Atlantic Adventure Communications with Crew

This is intended to be the main means of keeping friends/relatives up-to-date with progress and news. We will try to provide and update every couple of days, however the data communications facility is not renowned as very reliable so we may sometimes have problems.

The latest news will always be at the top of the News web page with the date of update.

The crew will be able to send short e-mails to friends/relations at home, but the most frequent updates will be via this website.

Friends/relations can send e-mails to the crew and these can be either open or private e-mails. For open e-mails just put any messages in the main body of the e-mail. For private e-mails state in the body of the e-mail who the message is for and then attach the private messages. We will try to pick up messages once per day, but this may not always be possible or convenient. Failure to make contact for a day or two does not imply there is a problem, just that we have had other priorities, e.g. conserving battery power, racing, sunbathing etc.

All messages should be kept to the minimum text and any pictures and graphics should be avoided. The satellite link has a data transfer rate of about one tenth of the normal home modem so downloading takes a long time and is very expensive.

Once the boat is more than a mile or two from land the main voice communications will be by Satellite phone. If friends or relatives need to speak to one of the crew members they should send an e-mail and request that the crew member phones them, giving an approximate time. Conserving battery power will be an essential element of the trip, so the phone will not normally be left on to receive messages.

Satellite phone calls are expensive so calls are expected to be short and infrequent.

The World Cruising Club, who run the ARC have a website which records the positions of all the boats doing the ARC crossing. During the Arc crossing in November/December you can follow our progress at this site (www.worldcruising.com).