Satellite tracker - Garmin mini 2 the best?

[geem]

Do you get gribs or wfax on passage? Just wondering how others do it.
I'd be happy with some wfax synptics every day or 2, ...or 3, not that knowing what's coming makes that much difference anyway .
Last time I went north towards Bermuda from the Carib there was a high over the mast in wfax most of the way, took ages til the wind finally arrived up near 38N
Saw inreach do some sort of weather but didn't even look at what they offer.

We don't bother down loading weather onroute. We used to do it with the SSB but found we rarely used it so ripped it all out and gave it away. A friend sat at home with a cup of tea and access to the whole Internet is in a very good position to review weather in combination with our tracked position on the inreach updated every 10 mins

 

[Buck Turgidson]

Black cat software on an iPad and a small HF receiver will get you synoptic charts which is all I need. After all, once offshore there isn't anything you can do with more detailed wind info.

 

[GHA]

Black cat software on an iPad and a small HF receiver will get you synoptic charts which is all I need. After all, once offshore there isn't anything you can do with more detailed wind info.

Or HF weatherfax on android.
Also useful having the images displayed on opencpn so you can scroll though them, opencpn has a plugin to decode the audio if you want.
One day might get round to setting up the raspberry pi to download live weather satellite images straight from the satellites, had it working as a test before, - another weird antenna on the radar arch

 

[geem]

Black cat software on an iPad and a small HF receiver will get you synoptic charts which is all I need. After all, once offshore there isn't anything you can do with more detailed wind info.

Not sure about that. The more detail the better when weather routing somebody.

 

[GHA]

Not sure about that. The more detail the better when weather routing somebody.

Suspect a lot of the time we're just kidding ourselves
As the years go by I seem to be in less of a rush, take what it is, if the boat is happier heading slowly towards Iceland for a day then so be it, if the passage takes a few days more so what, better measured in how pleasant the memories are, not how long it took. Why the rush?
Becalmed isn't the awful thing it once was, read, cook, do some little jobs, have a swim. Wait, that urge to get there fast as possible is just a learned western habit. the wind always comes back. Is what it is.

For 2 or 3 days anyway, then thoughts turn to how much diesel is left

 

[geem]

Suspect a lot of the time we're just kidding ourselves
As the years go by I seem to be in less of a rush, take what it is, if the boat is happier heading slowly towards Iceland for a day then so be it, if the passage takes a few days more so what, better measured in how pleasant the memories are, not how long it took. Why the rush?
Becalmed isn't the awful thing it once was, read, cook, do some little jobs, have a swim. Wait, that urge to get there fast as possible is just a learned western habit. the wind always comes back. Is what it is.

For 2 or 3 days anyway, then thoughts turn to how much diesel is left

I have done my fair share of light wind passages. Its when the sea is lumpy and sails just thwack back and forward that it gets frustrating. We did have a day off Mid-atlantic once when there was no wind. Went for a swim did the washing. Put a line up and dried everything. We had super calm conditions so it was nice.
At the moment we are studying every weather model update to see if we head for Azores or Bermuda. Lastest says Azores. Tomorrow it will say Bermuda!

 

[Buck Turgidson]

I have done my fair share of light wind passages. Its when the sea is lumpy and sails just thwack back and forward that it gets frustrating. We did have a day off Mid-atlantic once when there was no wind. Went for a swim did the washing. Put a line up and dried everything. We had super calm conditions so it was nice.
At the moment we are studying every weather model update to see if we head for Azores or Bermuda. Lastest says Azores. Tomorrow it will say Bermuda!

and whichever you chose the weather for the other will be better after 3 days.

 

[geem]

and whichever you chose the weather for the other will be better after 3 days.

I have checked every update. Models are a work of fiction. I suspect we will head for the Azores tomorrow morning if things don't change dramatically. A slow up wind trip I think. Very light winds. Enough fuel for about 8 days of slow motoring

 

[GHA]

I have checked every update. Models are a work of fiction. I suspect we will head for the Azores tomorrow morning if things don't change dramatically. A slow up wind trip I think. Very light winds. Enough fuel for about 8 days of slow motoring

Safe passage!

 

[BCsailor]

Thnx, though seems a little more expensive to run than inreach for what I'm looking for. Which isn't actually very much...

Odd... Zoleo typically cheaper for device and monthly plans less (once more messages included)

Plans | ZOLEO
inReach® Consumer Subscription Plans | Garmin

Note that if a shore-based friend uses free Zoleo app, you can send ~950-cbaracter messages back and forth. One can get a lot of text info (eg weather) into 950 chars.

Neither device will do gribs.

 

[GHA]

Odd... Zoleo typically cheaper for device and monthly plans less (once more messages included)

Plans | ZOLEO
inReach® Consumer Subscription Plans | Garmin

Note that if a shore-based friend uses free Zoleo app, you can send ~950-cbaracter messages back and forth. One can get a lot of text info (eg weather) into 950 chars.

Neither device will do gribs.

Says 3 month minimum initial plan then 23 quid fee to initialise a monthly plan. Stopped reading at that point...
No interest in receiving anything, just pinging a daily position & maybe email to noforiegnland on ocean passages. Inreach seems to cover that.

 

[petibonvm]

Personally I like it out on the ocean & would happily disappear for weeks without contact but there are one or 2 people in the world who would worry so that's a bit selfish really.

So looking at the options, would be nice to ping a position once a day which will show up on on a website and also to send an email with a position & short message to get displayed on noforiegnland. Having an app to format the email would be pretty important. And very important have the option of turning the service on & off.

The Garmin inreach mini2 seems to tick these boxes, looks like about 250 for the unit & 35 quid a year plus either 15 or 35 quid a month for either safety or recreation monthly plan.
Looks like it will receive messages as well, not very interested in that, after week or so alone on the ocean even a message from society can break the spell.. But might be a handy option.

View attachment 176675

Didn't look much further after seeing this, so 2 questions>

• Happy with your mini 2 for crossing oceans?
• Is there a better option?

TIA

 

[petibonvm]

Personally I like it out on the ocean & would happily disappear for weeks without contact but there are one or 2 people in the world who would worry so that's a bit selfish really.

So looking at the options, would be nice to ping a position once a day which will show up on on a website and also to send an email with a position & short message to get displayed on noforiegnland. Having an app to format the email would be pretty important. And very important have the option of turning the service on & off.

The Garmin inreach mini2 seems to tick these boxes, looks like about 250 for the unit & 35 quid a year plus either 15 or 35 quid a month for either safety or recreation monthly plan.
Looks like it will receive messages as well, not very interested in that, after week or so alone on the ocean even a message from society can break the spell.. But might be a handy option.

View attachment 176675

Didn't look much further after seeing this, so 2 questions>

• Happy with your mini 2 for crossing oceans?
• Is there a better option?

TIA

I have an Inreach mini (older generation). I have been using it for 4 years in offshore navigation to send predefined messages to my loved ones, to correspond with a friend on land who has my position with the message and who can send me a weather summary. I make marine weather requests 150M from my position to refresh my departure grib. I checked the weather with Earthmate on my tablet paired via Bluetooth with the mini. I don't use tracking, I prefer to send a predefined SMS with my position. the only requirement is to record the 3 predefined messages on explore BEFORE departure (the predefined messages are included in the package). This suits me perfectly for a reasonable cost.

 

[GHA]

I have an Inreach mini (older generation). I have been using it for 4 years in offshore navigation to send predefined messages to my loved ones, to correspond with a friend on land who has my position with the message and who can send me a weather summary. I make marine weather requests 150M from my position to refresh my departure grib. I checked the weather with Earthmate on my tablet paired via Bluetooth with the mini. I don't use tracking, I prefer to send a predefined SMS with my position. the only requirement is to record the 3 predefined messages on explore BEFORE departure (the predefined messages are included in the package). This suits me perfectly for a reasonable cost.

Great, thanks! Didn't realise t a predefined message could contain position. This is handy as with a little online geeky code it's possible to send a position update email to noforiegnland, though for the sake of a message would be nice to include some live text as well.

 

[Fox Morgan]

I'm fairly fresh back from an Atlantic crossing last week, I was using my Inreach Mini 2 and can say without doubt it is the most fun and useful thing in my kit bag for comms.
I had starlink onboard, plus an emergency iridium 9555 in the grab bag. The Inreach Mini2 was excellent for helping friends and family know where we were, and for me to pop a text on the tracker to let people know what we were doing in brief. It also allowed me to receive the off message and if needed I could have received some weather info that way too.
In short. I love that little orange gizmo. I paid for mine through GTC as it gave me more texts per month than straight through Garmin.

Garmin Inreach Mini 2 satellite tracking and texting across an Ocean - Yachting World

 

[lustyd]

Didn't realise there were options for subscriptions, is there a list of providers anywhere?