BRISTOL SAILING ASSOCIATION

Newsletter May 2019

Contacts:Kath Liddiard (Commodore)01443 227928

Jock Playle (Secretary)0117 973 8855

Becky Goddard (Treasurer) 01749 346818

Future Trips

1.1Jerzy Wieczorek will skipper a weekend trip from Plymouth on July 26 – 28. A Bavaria 34 has been chartered from Richard Brown at Yacht Haven Quay. There may be one place still available for this.

1.2Jeff Woolmer is available to skipper weekend sails during the summer. Several members have expressed interest but we have no confirmed dates. At present, one member is available for the weekend of August 3-4, three for August 10/11 (so this looks possible), and one for August 17/18. Three others have expressed interest, but with no specific dates. Will you all please let us have your preferred dates so that we can arrange some sailing?

1.3Alan Howells will now not be able to take another boat handling practice trip later in the year, but Jeff Birkin has offered to replace Alan, with a trip in August or September. Two members have previously asked for this, do we have any others interested?

2.News Jeff Birkin spotted this warning from the MCA re. GPS systems.

2.1SAFETY BULLETIN 13 - GPS Week Number Rollover. The Maritime & Coastguard Agency would like to make Operators that use the Global Positioning System (GPS) for both position and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), aware that the GPS Week Number will be rolling over for the second time, on April 6th, 2019.

This could cause stand-alone GPS receivers and systems using GPS chips to produce data that is 19.7 years either in the past or future, therefore generating errors in both the GPS position and time. However, if onboard equipment has been installed after August 1999, or has regular firmware updates from the manufacturer, there should be minimal risk of an error occurring. Please note that not all products will Rollover on April 6th, 2019, some may Rollover on a different date due to the implementation in the manufacturer’s firmware.

The Week Number is stored as a 10-bit binary number which allows for a maximum of 1024 weeks (19.7 years) before resetting to 0. Since being rolled out in 1980, this will be the second time this has occurred, which means most manufactures are aware and are prepared. There are products at a higher risk of going wrong if they are; - units older than 10 years, and - units which have had no firmware updates.

Products are at a lower risk if - they are relatively new units, and - units that are regularly updated with firmware.

Actions to take : 1. Ensure all recent firmware updates are completed; 2. Check with your GPS manufacturer for further information on GPS-dependent equipment and identify what action, if any is, required by the operator; 3. Identify what effect this could have on your current operations, PNT (position, navigation and timing) solutions and potential issues if failure occurred; and 4. Operators of such equipment should monitor and, wherever possible, verify their equipment for any errors.

3.Recent trips

Trip reports A reminder that Chris Wallace has asked for all members who provide trip reports to include the type and name of the boat, and the names of all crew, so that the reports can be completely listed and referenced on the website. Photographs sent to webmaster@bristolsailing.org.uk would also be very welcome.

At the April meeting we had reports from Ian Collins and Jeff Birkin on the two-boat cross-Channel charter from Plymouth on April 26 - May 6.

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Trip on Phoebe, skippered by Ian Collins

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Trip on Cleo, skippered by Jeff Birkin

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