Camano Island, Washington State
Yesterday I finally got to meet Steve Roberts, my co-driver (OK, it’s his truck) for the next two months while we go to retrieve Sedna (my Atlantic rowing boat) from Miami and bring her back to the West Coast.
Steve and I have been corresponding for the last 6 weeks. He tells me that the volume of our emails now exceeds 1 MB of data. That’s the kind of thing that Steve notices.
He was showing me around his workshop this morning – the centre space is dominated by his amphibious pedal/sail trimaran Microship. The rest of the workshop is occupied by cluttered workbenches, cast-off computers, circuit boards, wheels, boxes, books, bric-a-brac, and a new marine toilet awaiting installation.
Steve proudly showed me his assorted creations, particularly the communications gadgetry. I understood most of it, once I’d screened out the acronyms and jargony bits. From what I could gather, there is some pretty cool comms stuff here that would make contact possible from any point on the planet.
The hope is that while Steve is building the comms infrastructure for his new, big, ocean-going trimaran Nomadness (NOT pedal-powered) we will build a duplicate set of comms equipment for me, thus hopefully avoiding the communications blackout I suffered after my satellite phone packed up a month from Antigua.
Tomorrow we hit the road for Miami. As a taster of Steve’s geeky genius, he has fitted out NEWT (New Expensive White Truck) with a tracking device so you can follow our progress in real-time as we meander our way across the US.