Dec 2014 Newsletter - End of the season.

December 1, 2014

 



Hello all from Patricia and David at Gulf Harbour Radio.



By now most of you are at your destination and those of you in NZ will be wondering when summer is coming. We are! We now have more time in our day but have yet to get Chameleon up for her clean as the weather man needs to guarantee a dry day. And who wants to deal with gale winds out in the Gulf.

I don’t know what those who went to Australia are up to but we may soon get to see some of those who arrived in NZ. YIT Mike is flying up from Wellington and we’ll all be at the MEET & GREET event put on by the Whangarei Marine Association on Dec 5th at 4.30pm at Afare, 197 Lower Dent St. Tickets are available from the various marinas and it is a good opportunity to see what Whangarei offers visiting cruisers. It also gives us the opportunity to put faces to your voices and be able to show you how we operate. Mike will have a computer screen to show you how your reports come through to Gulf Harbour Radio. It has been a good year to get the system meshed into something that helps us here at the radio end and keeps your friends and families informed of your whereabouts and activities.

We have had some wonderful emails from you and really appreciate hearing that many have learned a lot about weather in the South Pacific. That was David’s objective along with keeping you up to date with what is happening in your area. Some of you even like to hear about the upper levels and the jet stream! We will make a few changes in the format next year and now that we have a lot more boats able to send updates to YIT before the net it should be possible to make the weather net more efficient. It sounds like David’s part needs to be a bit earlier as propagation gets poor later on. We will have to vary the time as the season progresses. If you have any ideas for changes or improvement then let us know, and thanks to those who have already made suggestions.

Our frequencies will be different next year as we have applied for a change due to the Asian interference we experienced on 8116. We need two frequencies as radar sometimes interferes. Check the web site prior to leaving next year. We will start the net on May 1st. We really appreciated the relay help we got from many of you this year when propagation was poor. Hopefully many radio installations will be given a good going over this summer to improve your TX. Don’t leave it to the last minute as this is both an art and a science! The more copper ground plane the better!

As I write this there are still boats on passage and although we have finished our weather net we have got their positions from YIT or the Ham net on 14315 at 2100UTC. Those of you wanting to keep your brain active in NZ may want to think about getting your ham license while you are here. It is a multiple guess exam and details are available on www.nzart.org.nz. Click on Exam, then on the left ‘Exam Files’ and go from there. You can download the full question bank – with answers – and get your memory to work! There are examiners around the country who will be happy to sit you down and test you. The amateur radio licence is handy to have if you are going west as there are not too many nets to get info from if you need it. Also a ham license enables you to use the free winlink email system. There is a club just north of Auckland that sometimes runs weekend courses that end in the exam but it does help if you have done a bit of pre study.



Important: Sadly you now need to be a resident of NZ to be able to get a NZ amateur radio license.



The SSCA are organising a U.S. Exam in Whangarei late January so that is good news for US cruisers. There may also be one in 

Opua in April so make contact with the SSCA if you want to make use of that opportunity.



Those of you that are in NZ and near Gulf Harbour may like to put the Gulf Harbour Yacht Club Christmas dinner/dance on your agenda as it is always a fun night with great food, spot prizes and wonderful band. $35pp. December 19th. Book directly by email to admin@ ghyc.co.nz and mention you would like to be at the cruiser table. David is saving up for the turkey as he does not get one in this house for Thanksgiving.

Finally we would like to very sincerely thank those who have made a financial contribution to YIT/Gulf Harbour Radio. We really appreciate your acknowledgement of the significant costs involved in running the station and the web site and while our time is voluntary we have to pay for the server and station licence and weather products etc. These costs amount to around $1500/y so your support is much appreciated and enables us to continue the service.

We look forward to meeting some of you over summer and hope that your time in NZ or Aus is full of fun and not too much boat work. See the country by land or sea and enjoy yourselves. Take care and we will talk to you again next year.

Patricia and David



Ahoy there YITsters, Dani and Mike here from SV Mirabilis.

The YIT community has really grown over the year and as of last count we now have 182 yachts registered. This is great news for all of us, as the website and services it can provide benefit from user added content. Many of you will have received weather submitted by other yachts around you while on passage, and some may even have been able to find a nearby walk or dive site to explore using the Get functions.

This site information component of YIT is so far still very much in the development stage. To help those of you who have just arrived or are shortly due to arrive back in New Zealand, we have added a bunch of anchorages around the Bay of Islands and a little along the coast either side. You will also see a few walks and dive sites added in around the place. For the divers among you who are intending to explore a bit further afield, we have added a number of sites along the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula and Bay of Plenty. The water may be a bit cooler here but the diving around New Zealand shouldn't be missed and this should help guide you to some of the choicest spots. If you need to refresh your memory on how to request information on nearby sites, check the help section of the website or the help file you received when you first started with YIT.

All this site information will only be as good as we collectively make it as a cruising community. We have designed it based on the wiki concept, so you can add new sites yourself, add more info or update any existing sites with information you think will be of interest or use to other cruisers. You can do this retrospectively also with any sites from your trip you think others might be interested in knowing about. Just login to the site and start adding or even editing away on any location page.

What's New in YIT or coming soon?

Many of you have been using YIT through the email system for a while now, and while we have done our best to make it as user friendly as possible, it can be a bit tricky to remember the correct formats to send in information or make requests. To make things a whole lot easier, we have been beavering away developing YIT's very own app which you will soon be able to download and then readily launch from your desktop, and later ipad or tablet, whenever you want to connect with YIT. For those who are going to the Whangarei meet and greet on Friday 5 December please come say g'day and have a play. Any feedback on the app will be very welcome and will help ensure everything is running as smoothly as possible before next year's cruising season.

Another new function coming soon to YIT will include the ability to fly over your trip using Google Earth embedded within YIT so you can relive your adventure with your friends and family. If you have other suggestions for additions or improvements to YIT, feel free to drop us a line as always, at mike@yit.co.nz.