{"id":2828,"date":"2024-06-30T16:30:49","date_gmt":"2024-06-30T16:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=2828"},"modified":"2024-06-30T18:45:27","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T18:45:27","slug":"beryl-and-elon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/beryl-and-elon\/","title":{"rendered":"Beryl and Elon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great Escape from Grenada to Trinidad<\/p>\n

Three days ago I left Dominica because there was a tropical disturbance 1,500 miles away. Now I’m approaching Trinidad where the weather forecast for tomorrow is \u201ca gentle breeze\u201d.<\/p>\n

For the Grenadines \u2013 just 100 miles to the north \u2013 it is: \u201cHurricane Beryl will develop into a Major Category 3 Hurricane with life-threatening winds of 150km\/hr and higher gusts. Major storm surge likely\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh look, in the time it\u2019s taken me to write that, Beryl has graduated to \u201cExtremely dangerous Category 4 Hurricane\u201d with wind speeds of 209-251 km\/hr.<\/p>\n

Jogging along against the Equatorial current so that I\u2019m really only making two knots towards my destination, I know all this stuff because I have Starlink.<\/p>\n

Starlink, if you\u2019re not familiar with it, is the satellite communications system that is the practical by-product of Elon Musk firing off all those rockets.<\/p>\n

When I wrote The Voyage books (#1 & #2), part of the charm was supposed to be \u201cNo contact with the shore, no high-frequency radio or satphone. No weather forecasts, no texts from loved ones. No news\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I had books on my Kindle, films downloaded onto Amazon Prime. I told the family when to expect me (but not to raise the alarm if I was late). As for weather forecasts: My view was always to get a good forecast before you leave and once you\u2019re out there, you get the weather you get\u2026<\/p>\n

And this was fine before weather apps and hurricane trackers and Mr Weatherman on YouTube. But an iPhone needs the internet. Until now, this meant a SIM card \u2013 and in the Caribbean, a different SIM card for every island\u2026 and even when you\u2019ve got one, it\u2019s not going to work in the remote anchorages, so you end up in a beach bar trying to make WhatsApp calls in competition with wall-to-wall reggae.<\/p>\n

Yet, for the same price (cheaper in many cases) you can get Starlink\u2019s unlimited high-speed internet – blisteringly high-speed, actually. We\u2019re talking 172mbps – and all you need is a stylish white box full of clever electronics and a dish the size of an airline tray table.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Starlink dish (top right), with the solar panel and wind charger.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Chiefy in his perch on top of the Starlink router.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Starlink has been a revelation: As long as I have battery power, I can leave it switched on and people can call me whenever they like \u2013 even my son Owen at six o\u2019clock in the morning because he\u2019s buying his first house and forgot about the time difference. I can decide, on a whim, that Hollywood<\/u><\/em> on Netflix is brilliant and download the whole series.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, once away from shore, I do have to opt for the pay-as-you-go tariff \u2013 but even that is worth it for my daily fix of The News Agents podcast (so I can sit with my face in my hands, not daring to peek between my fingers in case Joe Biden\u2019s geriatric mumbling turns out to be real…)<\/p>\n

And I can follow Beryl in real time \u2013 from her tiny beginnings as a \u201ctropical disturbance\u201d to her blossoming into a genuine life-threatening Category 4 force of nature. If I\u2019d known she was going to end up like this, I\u2019d have been a lot more frightened in the first place \u2013 but I\u2019m a hurricane virgin. The one thing I did know was \u201cGo South\u201d and \u201cGo Now\u201d.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, I had a long conversation with an old hurricane hand at last autumn\u2019s Ocean Cruising Club party in Gran Canaria. \u201cHurricane preparation\u201d he explained, is a last resort when you\u2019ve left it too late. Even then: \u201cDon\u2019t just take off every scrap of canvas, everything on deck, the boom, anything you can unscrew. Take down your halyards. Do you know how much windage there is in a halyard? Now count how many you\u2019ve got…\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet on Facebook, someone was asking whether he should leave the canvas doors of his cockpit enclosure open for the wind to blow through\u2026<\/p>\n

Someone else was saying she wanted to get clear but her partner wouldn\u2019t leave because they\u2019d paid for a month\u2019s mooring\u2026<\/p>\n

If you flick back a few posts to \u201dBarbuda\u201d you can see what Hurricane Irma did to a brand-new beach hotel. Imagine what it\u2019s going to do to the guy in Grenada Yacht Club Marina who asked if he should put out an anchor or extra lines to the dock\u2026<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the AIS screen shows a stream of yachts heading for Trinidad\u2019s Boca de Manos. North Coast Radio checks us in \u2013 breaking into my reverie with crackling Channel 16 updates. I\u2019ll wait until I\u2019m ten miles off. Yes, I filed my Float Plan online but no, I\u2019ll need to dig out the printer for the Maritime Declaration of Health (Has anyone died on board otherwise than as the result of an accident?)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Great Escape from Grenada to Trinidad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Great Escape from Grenada to Trinidad Three days ago I left Dominica because there was a tropical disturbance 1,500 miles away. Now I’m approaching Trinidad where the weather forecast for tomorrow is \u201ca gentle breeze\u201d. For the Grenadines \u2013 just 100 miles to the north \u2013 it is: \u201cHurricane Beryl will develop into a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2828"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2836,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions\/2836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}