David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Location:   Georgetown, Exumas, Bahamas
Coordinates:   23° 30.79′ N  75° 44.73′ W

Some of you may be wondering how we browse the Internet, maintain our web site, and exchange e-mail messages while aboard Three@Sea. This is important to us not only because of the social aspects of staying in touch, but also because we get information about the weather from web sites and via e-mail, and weather information is the one thing we can not do without while cruising. The bits definitely don’t flow as quickly or as consistently as they did at home, but we are able to stay occasionally connected using a combination of strategies.

When moored or anchored near some civilization, our first strategy is to try to pick up a WiFi signal from a local business (usually a marina, but sometimes something less expected). A ship-board WiFi connection is nice when it’s available because I can distribute (share) the connection amongst our laptops, and we can work in the comfort of our own boat at whatever hour is convenient for us. WiFi “hot-spots” are not nearly as prevalent here in the Bahamas as they were in the U.S., but there are a surprising and growing number of them available from local entrepreneurs.

To increase our chances of connecting, I installed an industrial-strength 15dB omnidirectional WiFi antenna atop Three@Sea, and then connected it to a powerful WiFi adapter inside (Alpha 500mA). This adapter scans for available networks, tells me which ones are not password protected (very important), and also indicates the strength of each signal. I can access WiFi hot-spots from a couple miles away with this setup. In the U.S. this gave us access to many routers in people’s homes that were completely unprotected (there’s a lesson in here).

Once connected to a hot-spot, we usually have to pay something for the service — how much depends greatly on where you are. Here in Georgetown we’re paying $15 for one week of access, which is very reasonable. But in order to get this access I had to ride into town in our dingy, find the pet store that apparently is the host for the “Harbour Wi-Fi” service, and pay them $15 in cash to get a username and password. In other words, it’s not quite as easy as the T-Mobile hot-spots available at your local Starbucks! We also find that the quality of the hot-spot and the reliability of the Internet connection on the other side of each hot-spot is highly variable: we once paid $12/day for a connection that was almost unusable; we’re currently paying $15/week for a connection that is fast and reliable (except for the two or three times per day when it just disappears for an hour or so); and our best connection so far was from an open router in somebody’s business or home in a neighborhood on Nassau. I guess WiFi too is like a box of chocolates: “You never know what you’re going to get.”

Sometimes a WiFi signal isn’t available from the boat, but there is an Internet cafe somewhere in the local settlement. The other day we carried one of our laptops to dinner at Lorraine’s Cafe in Blackpoint, where we had very good free Internet access during our meal. The WiFi signal at Lorraine’s wasn’t strong enough to reach boats in the anchorage, but at least we could check our e-mail while we’re enjoying our appetizer.

So what happens when we’re in the middle of nowhere and can’t get a WiFi signal? Well, things definitely get a little more difficult, and quite a bit more expensive. We have elected to use a satellite connection for this purpose, which I describe below. Many people use an SSB (which is like a ham radio) to send and receive e-mail. We don’t yet have an SSB aboard Three@Sea, and while we may get one eventually, we’re currently betting that satellite communications is on the rise, which should make the prices fall and the bandwidth broaden. We’ve decided to invest there for now, and we’ll see how this strategy pans out over the next year.

We have an Iridium satellite phone (9555 handset) that we can use anywhere on the planet for voice communications and as a data modem. There are other satellite phones and Internet services available too, but they are either limited in the coverage area, not as reliable, or much more expensive, so we decided to go with Iridium. Of course, Iridium could end up bankrupt during the next several years as occurred in the past, but we’re hoping that doesn’t happen.

To do e-mail, we connect the Iridium phone to our laptop and use it as a data modem, allowing us to receive and send e-mail about once per day. The speed is pretty slow, but it is quite reliable. Since we pay for our connection by the minute, we only use it to receive weather information and other emergency e-mail communications, and then disconnect as quickly as possible. We can also surf the Internet through this connection, but it feels like the old days using a 9600-baud modem (if you’re old enough to remember those painful days), and it would really chew up the minutes. Instead, I’ve set up an e-mail address to which we have all the daily weather information we need delivered to us, and we can also send and receive emergency communications.

So that’s our Internet and e-mail situation aboard Three@Sea. It’s worth mentioning that when we are anchored in a remote location, we very much enjoy being mostly disconnected. We still need to keep an eye on the weather, but other e-mail and Internet habits and “requirements” seem to fall away pretty quickly.