Parrot wreath

This photo was sent to us by Jane and Michel DeRidder, with the caption:

This delightful circle was taken at Lamington national park, west of the Gold Coast. These are native Australian mountain parrots, the red and blue kind are crimson rosella and the red and green are King Parrots. They are feasting on sunflower seed which Mr. Watt had left for them, but did not expect them to form such a perfect ring. This guy on the bottom is about to jump into the centre, to the discontent of the other birds.

Polar Perfection: Paul Nicklen takes extreme images in extreme conditions

The remarkable National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen is interviewed in a recent DAN Alert Diver by Stephen Frink (subscribers only, sorry). The interview is worth the price of a subscription to Alert Diver. And do not miss Paul’s public website and his new book Polar Obsession.

The Joy Jar

We’ve both overdosed on the joy in our respective jars. The User Guide says “Consume as desired”, so that is what we did. The User Guide also says “No expiry date.” We find that the Joy Jar messages retain their full joy dosage after consumption. This is an empirical observation, based upon consuming Joy written by our daughter and grandkids.

Highly recommended!

How to synchronize multi camera shoots

In a recent post I added a reminder to synch your date/time settings. This is a common problem when friends and rellies fly in to new location to play together.

Multi-camera shoots: especially on family outings or holidays we often find several cameras shooting the same activity. To make this work out to everyone’s benefit, be sure to get out all your cameras and synchronize the internal date/time clocks. Then your multiple-camera shoots will automatically interlace in your Picasa-like organizer as well as your website. We’ve had 3 and 4 cameras shooting on our Pacific passage galleries.

But what if you forget? If you use Adobe Lightroom, then you can apply the following very slick trick that Charles just contributed:

…Of course the ideal is to set all camera’s internal clocks to a reference standard before shooting, but if you have just charged in without doing so, all is not lost! Take a picture of a “reference clock” with each camera (I use my wrist watch which sets itself by WWV, but you could use a GPS, or most anything, as long as it shows HHMMSS.) Be sure to use the same clock for all cameras. I tag these images “Timecheck” in Lightroom. Now select all the images taken with a single camera (you can use the Metatdata Library filter to help with this). Double-click the Timecheck image so it is full screen, and read the time on the reference clock in the image. Select “Metadata/Edit Capture Time” from Lightroom’s menu, and choose the “Adjust to a specified Date and Time” radio button, and enter the time read from the reference clock. Click OK, and you’re done! Repeat for each camera. All images should now sort into proper shooting time sequence. (There are further complications if dealing with cameras set to the wrong date, but they revolve around getting images into the right folders.)

The same technique can be applied using any other digital media manager that can edit the EXIF data.

Your own free photo sharing site in 3 minutes

Click the thumbnail for photo gallery

This note is for those who don’t yet have their own photo sharing web site. Our cruising friends in the same fix tell us “we don’t know how, we can’t afford it, or it is too hard”. But once they know how easy it is, they usually get their own free website, then stop emailing photos around the web.

Here is a dead simple, totally free and very quick way to have your own photo sharing web site. I just did this entire operation in about 3 minutes: I created a new PicasaWeb account, uploaded some of our latest leaping dolphin photos, then emailed the URL of the new album to friends.

Here are the 3 steps:

1. login to PicasaWeb with your Google account (your gmail address and password). See below if you don’t have an account***

2. click on “Add Photos” then the “Choose File” buttons just like you would in your email application to email that photo.

3. click on “Start Upload“.

But there is an even better way: click on the “Launch Picasa” button where you can download the free Picasa application. It’s amazing that Google offers this excellent software free. If you are already using iView Media Pro or Adobe Lightroom (which we use) then you don’t need Picasa.

Once you have all your digital photos organized in Picasa, then uploading your new photo album will take only a few seconds. When viewing your new album in Picasa, just click on the “Sync to Web” button.

There are many benefits to having your photos organized so you can instantly show your (Yosemite, birthday, kayaking) pics with friends either on your computer (Picasa) or on the web (Picasaweb). For example:

1. You can of course quickly crop and fix up exposure and other defects;

2. Picasa will learn to automagically tag all your photos with the names of the faces recognized in each photo;

3. You are getting free offsite backups of your precious photos;

4. Your friends get to see your great photos full size even if they are 4000×3000 images that are 10MB each;

5. Your friends can add comments and contribute their photos to a group shoot;

6. Your photo albums can be totally private and secure, or open for anyone to view.

7. Geotagging: you can easily map your photo albums using Google Maps. I just geotagged the dolphin album in about 30 seconds — I just entered “whangamumu,nz” in the map window which brought up a terrain map of the Whangamumu Harbor area. I clicked where I wanted the thumbnail of the album anchored, then the Done button. Try it!

Instead of emailing digital images around — just click on the Share button. Then supply your favorite email addresses and the message you wish to be included with your viewing invitation.

Enjoy!

*** If you don’t already have a gmail address, then click Create an Account and in 60 seconds you will have a free gmail address. A gmail account gives you access to dozens of useful, free Google services.

UPDATE: We have tried to keep our smugmug site updated almost realtime during our Christmas family cruise. It’s really very quick and simple with just a bit of discipline to load and rate the day’s photos. That is so much easier to do on the day rather than playing catchup months later. Once you’ve rated the best pics (to go to your site) it is trivial to do the web upload if you have net access.

If you prefer Flickr, there is a free plugin for Picasa that uploads to Flickr. We don’t have an opinion on the “best free photo site” choice, as we prefer Smugmug.com for our pics. It is a family business oriented to professional photographers who make their living selling their pics (and prints). Our daughter has a smugmug account ($39.95/yr for the non-pro account, unlimited photos of any size, videos, etc.). She was ecstatic with the quality of the prints she ordered before Christmas.

But I do think it is very important to have a robust photo organizing client like Picasa to make it easy to exploit the fun that you have in your growing collection of digital photos.

More Tips:

(1) Multi-camera shoots: especially on family outings or holidays we often find several cameras shooting the same activity. To make this work out to everyone’s benefit, be sure to get out all your cameras and synchronize the internal date/time clocks. Then your multiple-camera shoots will automatically interlace in your Picasa-like organizer as well as your website. We’ve had 3 and 4 cameras shooting on our Pacific passage galleries.

(2) Backup for your precious photos: We upload our original images [e.g., 12 megapixel, at 100% quality JPG]. These are backed-up on the smugmug servers + three Amazon S3 servers separated around USA for disaster defense. So there are at least 4 server backups of almost our original quality images [the images would be exactly original except we don’t think we need to pay for Smugmug’s special RAW archival service. If disaster strikes are own quad-level image backups we will survive with the 100% JPEG.

BOI: Whangamumu Dolphins

Click the thumbnail for photo gallery

Whangamumu Harbour is tucked in behind the Whangamumu Peninsula — some 6nm south of Cape Brett. We are outside the Bay of Islands here, next stop Tahiti if one were to continue sailing ENE from here (as we last did in 2004 enroute Alaska).

Whangamumu is an ADAGIO favorite, protected from all but strong NE winds, moderate depths so it is easy to find your spot in 5m of water, roomy so there is space for a lot of boats. When we anchored at mid-day there were two other yachts. By nightfall there were some twenty-odd boats, many of which are summer migrants from Auckland waters on their way to a holiday in the Bay of Islands.

In addition to the attractions of the abandoned whaling station and the gnarly pohutukawa trees surrounding the bay, there is a pod of bottlenose dolphins. While paddling the kayak along the shore Alan and Sarah discovered the dolphins as they were herding a school of fish against the rocks.

We observed the fun from ADAGIO for a bit, then for a better photo platform we launched ALLEGRO. The dolphins appeared to be feeding continuously around the shore of the inner bay. The foraging activity sometimes included spectacular jumps, lunges, sprints and nose-stands. Our impression was that the acrobatics of the agile dolphins are triggered by unexpected escape moves by the target school. At one point, they seemed to take a break from fishing to play with a piece of seaweed. Great fun — we enjoyed a couple of hours with the dolphins — as you can see from the photo gallery linked at left. During the evening the dolphins continued to feed, passing within a couple of meters of ADAGIO near sunset.

2009 Holiday Newsletter

Cloudy Bay, looking towards West Cloudy Head — Click image for the full size photo

Dorothy and Steve are back in summery New Zealand — five and one-half years and two Pacific crossings since we last sailed out of the Bay of Islands on June 7, 2004 — bound for Tahiti, Hawaii and Alaska. We are kicking up our heels to be sharing anchorages again with dear Bay of Islands friends like Jane and Shelly on MAGIC DRAGON and David and Susan on IMAGINE. So many more friends to catch up with — we’ve just anchored in Pomare Bay in front of our former home on Te Wahapu, hoping to visit with Jeremy and Diana Pope and Matt and Carol Harvey before we shift over to Opua to collect the Weindorf family for our 2009 Christmas adventure. So, what have we been up to this year?

We celebrated the 2008 holiday season with our daughter, Kim, son-in-law, Alan, and wonderful grandchildren, David (age 12) and Sarah (age 9). In January we flew to Hobart, Tasmania for their Summer Festival, many visits with friends, the Australia Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, the Australian TROPFEST film festival, the Folk Music Festival, Ten Days on the Island, and more.

March found us back in California for more fun with Kim and her family, including a long weekend in Yosemite National Park and lots of bicycling. ADAGIO needed a new bottom job, and the best place to haul her out for new bottom paint was a boat yard located in the Napa Valley. We enjoyed views of the surrounding vineyards from ADAGIO as she was perched high above the marine railway. We enjoyed some, but too few sails around San Francisco Bay — certainly one of the finest sailing venues on planet Earth.

By the end of June ADAGIO was provisioned and ready to sail for Hawaii. Fellow OCC sailor Shaun Peck (Victoria, BC) joined us on the Hawaii passage, so ADAGIO sailed once again under the Golden Gate Bridge on June 30, with our daughter and grandchildren watching us on the Exploratorium webcam.

On July 12, we arrived in Oahu, Hawaii, after a comfortable and fun passage. Shaun immediately joined a committee of volunteers in Honolulu to help out with the finish of the 2009 Transpac Race.

On July 16, ADAGIO’s population increased again when we were joined by Leo Foley, commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club of Tasmania (Hobart, Tasmania), and fellow OCC sailors Penelope and George Curtis (Oxfordshire, UK). On July 23rd we found the passage weather we wanted to depart for New Caledonia. August 15th, after 23 days at sea, we arrived in New Caledonia. We seem to have partied all the way, with such good company aboard, making for short watches, assistance sailing the boat and help in the galley. We enjoyed showing our crew our favorite places in New Caledonia, even visiting our friends Cleo and Albert in the isle of Pines.

We enjoyed cruising New Caledonia through August, then in September we circumnavigated New Caledonia’s “big island”, Grande-Terre. We believe that the best way to see this country is by boat. The coastal areas are very beautiful, and the coastal towns are quite varied, as is the scenery.

On October 10, our Australian friends, Ian and Andrew, arrived to join us for the New Zealand passage. We had time to take them sailing, to practice “pulling the strings.” They were an enormous help with the pre-passage preparations, including repairs of a few bits we broke between San Francisco and Newcal. While we waited patiently for NZ passage weather we spent as much time as we could enjoying the beautiful Isle of Pines, including visits with our local friends, and with new cruising friends aboard other boats lucky enough to make it to Ile des Pins.

Halloween, October 31, we sailed out of New Caledonia, and arrived in New Zealand on November 6. Head seas were bumpy for the first couple of days, but comfortable after that. We had a week to show Ian and Andrew around the Bay of Islands, before they returned to Australia. Bay of Islands marine businesses entertained cruisers as they arrived from numerous islands in the South Pacific. We met cruisers from many different countries, and spent social hours getting to know them.

As you can tell, we are just a “box of fluffy ducks” being back in enZed, where ADAGIO was launched 9 years ago. We have begun exploring the islands of Urpukapuka, Moturua, Roberton, and the Te Pahi Islands, finding good beaches, coves, caves, hiking trails and fishing spots to show to our grandchildren when they arrive on December 23 for a 10-day visit.

Stay well and let us know how you are and where you are — and let us know if you have changed your email address!

Best wishes, Big hugs, and Best of Luck in the New Year

Dorothy and Steve

S/V ADAGIO, Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Steve and Dorothy at the Pa site lookout atop Roberton Island, Bay of Islands

BOI: Te Pahi Islands to Urupukapuka

On December 19th we sailed up to the Te Pahi Islands – our first visit there, thanks to guidance from MAGIC DRAGON and IMAGINE. Lovely anchorages with spots for shelter from most of the BOI winds – you just have to shift your position before the wind shifts.

We had a couple of days to catch up, including bits of computer knowhow swapping on echarts and RSS. Then ADAGIO and MAGIC DRAGON set off for Urupukapuka. Steve and Dorothy want to do some more exploration in preparation for the upcoming Christmas visit by Alan, Kim, David and Sarah.

Nearing Urupukapuka we slowed so the Dragons could lead us into the best spot to anchor in Otehei Bay. Just then a bottlenose dolphin started playing on the bow wave of MAGIC DRAGON – allowing Dorothy to grab one hasty pic of the dolphin leaping in front of MAGIC DRAGON.

BOI: Moturua Island 12 December

On 11 December ADAGIO and David & Susan/IMAGINE sailed to Moturua Island to meet up with MAGIC DRAGON. After a yummy pot-luck aboard ADAGIO (in the rain), we had a good sleep followed by a Saturday morning circuit-tramp around Moturua.

We were impressed and pleased with all the improvements that DOC has made to the Moturua tracks and facilities — very first class now, with tracks mowed through the grass wide enough for quad-bikes to service the trails.

BOI: ADAGIO installs 3G wireless broadband for NZ and Australia

UPDATE 11 August, 2010: Australia wireless broadband. It was challenging to uncover the Telstra post-paid, no-contract 3G service. The secret words are “Browsing Pack”:

“There is a range of Browsing Pack options that start from 30MB ($5) of included data per month – up to 9GB ($99) per month of included data. You can change your Browsing Pack as your needs change. Unused included data expires each month.”

We are on the 9GB/month plan. Like Telecom NZ, credit approval for post-paid was simple and quick. Before you go in, call the Telstra shop to inquire which ID they will accept to make up your required 100 points.

6 December, 2009: We are anchored near the beach south of Roberton Island in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands. I should say “happily anchored” both because this is a truly lovely spot, and because we now have aboard ADAGIO broadband wireless internet access. We are confident that the solution we have adopted will continue to work well throughout most of coastal New Zealand and Australia. It will also work in U.S. waters should we decide to sail back there.

This all started when we read a report in The Albatross, the monthly newsletter of our home Hobart club, the Cruising Yacht Club of Tasmania (CYCT). This report “Cruising the Australian coast with Broadband Internet” described the successful experience sailing from Brisbane to Hobart on Alamak. Former Telstra engineer Andrew Boon brought along for the trip an Ericsson W25 Fixed Wireless Terminal:

Essentially it is a mobile phone on steroids. It runs under 3G (or in the case of Telstra, Next G) mobile networks and contains, like any normal mobile phone, a SIM card. The difference between it and a normal phone is it has ports that allow it to be connected to a normal telephone handset and/or a computer and/or a fax machine – all at the same time.

We found that download speeds were equivalent to land based broadband speeds (Andrew can give you the numbers if you are interested) and other than dropping out a couple of times, it proved to be very reliable. For crossing Bass Strait, we rigged the external aerial, otherwise we got by on the stub aerial connected to the unit. We had good coverage the whole trip with the exception of a short break in Bass Strait.

That report really got our attention – especially because we have observed a steady stream of “success” field reports from CYCT sailors – testing their new Telstra Next G phones whilst cruising a variety of Tasmanian waters. The alert reader will recall that most Tasmanian cruising, away from Hobart, is anything but Urban.

Then we were doubly blessed when Andrew agreed to join Adagio for the New Caledonia to New Zealand passage. Andrew patiently answered a long series of questions about the technical feasibility, and how best to configure to get good results. So with Andrew’s encouragement we set about to see if there was a commercial offering that would meet all of our non-negotiable requirements:

* No contract: it is impossible for us to agree to a 24-month contract.

* Practical rural coverage, obviously.

* Enough monthly data allowance (at least 8GB).

* And enough portability so we can use the same equipment investment for at least NZ and Australia.

Before explaining what we did I should mention that we investigated whether an iPhone could meet our objectives. We decided not – principally because the iPhone is not designed for an external antenna, nor is it designed to robustly support tethering another computer to the iPhone’s 3G connection. There are workarounds, but we did not want to get into an “iPhone development program”. We’re here to go sailing!

But which network – Telecom NZ or Vodafone? From Andrew we learned that hardware-wise, the big divide is whether you choose 850 vs 900 MHz, which means the following network choices relevant to our portability requirement:

850/2100 MHz = Telstra NextG / Three (AUS), Telecom (NZ), various in USA.

900/2100 MHz = Optus YesG / Vodafone (AUS), Vodafone (NZ), various in EUROPE.

The telecom vendors do not make it easy to discover how their network coverage performance compares across locations. A key insight came, again, from Andrew, that Telstra/AUS and Telecom/NZ had both invested in widespread deployment of the longer range 850MHz cell towers, using 2100 MHz towers to infill in coverage soft spots. Contrariwise, Vodafone et al had focused upon 2100 MHz towers to concentrate their coverage where most of the people live. Since we prefer to mostly cruise where people don’t live, it became quickly clear that 850 MHz best met our “Practical rural coverage” requirement.

Now the question became commercial terms with Telecom NZ. To cut to the chase, we went to the Telecom retailer “Orb Communications” in Kerikeri, where Ms. Amanda Walker quickly set up just what we required – all of these items are what Telecom calls “Open Term”, which means we pay monthly bills, but can cancel at any time:

• a “Plan Only” sale, meaning we supply our own equipment

• a no-charge SIM card for the Telecom XT network (i.e., 3G)

• Data plan: “Mobile Broadband 8GB”, $79.95/month

• “One Rate 100” voice service, meaning 100 minutes airtime for a monthly minimum of $50.

Translation: we pay nothing up front, have no contract, but agree to pay $50 + $80/month for the voice + data service until cancelled or amended. For those who need a fair bit of data like Adagio does, we were fortunate to have the benefit of the Xmas promotion — so we get 8GB per month for same price as 4GB. Telecom’s normal price is $29.95 for the extra 4GB, then $0.10/MB over the 8GB allowance.

Because this is a postpay plan Telecom requires a credit check. That seemed very straightforward as we only had to supply two current photo-ID, our NZ mailing address (of former neighbors on Te Wahapu), and when asked “How many credit cards do you have?” I replied “two, would you like to see them?”. Answer “no thanks”.

So, confident we had a telecom deal we could accept, we ordered the equipment:

A$ 470.00 ex-GST Ericsson W35: Fixed Wireless Terminal from Powertec Australia

NZ$ 130 ex-GST RFI CD2195: 890mm tall four-band external antenna (gain of 6.5dBi for 824-960 MHz, 3dBi for 1710-2170 MHz) from RF Industries New Zealand, Paul McKnight +649 5372683.

NZ$ 20 An inexpensive Slimline landline phone from Dick Smith

Configuring the W35 to work with the Telecom network was straightforward, taking about 10 minutes. An ethernet cable will be required until you have configured the WLAN wireless access point. The parameters required are similar to configuring an ADSL router. Fortunately we had long range wifi access, as I had to search up the Telecom Access Point Name (APN, which is internet.telecom.co.nz).

We have run just a few objective speed tests using SpeakEasy.net/Speedtest. Anchored in the Waikere River – with external antenna and without

– With antenna signal bars = 100% test #1

   – Download Speed: 3939 kbps (492.4 KB/sec transfer rate)

   Upload Speed: 457 kbps (57.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

– Disconnect antenna signal bars = 50%

   – Download Speed: 1682 kbps (210.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

   Upload Speed: 509 kbps (63.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

– With antenna signal bars = 100% test #2

   – Download Speed: 2991 kbps (373.9 KB/sec transfer rate)

   Upload Speed: 681 kbps (85.1 KB/sec transfer rate)

Some more details: the Ericsson W35 includes an internal 802.11 wireless access point. So the installation can be done where it is most convenient to connect to an external antenna. E.g., for us and for data-only we could mount the W35 near our cockpit external microwave jack. If you don’t need a landline phone, then you just need DC power and the antenna.

The landline phone is an experiment. One motivation was to get cheaper airtime than Vodafone prepaid at NZ$ 0.88/minute. The Telecom One Rate 100 plan was $ 0.50/minute. But now we have 2degreesmobile.co.nz GSM prepaids at a current promo rate of $ 0.22/minute. The other motivation was remote location coverage. We expect to get voice coverage with the W35/external antenna where we would have no useable GSM signal on Vodafone (and 2degrees uses the Vodafone network).

The external antenna connection can be a challenge on some boats. Our case is simplified in that we can repurpose our already-installed LMR400 low-loss microwave cable which we have used since Hobart 2001 to connect medium-range and long-range wireless antennas to our wireless bridge. When we have access to a 3G wireless broadband network we don’t need the 802.11 wi-fi setup, so we can switch the use of the routing of microwave cable from our nav station to a protected cockpit bulkhead connector.

I am awaiting shipments from AUS and NZ of some more antenna cabling parts I need to finish the installation. By finish I mean “all that we need for further testing”. Ultimately we will install the external 3G antenna on our radar arch, but that involves a new run of LMR400 and sacrificing one or more antennas that already have space allocated on the arch. Meanwhile the W35 will go under the nav station with our other access points and routers. This is less convenient than having the W35 on the desktop where we can easily see the indicators and operate the low-power/sleep button. But the less-convenient location is is close enough to the existing LMR400 cable to connect with a 500 mm MCX to N-Male pigtail/patch cable. We are striving to minimize connections as each connector can add 0.1 to 0.5 db to the signal acquisition losses. I also have to wire up the DC supply power properly, utilizing our regulated 12VDC supply (or maybe I can use the ship’s 24VDC as the input spec is 10 – 28VDC).

Our bottom line is that we can now enjoy cruising the more remote areas as we do not feel the need to scurry back near “civilization” hunting for a wireless signal.