Chameleon and Mirabilis will enjoy hearing and reading about tropical life in the Islands and we wish you a wonderful and safe season.
Patricia and David, sv Chameleon, weather@ghradio.co.nz
Mike and Dani, sv Mirabilis, mike@yit.co.nz
Gulf Harbour Radio ZMH286, www.yit.co.nz
Examples of emails to YIT.
Position Report
email send@yit.co.nz
subject: YACHTNAME (make sure you use the one you registered with)
[password] MYPASSWD
[position] 21 34S 175 35E
[speed] 5knts (optional)
[heading] 270T (optional)
[status] ticking along, smooth calm seas, gaining on silverbreeze should hopefully
catch up for a bbq tonight...yeah right!
[weather] 5knts SE, slight seas, no clouds, 1022 baro
Weather request. You can select from (do not include the text in the round brackets, this is descriptive only)
email:get@yit.co.nz
subj: no subject
[weather]
tonga: (gets tonga marine)
fiji: (gets fiji marine) ***broken but I will fix this tuesday 21/04/2015
fiji-towns: (gets fiji-towns) ***broken but I will fix this tuesday 21/04/2015
newcal: (translates into english automatically)
norfolk:
pacific: (gets pacific high seas from the NZ metservice)
niue:
kiribati:
nauru:
tuvalu:
cookis:
swpacific: (from Fiji metservice) ***broken but I will fix this tuesday 21/04/2015
subtropic: (from NZ metservice)
To subscribe, add a number afterwards ie tonga: 10 and for twice a day tonga: 10/2 eg. Tonga for ten days twice a day.
[weather]
:tonga 10/2
P.S
Remember if you are not using the YIT App on your desktop you should be. It makes using YIT ten times easier than email when on some sort of internet connection, it even resizes photos before sending!! When you are not on an internet connection and only on SSB or Sat it will generate your YIT email syntax for you so you can just paste it into your email.