[SFDXA] "We'll be BA-Ack" say the Bouvet Ops

[Pete Rimmel N8PR]

3Y0Z Bouvet Island Team: We’ll Be Back

03/05/2018

Now safely home in the wake of their ill-fated DXpedition attempt to Bouvet 
Island, the members of the
3Y0Z Bouvet Island team hope to try again to mount an operation from what’s 
been described as the most
remote place on Earth. The subantarctic Bouvet — a Norwegian dependency — 
stands as the second most-wanted DXCC entity.

“[W]e are not the kind of people to give up,” DXpedition co-leader Bob 
Allphin, K4UEE, said in a statement
released over the weekend. “The same thing happened when we were trying to 
activate Peter I Island in 2005.
We came back the following year and…we got it done.” The 2006 3Y0X operation 
subsequently was judged the “DXpedition of the Decade.”

All told, the 3Y0Z team spent a month aboard MV Betanzos, the vessel that 
transported them from Chile
to less than a mile off Bouvet to Cape Town, South Africa. Now back home for 
about 2 weeks, the team has had a little time to reflect.

“We have been to Bouvet Island, and as a result, we have a better 
appreciation for the challenges we face,”
Allphin said. “It is a dark, dismal, and dangerous place. Yet, when the sun 
shines, it is magnificent.”

The most difficult memory for the team, Allphin said, is the team’s final 
day off the coast of Bouvet,
“when we saw the island, crystal clear in calm winds, less than a mile away. 
The conditions were perfect
for our first reconnaissance flight and possible landing of men and camp 
infrastructure. But, during the violent
night before, the captain had made the decision to abort. In retrospect, his 
call was clairvoyant. The mechanical
propulsion failure on the ship that occurred would have brought disaster if 
it resulted in some of our men being stranded ashore.”

Allphin said the 3Y0Z Bouvet team is optimistic that it will get at least 
some of its money back from DAP,
the Chilean company that owns the vessel. “That money [with] what we still 
have in the bank will allow
us to begin making plans to try again,” he said. “We have begun the 
difficult task of looking for a suitable
vessel, and would hope to go back to Bouvet in the next year or two.” He 
said no contributors have asked
for their donations back, and several have urged the team to roll over their 
contributions to help fund the next attempt to activate Bouvet.

“So, if we can pull all the moving parts together, we are going to try it 
again, hopefully, this time, with a different outcome,” Allphin concluded.

Allphin, Ralph Fedor, K0IR, and Erling Wiig, LA6VM, have served as 
co-leaders of the 3Y0Z effort.
The 2018 3Y0Z team totals 20 radio amateurs, including the co-leaders, from 
eight different nations
and includes some of the world’s top operators