We communicate via both e-mail and radio. When under way, we can usually be reached on various ham and SSB maritime "nets".Our ham callsigns are: KK7IJ (Jeff) and KC7YDS (Deirdre). If you are a ham operator, or have a marine SSB radio (or know someone who does), and would like to try to reach us via radio, contact us first via e-mail to setup a time and frequency.
However, most of our communication is via e-mail. This is especially true for keeping in touch with people who are not able to talk directly with us via radio. Vesper is equipped with a SCS PTC-IIe PACTOR III controller. This equipment, in conjunction with our ham radio, is used to read and send e-mail via a network of shore-based stations called SailMail. On board we use Airmail software running on our computer. With this system, we are able to send and receive text e-mails (but no web access) from nearly anywhere we might go.
Periodically, when we connect to send or receive e-mail, our GPS location is recorded in our position reporting database. You can query this database and see a map of our most recently reported position.
We very much enjoy receiving e-mails and try to check our e-mail daily, but because our link is VERY slow, please don't send us jokes or long messages addressed to a list of folks. Unfortunately, our system isn't able to handle large attachments such as pictures.
A useful thing you can do to speed up e-mails is to please don't send our own message back to us when replying. There is no sense sending it back since it just means it has to be transmitted twice!
Lastly, please protect our e-mail address so that we don't receive SPAM or other unsolicited e-mails. You can do this by never posting it anywhere or giving it to people you don't know, most especially businesses or websites. Since our e-mail is so slow, you can imagine how annoying it is to wait for minutes to receive a message and find it to be SPAM. We'd like to continue to avoid that!
Many thanks for helping keep the flow of e-mails coming and going smoothly and please stay in touch.
