Ham radio has always been a big part of our cruising life. In Mexico we regularly checked into three morning nets. We'd speak to friends back in the US and keep track of cruising friends as they circumnavigated. Aboard Nellie we have a nice ham shack. One of the radios is interfaced to the shipboard GPS and sends out our position report every three minutes. This same radio supports the ham version of 'texting'. With our high frequency radio we've been checking in with the Waterway Radio Cruising Club (WRCC) almost every day since we left home. In short there's no end to the many different ways to communicate aboard Nellie.
So this afternoon were chugging along and I'm ham-texting with a friend in Melbourne, FL when another friend, Terry, calls me on the VHF radio. Terry is from Western Florida and I was surprised to hear him. Turns out he's here in Melbourne for tomorrow's Waterway Cruising Club's (WRCC) Annual picnic. How serendipitous. We just couldn't pass up an opportunity to finally put faces with the voices we've been hearing for so long on the radio.
It was a short 21nm day that brought us to the anchorage off Eau Gallie, FL, but it puts our total at 952nm under the keel thus far. DBH
