WWW-connection at sea?

[bateson]

Hho knows the state state of the art when it comes to conneting to www and the mobiletelephone system by sattelites? Could vhf ( and coastradiosystem) be used as mediater for instance). I gues there are number of ways to intergrate communication and navigation systems onboard and technology is changeing ( they call it developpment) very fast.

yours Bosse the swede

P.s. Thanks everyone for your wise advice concerning bying a yacht and main reefing systems.
d.s.

 

[Abigail]

I am by no means a tecdhie expert - but to kick off discussion , a couple of questions and comments from our ongoing research. As a general comment, like everything digital, this is very fast moving and the best time to buy the technology is always going to be tomorrow. Also, avoid being on what I call the 'bleeding edge'!

What do you want to be on www for at sea? Is it just for weather. In which case use your SSB to download grib files. Is it to have a sat phone to contact home if you must - but you don't really want data. In that case look at the suppliers and consider their coverage to your likely cruising ground. Is it for serious data - eg for a business? In that case you will need a dome. Last year, at SIBS, these were down to about 0.5m across and about £4K investment plus cost of time/data.

Where are you planning to be? If you will be in Europe and primarily coastal, then a GPRS phone with local SIM cards and arrangements may be the way to go, incluidng using free wifi when you can find it. (Much more common in US than UK, I don't know about much of Europe). Navtex and good old VHF a v useful and free part of the weather comms armoury.

We run two businesses from our boat, and so far have been mainly in UK waters. We still have a 'home pontoon', on which we have a broadband access. On our calculations, being in one place for more than 6 months out of 12 makes this a cost-effective choice for our business model. This will of course vary locally according to price and feasibility of instalation. We use GPRS on mobile phones extensively for coastal cruising, incluidng accessing weather sites, on a subscription which gives unlimited megabytes for a fixed price. (This would be completely cost-prohibitive if we paid by the megabyte!) We are sorting out SSB access for future use.

We will be in European waters for another 5-7 years and anticipate much of the time (except perhaps Eastern Baltic and Eastern med) to cope on GPRS, wifi and internet cafes. We keep a very close eye on satellite technology in terms of size (what fits on our very overcrowded transom), price (upfront and ongoing), coverage and comparative value. In the last five years the equation has shifted a lot, but not enough (yet) for us with our plans and usage to persuade us to the investment. This could change.

I've given a bit of our detail to show the things we have taken into account in considering the same question. Also - we are very aware that tomorrow's answer (or next years) may change to vfm balance.

Hope this helps. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

 

[bateson]

Thank you Sarah and Pip.
A lot of people read my post butonly you answered. I think very few have theoretical knowledge about the state of the quikly changing art and still fewer practical experiences. You seem to be among these few so I take your advice.

My conclusion is that I will not invest in the near future since it looks lika a new system is under construction in which a number of functions will be integrated and by means of sattelites freed from masts and land connection. So I keep my VHF, GPS, Mobile telephone (first generation or perhaps second) as well as radiopeil, sextant, binoculars, papercharts, log, dead reckoning etc.
All the best
Bosse