Skippers Log, 6/25/10 Second Verse

I woke up today determined to be able to talk on the SSB. I don�'t know exactly why today was the day, it just was. I have been able to hear everyone during each roll call, they just couldn�'t hear me. So I set out in a systematic way to determine the problem. Long story short, I found it! Believe it or not, it was with the tuner! When I bypassed the tuner and connected the antenna lead from the transmitter directly to the antenna, people can hear me! I was so shocked they answered back, I almost fell over. �"This is Second Verse; did you just say you can hear me?�" Yes! I made some more modifications and I plan to participate in the 2100 comm. check tonight. Let�'s keep our fingers crossed it still works.

In terms of weather and my position, this is not so good. I have cut my losses and jibed the boat to 170 degrees true. This will basically take me just due west of where my original A buoy was, crossing of the 130 W Longitude. It was hard to make this decision, but I looked at the latest GRIB files for the next few days, and it looks like the best call. It basically makes the last two days superfluous for me in terms of the race, but I will chalk it up to a steep learning curve and lessoned learned. As we say in science, there is no failed experiment, just more data.

I�'m may be late for the party, but when I get there, it's on!

Second Verse, signing off.