Bill Shock

The drone of the engine greeted my watch with little wind and that from behind and AWOL trailing in our wake. The wind was due to veer to the NW and this duly happened at about 0600. The wind now just behind our beam meant that we began to accelerate the wind rather than diminish it so we could sail. So it was head to wind, full main raised and thus started a really good day under sail. Unfortunately the weather was miserable and the clouds were so leaden that I couldn’t pick up the sun for a sight until midday.

Then came the bombshell, what was that noise? It was traced to the telephone. It never rings so we didn’t know what the call tone sounded like. It was a very bad line and I thought the woman said that it was Helen before ringing off. This happens to be the name of Barry’s wife so when it rang again, Barry answered it to discover (just as well he didn’t say ‘hello darlin’) that it was not his wife but a woman called Helle from Mailasail, the Satellite communications provider. The news was unbelievable and grave. The system had flagged up inordinately high usage since May the 12th and she was warning us to expect a monstrous bill. My incredulity prompted a call from the boss and we agreed to disconnect the wiring to the data side of the system pending an analysis of the usage and he promised to call us back within two hours. He was talking a cost into the MANY thousands! After our sobering £1885 bill for last November when we crossed to the Caribbean, we thought we had learned some lessons as an analysis of the bill showed that, although only cents at a time, the computer, set to regularly check for mail, had steadily racked up the costs over the month. This time we had disabled the computers regular checking for Emails and only connected through the most limiting firewall which only allows compressed Emails to pass so how on earth could we run up a bill that makes last Novembers extravagance seem like a snip? Being a bit paranoid about a repetition of last November, I had even asked Mailasail on the 17th of this month to check my usage and they replied that it was quite modest so whatever has happened it is between the 17th and the 25th!

What to do? With the data disabled, we await the return call from Mailasail which didn’t happen last night so I have now suffered a very disturbed night thinking about the implications. Using Email is out of the question and I am reluctant to use the Iridium phone. The new ‘Yellow Brick’ tracking system that I installed in January to transmit positions to the web site has the facility to use its Satellite connection to transmit text messages for a modest price in previously purchased ‘units’. So I have asked the website administrator back in the Atom office to put a notice on the web site to the effect that blogs are temporarily (hopefully) suspended. If the situation cannot be sorted out so that blogging can resume, then the blogs which we will continue to write, will be stored up and posted through terrestrial Wi-Fi when we reach the Azores. Another ‘fall back’ is the grab bag mobile Inmarsat satellite phone which is loaded with credit so, if we need to, we can still communicate.

Ollie writes:-

Another fishless day; no self-slaughtering squid spread across the deck either.

Oh well, we’re not dependent on fish for survival.

As it happened, Barry cooked up a superb chilli con carne.

And we washed it down with a glass or two from the second box of wine-in-a-box.

We’ve been off the stuff for a couple of days, and on taking my first few sips I said:

“It’s actually a bit like an alcho-pop, this.”

I meant it as a criticism, but the skipper just replied with palpable enthusiasm;

“You know, it really is!”

It might be that you’re reading this blog later than usual.

That’s because today we had a visit from a gentleman named Bill Shock.

You may’ve met him, he tends to arrive with compliments from your mobile provider shortly after you’ve returned from holiday.

What happened in this instance was rather more dramatic though.

A call came through on the satellite phone.

It was the internet people, saying our service has been paused due to incredibly high usage.

It’s obviously their cock up.

Because in the last two weeks we’ve been using the internet and satellite phone with monastic levels of parsimony.

So why the whopping bill?

Well, we’ve left that question with them, but it’s admittedly cast a shadow over a great day’s sailing and caused a degree of anxiety on-board.

Once the skipper had finished talking with the internet people, I got the sense my ensuing comment wasn’t wholly appreciated.

“Dad I wasn’t going to mention this but I may’ve called a few sex chat lines using the satellite phone…just to pass the time on watch…you know.”

I think for a split second he may’ve actually believed me.

In any case, we can’t use the internet or the satellite phone again until they’ve sorted it out, and confirmed that Bill Shock wasn’t supposed to visit.

We’ll keep writing this blog, it’ll just be unpublished for the moment.

Watch this space.

Postscript from Nick:

I have just finished a call with Mailasail who are continuing to investigate but, in the mean time they suggest I plug the data cable in only long enough to clear my mails (hence this mail) then unplug it again as the maximum transmission is 1MB per minute and any system errors would only rack up the data for the short period of connection.