Ham Radio for Cruising Mexico?

Capt. PAT RAINS

My husband John and I had a booksales booth at a West Coast boat show, and we were scheduled to give a seminar called Ham Radio for Cruising Mexico

That morning, a young couple visiting our booth slowly browsed my guidebooks to Mexico and Central America, said that circumnavigating was their dream, and they were in the process of outfitting their boat for just that goal. They bought my books, so I signed them ‘Smooth Seas to Jim and Judy.’

So, I invited them to our ham-radio seminar.

To which Jim replied, “Ham radio! You are nuts? We just bought Starlink; it’s super easy,” said Jim . “We’ll operate our business while cruising paradise.”

Judy said, “Yeah. Our boat’s gonna’ have satellite internet and stream movies all the way around the world,” said Judy.

Jim said, “We already bought a sat phone and an InReach with texting. Why on earth would we bother with more?”

Why On Earth

Well, Jim and Judy have a point: all their gizmos are absolutely brilliant. But, do you know their common vulnerability? They all rely on satellites, so they’re v ulnerable to sudden failure. What if Jim and Judy were half way to Hawaii and suddenly the all their satellites went down? And a whale broke their rudder. What if they were searching for a safe anchorage outside Baja before a hurricane hit?

No, forget streaming movies; we’re talking having no GPS, no electronic charts, no satellite phones, no satellite compass, no nada!

Satellite failure is more common that we like to admit. It can be due to those huge “coronal mass ejections” that our sun has been flinging at Earth lately. Also in the news, satellites have been hacked by foreign and domestic bad guys. Satellites and civilian GPS signals have been i ntentionally dithered, as boaters experienced in the 2010s, and actually shut dow n.

Ham Radio Nets

Most boaters who are also “hams” (amateur radio operators) say that it’s the ham radio networks (nets) that offer them the most practical value while voyaging and cruising. The nets provide free worldwide marine communications – boat to boat and boat to shore. Ham nets give boaters a chance to palaver regularly with a curated group of hams and share info. The nets also offer listeners at least two valuable services for free: Weather (official forecasts plus onsite weather reporting gathered from fellow boaters) and emergency assistance instantly - even on the high seas.

Go ahead, listen in; it’s free. Anyone with a SSB radio can “monitor” the different ham nets to hear what’s going on, like rescue and recover work for the Lahaina fires. Ham radio nets are a purely volunteer public service that’s regulated by the FCC, and they’re free listen in. If you’re having any emergency, you can always call in for help even if you’re not a licensed ham.

Sonrisa Net: meets on 3.968 Mhz LSB, 80-meter band. Starts at 0630 PDT. The geographic range of the Sonrisa Net is smaller, centers around the central and lower Sea of Cortez, yet more boats check into this net.

California-Baja Net: meets on 7.2335 Mhz LSB, 40-meter band. Starts at 0815 Pacific Time. Covers California and the outside of Baja.

California-Hawaii Net: meets on 14.340 Mhz USB, 20-meter band. It runs daily 1600 to 1700 Zulu. This ham net transferred hundreds of emergency rescue messages during the deadly Lahaina, Maui, fires while cell-phone towers and underground cables were burned out of serviced.

VHF vs HAM

Ham nets are formatted like boaters’ familiar VHF nets - but on steroids.

Morning Cruisers’ Nets on VHF are a backbone of the cruising community. First-timers in Mexico quickly learn to tune in at 0800 (usually on VHF channel 22) to these English-speaking VHF nets that operate from boats within marinas and anchorages at all Mexico’s cruising ports. VHF is purely “line of sight” communications.

Ham nets operate on HF or high frequencies, so they cover a vast geographic reach. Voice signals can actually bounce off the Earth’s ionosphere. Ham nets can instantly link multiple radio operators (stations) located thousands of miles apart, even if some are aboard boats in the middle of an ocean, or in Coast Guard aircraft or scattered across a continent.

In both cases, someone must volunteer to be Net Control for a few weeks. He

Nelson, call sign Kilo Six Gulf Echo Tango,

Ham and VHF nets follow similar formats.

Emergency Traffic

Except, on ham nets, the first activity is “Emergency Traffic.”

“Anybody having an emergency? Medical, mechanical or otherwise? Licensed o r not, if you’re having an emergency, please come back now to Gulf Echo Tango.”

Everyone stays silent for about 10 seconds to listen for any weak radio signal possibly trying to call for help. Dozens of hams listening are ready to relay the weak station’s plight and launch the whole network into emergency action.

After a silent moment, the net control asks checked-in stations in other f requency radii to put out a call for any emergency or priority (low battery) traffic in their vicinity. One by one, nothing was heard today.

But personally, I know of at least a dozen maritime emergencies expertly handled by ham radio nets: May Day rescue after a sailboat sank, Coast Guard alerted to pirate attack on motoryacht, two vessels diverted to assist an endangered Transpac rower, Coast Guard standing by a motoryacht taking on water while halfway to Hawaii, for example.

Weather

After the emergency traffic, ham-net formats sound like any VHF cruisers’ net, shifting to the all-important “weather.” In ham nets, another volunteer disseminates official NOAA forecasts plus several onsite weather reports that he or she has gathered from other boaters underway. Two ham boaters listening to the same net might be thousands of miles apart, in remote or undeveloped corners of the planet - or crossing oceans.

VHF nets’ focus is local weather, which gains importance during hurricane season.

News

Last comes the sharing of local news, same format but a big difference between hams and VHF nets. Hams may share tsunami warnings for Alaska to Japan, or the new check-in procedures for Raitai or Mumbai.

V HF boaters’ news is local – like a jellyfish warning for divers in Agua Verde, or which La Paz store has the cheapest cerveza, where to get propane tanks refilled, who’s selling their used snorkel gear for how many coconuts.

Finally, the net-control people on both VHF and ham networks close their net frequency and turn it over to whoever wants to use that clear air space to meet more contacts.

I hope to talk to you all on the air someday. Wishing you 73s, Pat Rains, Kilo Bravo 6 Hotel Bravo India.

The team then employed machine-learning-enabled techniques to identify patterns associated with boats.

Skylight revealed only a few isolated cases of illegal fishing within the MPA after 2017, emphasizing the efficacy of technology in helping those monitoring and protecting the 147,000 square k ilometers of water within the park’s perimeter.

In addition, the results of the study dispute the Mexican fishing industry’s argument that the park could cause a possible loss of 20 percent of their tuna and other catches and instead provided proof that large, fully protected MPAs can contribute to a more sustainable and equitable use of the ocean, without significant economic repercussions on the fishing industry.

This study was funded by Oceans 5 and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. For the complete study, please visit https:// shorturl.at/iW789.