The radio is indeed a valuable piece of equipment not only to be able to call people but because it has AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is a real safety boost as it gives us the heads up when another ship is in the area all built in.

The beauty of this and other onboard systems is with the right hardware and a little knowhow you can get a lot of information to display on different pieces of kit, i.e. a laptop, tablet or even your phone so the plan was to use a multiplexer (something that collates and pushes out this info!!) that was also in “The Box” to allow us the flexibility and ease of use of all the information we could make run through it before we leave!! To be honest none of it is totally needed but it will make life much easier and potentially less stressful on the journey but as I have found this very simple task has now taken me the best part of two days only to find that it isn’t me being totally stupid for not getting things to work but it is me being totally stupid for not checking to make sure we have GPS signal running to the plotter that I’m connecting the radio to – needless to say without the GPS signal we don’t have either AIS or more importantly we don’t have the primary navigation system on the boat and although we have backups coming out the “ying yang” it wasn’t how I wanted to start the trip! Let’s hope the yard can find a solution….