For years mankind has set out across waters great and small to explore what lies on the other side, to carry supplies, to settle in new places. The oceans of the world remain one of the great mysteries to be discovered. They are frontiers which draw people to adventures, to journeys which test the mettle of ones spirit, which refine and transform those who heed the call.
In the early stages of 2016, as a result of an adventure of this nature, a man not well known, made a transformational, even disruptive discovery in a little known corner of the South Pacific.
There are few who travel the oceans with greater irresponsible bravado than those who do so on small sailing yachts. Many will travel for months at a time: perhaps in a small cluster, perhaps alone, often on a very small budget. It was the budget issue which gave rise to our subject’s great discovery.
Albert Einstein said:
in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity
In such an opportunity we join Philius for the adventure which has rippled sensationally through the sailing world.
Let us go to the beginning.
Philius Grigg is a man of moderate means, with grown children and a handful of excitable grandchildren. Upon the death of his housebound wife, Philius found himself yearning for a drastic change of scenery. A 35 year veteran of a nearby telecommunications exchange, variety and adventure had ended at 25, the birth of a son being a time in which cultural norms dictated he create a stable home for his family.
As a diligent technician and successful supervisor, Philius’ spare time was spent dreaming of voyages on the great oceans of the world: the Atlantic, the Indian, the Pacific. But as a stolid Anglican, it would never be considered that such a daring adventure might be embarked upon by the likes of Deacon Grigg.
With great changes come room for movement not possible previously; great changes in this case occurred and Grigg found an open window which might never have presented itself otherwise. The death of his wife was certainly not to be seen as a salvation, but when coupled with the liberty of grown independent children and a redundancy which often follows multinational takeovers, old dreams suddenly seemed attainable.
At 55, with energy left and a comfortable life to fall back on, Philius declared the necessity of an adventure, in light of changes which had forever altered the fabric of his lifestyle. An adventure he could never have allowed prior; and which he may never again be capable of if delayed. So, with bemusement and questions as to soundness of mind, three sons and a daughter bade him farewell for a month long “shake-down” across the Atlantic.
Philius did himself proud. As the captain of a small ketch, with a crew of 2 young sojourners, he made excellent headway. For a week.
On a Sunday afternoon the little S/Y Sloppy Joe had her first test: a squall, in which waves reached massive heights, bounced her around violently. So quickly did it develop that no chance was given for battening of hatches or for securing crucial items. Within minutes, a rogue carving knife was firmly embedded in the port side seat cushion, and a sharpening steel left an irrevocable comment on the galley counter. Worse of course, was the thick volume of Hemingway (Grigg was an unashamed fanatic), which on it’s journey to the deck caught the corner of Grigg’s prized investment…a beautiful satellite communications unit.
One cannot feign surprise in learning that Grigg was an unashamed fan of the latest technology. He was, after all, a technician for one of those little telecommunications companies swallowed by multinationals during times of government capitalisation. He had been the kind of technician whose job simply would not stay at work; the kind who read and experimented in his garden shed. The kind for whom it was an inordinate thrill to resurrect an outdated piece of equipment, then find a way to make it talk to a modern system.
Grigg had taken great care installing his satellite equipment, he was ecstatic when he succeeded in interfacing it with his laptop computer. He was one of few yachtsmen whose daily routine included emails to and from the family. We all understand the significance of a low-cost yacht owner treading the territory of container ship communications: he was the envy of the sailors with whom he rubbed shoulders.
As swiftly as it had sprung up, the squall which unsettled S/Y Sloppy Joe abated. Slowly and methodically we see Grigg moving through his suddenly less than tidy yacht, mentally noting all of the damage, absentmindedly removing the carving knife from its new home while considering the dent in the counter. In half stride his eyes fall on his satellite system. He stands frozen for a moment as he takes in the fragmented casing, the crushed circuit board, the dangling wires. Most concerning is the completely destroyed aerial fittings and modem circuits. “…no spares on board…time for some frankensteining…” he mumbles quietly.
Frankensteining: a word resulting from his tinkering phase. As we’ve indicated, that phase arose in conjunction with the nationwide transition from analogue to digital. We all remember those fantastic rotary dial phones, the ones so unwieldy yet satisfying to use. As soon as they began to phase out, Grigg could be found collecting them up for various projects. One project an incredibly complicated remote controlled door: using analogue pulses amplified and converted to signals ultimately triggering an old washing machine motor, drawing to the side large swinging doors on Grigg’s tired garage. Mrs. Grigg and the children soon took to referring to these projects quite simply.
“Dad’s frankensteining again… today it’s an LM rotary phone, a kettle and a plunger handle…”
It barely warrants mention that theirs was the only home in the area with a its own internal telephone system, albeit a patchwork museum of obsolete telecommunications equipment.
So to the frankensteining at hand.
Grigg had by now become a fan of email at sea. At this particular juncture it is a real “life line” with his eldest, Eleanor, pregnant for the first time: an excellent reason to stay connected.
But this of course could not prevent the jealous wrath of fellow small boat owners, whose budgets would not stretch to the exorbitant rates on offer from satellite companies. Grigg had been thinking about options for reducing the cost of long distance communications, but to date had failed to come up with anything productive.
This being his shake-down trip, his choice was easy. With little further discussion, he and his crew turned for home, knowing full well the importance of repairing damaged gear before trying to complete an ocean crossing or a longer, more difficult trip. In light of what we could consider a very modest income, thoughts turned quickly to the question of how to replace such a costly piece of equipment. Buying a brand new unit had, in the first place, required no small feat of justifying: as Philius drew down more of his retirement fund than anyone would consider reasonable, he garnered strong derision from those who loved him most.
And now all of that investment paled into absurdity in the shortest of squalls. The question he set himself to was not how to buy another unit, that was quite simply not an option; but how he might find an alternative.
As a fan of email, but with a badly damaged satellite interface, Grigg concluded that he must fall back on his ability to develop ingenious solutions using the most unlikely of items. Could he do it? Can the ability to convert signals between digital and analogue formats be useful somehow?
With the course set for home, Philius began stocktaking the equipment onboard in order to complete the picture of available parts…broken satellite interface, laptop (mostly undamaged), soldering iron, VHF radio, HF radio, handheld VHF, autopilot, spare fuel lock solenoid, spare starter motor, light bulbs, ethernet cable, coax cable…the list went on.
Then he saw something which sparked a thought.
An absurd thought.
A thought which leaned upon the most obscure of trivial knowledge. A thought which took leaves out of so many history books one could be left thoroughly astonished at the absurdity of the combination.
What had he seen? His emergency flares. Smoke flares to be exact. Handheld and parachute types.
An idea began to form. The circuit boards modified with a digital to analogue conversion unit had to be built. The handheld might just help with that…and maybe it’s display too. Morse code. That might be important. But necessary? Between watches, Philius’ soldering and fine motor skills are tested: there is nothing quite like a rogue swell to test dexterity. After the analogue conversion unit is made, it’s time to think about an output. For all of the metal available, Grigg realised pretty early on that it was going to be difficult to replace his lost antenna. So an alternative must be developed, one which doesn’t need the SIM card rendered unusable in the squall.
It turned out to be easy to make an output unit: outputs of the analogue unit connected to light bulb, fuel lock solenoid, allowance made for mounting of the flare, ignition system modified to allow momentary action. Considerations made for alternative fuel sources…not more than half a day’s work here.
With a week of sailing left to get home, Grigg came to the tricky question: an adjustment must be made to the email interface software; an adjustment to allow correct digital to analogue translation function. But to use binary or morse? Which would lend itself better to reverse translation, which more reliable in less than ideal conditions? Which more readily allowed for at reception stations? After studying morse code books, semaphore flag code, and taxing his memory of basic code, Philius concluded that a two part test would be necessary. First a test of binary code solution, discover the reliability of it; next Morse would get a turn. Assuming that losses would be found in both, it should be relatively easy to discover which provides more reliable reception to translation collectors.
Of course, translation collectors would need to be built as well. To date, no-one had attempted to build a receiver quite like this one. Philius, after days of coding his two options, began considering what might be found in his garage capable of being used in creating such a receiver. The list is nothing if not amusing: a vacuum cleaner, 1990s era switching unit, old TV satellite dish, a computer from 2003, a length of drain pipe and, of course an analogue to digital converter using a light emitting diode and photo resistor. He knew where in his garage each of these items would be found. His itch to complete the project was so strong, that 3 days from home he felt compelled to start his inboard Gardiner engine: sail speed was no longer enough, he wanted those extra 2 knots.
As Philius Grigg’s little S/Y Sloppy Joe limped slowly into the marina just 2 weeks after departing, he could not foresee the resistance he would encounter in coming months. As he charted his creative course across the borders of the fiercely guarded commercial communications territory, he had no comprehension of the storm of controversy, commercial intrigue and malicious activity which would work its hardest to erode his success as he disrupted the course of marine communications forever.
By contrast, he could not predict the level of interest which would gather as media outlets began to realise what this staid middle aged man was trying to achieve in his backyard. He could not imagine that a few months after being thrashed about in a squall, he would be a man of national and international fame.
He had a far more important priority: how is Eleanor?
“Am I a grandfather yet?”
This is the first part of a series. If you like what you’re reading, maybe buy me a coffee!
Read part two here.