Location: 32.19 N, 70.34 W, somewhere in the North Atlantic, three days out of Beaufort, North Carolina. “Done.” Jeremy put the iPad face down on the towel under the dodger. “We’ll have a new set of GRIBs in a few minutes. And Chris’ weather should be in the next time we check too. Did Julian text back yet?”
Primary source weather, interpreted weather, and a quick text-based conversation with our son midocean? Mind blown.
Midocean communications (of all sorts) via a tablet is a new thing for us. When we first left to go cruising on our Bristol Channel Cutter, Calypso, in 1994, weather reports were something you hopefully caught by listening to shortwave SSB radio broadcasts. The garbled monotone of the robotic November Mike November (the National Weather Service’s voice forecasts) required some degree of competence and interpretation to make sure you were understanding it correctly. You could also listen to Herb Hilgenberg (aka Southbound II) who broadcasted from Bermuda to vessels on passage.
Adding an SSB transceiver and
