launched and almost ready

That's our Habibi four days ago when she was launched. After months on the dry dock finally in the water again! And that was the day we moved in our new home and we still can't believe that we live on a boat!
We have been very busy to get everything ready before we'll finally say Goodbye to Rock Hall MD and sail South. Hopefully we can set sails within the next two days as it's getting freezing cold here.
Yesterday our dear friend Kris arrived from Switzerland. He is and will be a big support for us the next two weeks. We are happy to have a third person on board for our very first trip on our Habibi.
You can imagine how excited we are!!

On Habibi in less than 24h and already a guest!

Wow that’s fast! We will be Cruisers in less than 24h and we already have our first guest! Kris volunteered to provide an additional pair of hands the first few days. I’m pretty sure it’s the best thing to have an experienced sailor on board while getting used to the new and bigger boat. The learning curve will be much higher – and a few beers with a good friend after sailing can make things just better, right?

The picture shows Kris and his famous old Lacustre No. 11 (build in 1939!) on our old “sailing home” the Lake of Constance.

Sun bath

Question over a Beer tonight: Why do you put so much effort to get Habibi ready since she is not that old??

Even if her only other owners, John and Sandra kept her in pristine condition (Thanks again at this point!) the sun and the salt have taken their toll – guess this picture of two rubber plugs states more than thousand words…

Solar panels on!

We decided to generate most of our power with Solar Panels. I know, it’s not something that makes a yacht necessarily looking prettier! Nevertheless, letting them run costs nothing and most important: they're silent and maintenance free. We should now generate enough power to keep the batteries full while on anchor without running a generator or the engine. It may not be 100% self sufficient when sailing as we need more juice for the autopilot and the navigation instruments. We have over 400 Watt in Panels – controlled by an MPPT Charge regulator.

no comment :-)

Communication

A main question asked is how we'll communicate with the rest of the world while sailing, particularly with home….

First of all, we explored to have a full Satellite based connection, but decided against it. A Satellite random antenna will set you back with 5-7000 USD and another 10 U$ per Megabit transferred data. It’s not just very expensive, we would also be connected 24/7, almost as at work, reading mails daily…so we decided otherwise:

1. We have a VHF Radio for short distance calls like to other boats and port authorities.
2. We have a SSB Radio which gives us almost world wide radio coverage with other ships and ham networks.
3. By adding a Pactor modem (http://www.scs-ptc.com) to our SSB Radio we are capable to receive and send email over short wave radio. As this is very slow (max 10500 bps) it's just for very small emails without any attachments. But it's also great for getting weather information. This has a unique mail address to avoid spam or those huge joke mails.
4. With a satellite phone from Inmarsat (http://www.inmarsat.com) we get the capabilitie to have cell phone coverage wherever we are. And we can connect with the laptop for data as well…
5. Another nice piece is our on board WiFi system. By adding a Wave WiFi Rouge external antenna we can connect to any free WiFi system within a bay or harbour. This signal is transmitted to the boat's own WIFI router to connect the various laptops and smartphones. The system claims to be able to catch any WiFi hotspot up to 11km! Check it out http://www.landandseawifi.com/
6. Last but not least we will buy local SIM cards for our cell phones to make local calls for restaurant reservations and so on…

If all goes well, we will not live in the communication Stone Age, but we may for sure have to change our attitude in being connected. So you can send us private mails and connect through facebook as usual – just give us some time to respond as we are on holiday ;-)

20 days to go...

Time is running so fast! If everything goes as planned we'll be leaving Dubai in 20 days towards Switzerland. Spending maybe another two weeks in our home country means we will be full time cruiser in 4 weeks on board Habibi. Amazing, but there is still so much to do and the days are flying by….