Beep…Crackle…Hiss…The sailors’ daily radio network on the short wave radio has started again, and out of the squeaky English that comes from the black box in front of me I try to make sense of what is being said. Sometimes the reception is loud and clear but sometimes it is not. But there is always a boat call that can be understoodd better than the others so if you can’t contact a boat directly, the conversation is done by interconnecting from one boat to the other. This is the only way to find out if and where there are other yachts around on the ocean. There is another yacht sailing 200 nautical miles [370 kilometres or 230 land miles] from me. After an hour, everyone is babbled out of things to say and the chatter box turns off and everything turns quiet again. I have won the fight against the over ripened bananas, and the clock is set back another hour. The time difference with the Netherlands is now 9 hours [UTC/GMT – 7 hours].

Laura