L'Eau Commotion Westabout

Day 48 8pm Thursday 25th July 2019 ( UTC +5 )
Mind you this was not totally unexpected as the Onwa Plotter/ AIS had failed just as I was leaving, by plane, to go to a rowing regatta in Perth. In a bit of a panic I rang Rod Smith of C H Smith Marine in Melbourne as they had an Icom MA 500 TR stand-alone unit on their website. Though not in stock Rod promised he could get it to Brisbane within the week which was duly accomplished. Though he highly recommended a Brooks & Gatehouse black box to connect to my Lowrance HDS7m chart plotter I was a little reluctant to go down that path as though they use an industry standard protocol the thought of crossed wires in the hook up had me really nervous; besides I had this same Icom unit on Katherine Ann which was very effective and worked well till I blew it up with AC over voltage from a runaway windmill in gale force winds near the Falklands. When I got back from Perth I switched on the Onwa and it was perfect. I carefully checked out the package from Rod and as the connections were compatible I repacked and stowed it away. Till today. What would normally be quite a simple job was complicated by the 30 knot + gusts that often had water up to the windows even though we were under double reefed main and storm jib,but the system checked out A1. The Echomax has not shown any radar activity so we are still to find out if it does the job. In The meantime we have been galloping along with quite a few more days of Sou'Easters round the 25 knot mark on the cards.