| Author | Message | ||
     Ted Lavino Senior Member Username: Tlavino Post Number: 363 Registered: 01-2004 |
Greetings folks, an excerpt from the Seven Seas Cruising Association’s February, 2006 bulletin regarding YOTREPS, a vessel and weather reporting service that can be invaluable to cruisers in all parts of the globe. I participated in this service during my delivery from HI to San Francisco via the Pacific Seafarer's Net (www.pacsea.org) and it is a great resource for anyone on a passage or those who would like to find out what its like out there... This is a great excuse to get that Amateur Service General class license, particularly now that the FCC is eliminating the telegraphy (Morse code) requirement (see my blurb re: Gordon West's weekend class..). Authoritative info can be found at www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/index.php Dear SSCA, For anyone unaccustomed to isolation, a small yacht on a long ocean passage can be a very lonely place. Following the dictates of winds and currents that often take you away from commercial shipping routes, sightings of other vessels are uncertain and as the days, weeks and the miles roll by, it can be easy to imagine that you’re the only human life on the planet. In recent times, radio and e-mail have done much to shatter the illusion, though the stark realities of life at sea and the importance of traditional seamanship are as important as ever. For many years, part of the daily routine of an ocean passage has been the regular radio net contact with a shore side station to report on progress. As often as not, these stations had only occasional contact with others doing a similar job and except in an emergency were unable to make much use of the data they collected. Now that the use of web services have become a reality for boats at sea, it has become possible to automate the process of sending and processing reports, to feed information back to boats, and to utilize collected data in ways that were not previously possible. The YOTREPS reporting scheme has been in existence for about five years and is a free scheme that processes passage reports from boats anywhere in the world. Some are collected by shore side radio net controllers who record the details in a specially formatted e-mail. Others are e-mailed directly from the boats themselves using either high frequency radio or satellite systems but, whatever the route, all are forwarded to the YOTREPS server for processing. On arrival, and after passing a series of validity checks, they are stored in a web database and copies are passed to participating weather forecast agencies and search and rescue coordinators. An aid to weather forecasters: Many of the regular sail cruising routes pass through parts of the world that are seldom visited by other vessels. Southern ocean routes in the Atlantic and Pacific are obvious examples; so too are many of the classic trade wind routes, often abandoned by commercial vessels in favor of more direct, fuel-economic alternatives. They cross some of the most remote and thinly populated regions of the world where official weather reporting stations are few and far between. Although forecasters rely heavily upon satellite systems to help fill the data gap, reports of actual weather conditions can provide a valuable reality check on atmospheric model predictions. Such models are generally able to reliably predict the existence of a particular weather system, but its exact speed of progress may be less certain. Small craft are very much in tune with wind conditions and a report of a sudden change in direction or strength, or of a sudden change in barometric pressure may be sufficient information to pin down the position of a specific synoptic feature. A resource for search and rescue coordinators: For the same reason that there are few reporting stations on many cruising routes, search and rescue resources are often at their most stretched. In recent years, particularly with the advent of accurate electronic position location, there have been many examples where the only chance of rescue for a small boat in distress has come from another small craft. Of the many well-documented examples, one of the first was in February 1983 and involved the Southern Ocean rescue of Jaques de Roux by fellow single-handed BOC race competitor Richard Broadhead. With no other vessels in the area, Broadhead undertook a 300 mile beat to windward to locate and recover de Roux just a few hours before his vessel sank. By accessing YOTREPS vessel reports, search and rescue coordinators are able to construct a plot of positions of reporting boats in a particular area. By plotting the boat’s past progress and wind conditions, a picture can be constructed of their abilities to render assistance. Even if reporting boats themselves do not encounter difficulties, only if their capabilities are known, can they be coordinated in the assistance of others. YOTREPS vessel reports on the web: In addition to distributing incoming reports, the YOTREPS web server also stores them in a long-term database, where a number of web pages can be used to access particular details. By knowing the identifier that a particular boat is attaching to their reports, shore side friends and family can follow the progress of that individual vessel as in the following example for the 44’ aluminum boat MARACUJA. Fig. 1 MARACUJA sails north from New Zealand through Fiji. Red vectors indicate course and speed, blue indicates wind direction and speed. Another feature of the web site is its passage weather analysis page. By clicking on a cruising route visitors can see an analysis of wind conditions experienced by boats during a chosen month. The significance of this type of result is of course very much dependent upon the sample size. In the past, most reports have come from boats in the South Pacific which at present is the only ocean covered in the analysis section. However, this is now changing and with more boats reporting from other regions it should shortly be possible to provide analyses for other areas. The YOTREPS e-mail list server: YOTREPS reporting is not just a one way process but allows participants to access a range of weather and other bulletins. In appreciation for the reports, forecasters in some areas provide special forecasts for the boats in their coverage area. In New Zealand for example, Bob McDavitt of New Zealand Metservice provides a weekly ‘Weathergram’ giving long-term routing prospects for boats in the South Pacific. Fiji forecasters contribute their fleet code analysis of the area and in Tahiti, France Meteo provides a synopsis and forecasts for all French Polynesian sea areas. Boats sailing the more popular routes often find it useful to know the positions, speeds and weather conditions of others sharing the same passage. Weather conditions experienced by others a few hundred miles along the track can often be a useful indicator of weather that will be encountered later. With this in mind, YOTR.EPS can provide a summary of all reports received during the past 24 hours in a format that can be loaded into a free program —the YOTREPS Reporter — to give an immediate plot of their course, speed and wind vectors. Compared with the regular phone line e-mail that most people are familiar with, marine e-mail systems often run at a small fraction of the speed and cost a good deal more to run. As a result, reception of the big messages that land based users accept as the norm can be a serious problem; at best, taking a long time to receive and at worst, locking the system and preventing all further correspondence. For these reasons, the YOTREPS List Server has been purpose built to make the most efficient use of low bandwidth mail systems. All bulletins passed are in plain text, stripped of unnecessary headers, formatting, images and html tags. In this way, many messages are reduced to less than 50% of their original capacity without loss of intelligibility. Fig 3. The mechanics of submitting reports: A typical YOTREPS passage report with position and weather observations appears as follows: Although lines 3 to 6 are not essential to ensure success, it’s essential that other parts of the format be adhered to exactly. On reception, reports are subjected to a number of credibility checks and those not making the grade are rejected. In principle, one could use a simple text editor to prepare reports, but a far easier way is to use the report form that’s included within the YOTREPS Reporter. In addition to validity checking, this assembles reports in the correct style ready for dispatch. In New Zealand for example, Bob McDavitt of New Zealand Metservice provides a weekly ‘Weathergram’ giving long-term routing prospects for boats in the South Pacific. Fiji forecasters contribute their fleet code analysis of the area and in Tahiti, France Meteo provides a synopsis and forecasts for all French Polynesian sea areas. Boats sailing the more popular routes ften find it useful to know the positions, peeds and weather conditions of others tharing the same passage. Weather condiions experienced by others a few hundred niles along the track can often be a useful ndicator of weather that will be encounter later. With this in mind, YOTREPS can provide a summary of all reports received during the past 24 hours in a format that can be loaded into a free program — the YOTREPS Reporter — to give an immediate plot of their course, speed and wind vectors. Those using HF radio and Sailmail, Bushmail or WinLink systems, should also find YOTREPS reporting easy as the e-mail software they are provided with includes its own report form. Submitting a report is just a question of filling out the boxes, and hitting the ‘Send now’ button, or you could use your instrumentation to do it all automatically. YOTREPS reporting is also possible for boats without e-mail. In past years, the bulk of reports were collected by radio nets, such as the Pacific Seafarers’ Net. This particular net covers mainly the Pacific but by using international relays it has tracked several circumnavigators, including that of David Clark who, at the age of 76, claims to be the oldest. The Pacific Seafarers’ Net is run by and for Radio Amateurs and performs an invaluable service for the cruising community. It operates daily at 0325UTC on 14.313MHz. Procedures for checking in are simple; the net uses a roll call list to call boats in turn who then read out their report details. At the end of the session, a net operator formats and forwards all reports in a single block e-mail. Forthcoming developments: Earlier last this year (2005), work with the US National Weather Service on a scheme known as MAROB, now allows US forecasters to reference small craft reports alongside traditional observational data. See www.weather.gov/omlmarine/marob.hlm Fig 4. YOTREPS system connections If you ever find yourself faced with weather that’s wildly different from the forecast, YOTREPS could be the way to let them know. For more details of YOTREPS and other services see the web site on www.pangolin.co.nz. ASSOCIATE MIKE HARRIS (Ed. note: Please refer to our web site’s Additional Pubs section for clearer representations of all the illustrations in this article at www.ssca.org.) |
