Fatto!

There are always thousands and one thing to be done at the start of a new sailing Season. I just finished the big jobs and keep smaller jobs when returning from Madeira. Of course pleasant weather helps but there was some time pressure as my wife arrives beginning of April in Madeira. Just this morning I installed one additional solar panel, the last job on the list before I spend some days hiking with my wife in Madeira over the Easter holidays. Now I enjoy a sunny (about 25 degree C) day on the beach in Porto Santo and will sail to Funchal tomorrow.

By the way - you may have noticed that a different link when hitting 'Current Position' is opening now. It is now opening the ham radio position reporting map. As I have installed ham radio on T-Fish, I can email and send position reports via HF Radio even when out of the cellular network. Cool! Isn't it? (p.s. I changed it back to the AIS mirrowing system used by VesselFinder and similar apps as the APRS Sytem was not updating my position although it was sent and the receipt confirmed). 

Still alive!

A couple of weeks ago, a Spanish friend who follows my blog contacted me asking if I am still alive.

Yes - I am! 

Indeed, he is right, I was not very active in blogging recently. Instead, I enjoyed our home and the beautiful Bavarian landscape, also a bit of skiing (not too much due to lack of snow), a lot of cooking and of course planning this year's  cruises. 

I also attended the BOOT fair in Duesseldorf, the biggest boat exhibition worldwide and took advantage being in the vicinity of Cologne to visit my brother, his family and a friend whom I met in Sardinia last year. I bought some new equipment at the fair, a new dinghy, and a Garmin InReach, allowing me texting and being tracked via satellite when I am out of reach of the cellular network. This, together with additional equipment (antifouling, an additional solar panel, new hinges for the skylights, etc, etc) had to be shipped to Porto Santo, Madeira, Portugal which seems to be easy as it is still Europe but in fact proved to be very difficult and costly. As soon as you leave European main land, shipping becomes complex and cumbersome. In fact one parcel did not make it and was sent back which is given me some headaches now. Some additional challenges to sort out.....

Besides this, I also re-discovered landscape photography. Further, I re-activated my ham radio license, DF2RQ, which I plan to use on the boat under DF2RQ/mm (/mm stands or maritime mobile) (this will not only allow me to communicate with fellow sailors on SSB but also to send and receive emails off grid via HF. I did some test in the last weeks with a simple wire antenna. Just with only 10 Watts output, I was able to contact some DX (far distance) station including some rare ones / DXpeditions (Burundi, Western Sahara, Saint Brandon, Angola, Nepal, Trinidad, Belize, ...). Also my morse skills are becoming better again (not yet as fast as I used to be as a teenager but it is coming back).

Next week I will fly back to T-Fish to prepare her for the new season. 

And here some pics from the last months: