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Internet Access While Sailing?
ryan schroeder asks: "My mother is sailing to Hawaii this summer and is wondering about solutions for checking e-mail. I know a cell phone modem won't work and a satellite phone sounds a little expensive. I bet someone out there had looked into this. If anyone has a direction to point me to that be great." It would be interested in hearing if any of you folks have gotten Internet access working while out at sea and what degrees of success you've had with it. Who needs land anyway? Give me a boat, the stars, working global wireless Internet and a wind to sail by!
I had this same problem when I worked for the Coast Guard. For the sailboat size, your options boil down to Packet Radio on SSB HF, INMARSAT, or Orbcomm. American Mobile Satellite does not have coverage between HI and the west coast. The cheapest is probably ORBCOMM. Try http://www.orbcomm.com/business_partners/sc_manufa cturers.htm to see what you can find.
Amateur radio is a possibility. Currently she would need to pass a 5 word per minute code test, but that shouldn't be to hard and a written exam (the license fee is $6-7). Then you need a radio, a multi mode controller (a modem for radio), and a computer. You might not need a multi mode controller, you might be able to use the sound card in the computer. This would give her email from just about anywhere, almost all of the time. She would be using a collection of pactor to email gateways located around the world. The drawbacks would be no busuiness communications (illegal), and no encryption (illegal, but shouldn't be a problem). For more information use a search engine and check out www.tapr.org and www.arrl.org.
Heh, as if the most difficult thing to overcome is the limits of cat5 cable.
I mean, the hardest part is going to be using the crimper with the giant claws on your deep-sea submersible suit!
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"It was people! People soiled our green!"
ComputerWorld has a story about how some fixed wireless companies are saying that various at-sea internet connections are threats to public safety and should be outlawed. Might be On Topic for your question.
Huh? What are you going off on? Where are the lies fud and rumors? I was in fact perfectly serious, amature radio in the right band would be a good solution, you might have to get a license for a non-standard amature band to get the distance, but no other group tries to get low cost radio working, and that is the solution needed here.
I knew the guy who ran (runs?) amature a large radio network. It works, but by his own words it is slow. Maybe that has changed and maybe not - I don't know. Certinaly the band he was working in doesn't have the distance abilities that sailboating needs, but he can easially set you up in a band that will deal with that distance. He would love to help too, just for the challenge of it.
Yes, most big liners have satellite access. The last trip I took (carribbean -- Tortola is beautiful) had net access for $.40 a minute.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
They both have valid points. They both have posted using somewhat abrasive/inflamitory language. They have both wasted my bandwidth!!!! :-)
-Derek
P.S. About your email problem while sailing... maybe one of those "contestants" of CBS's Survivor show will figure out a way to do email. Tune in and find out!
Bit late now though ain't it.
Why didn't you buy it years ago on the offchance that you might be off sailing in the middle of an ocean? Hmmm?
That'll teach you.
Basically, why would you want email in the middle of the ocean? Isn't the point of sailing in the middle of an ocean to get away from telephones/email/the modern world?
Deleted
Well, being a Dutch citizen I would say that's debatable, but then again, I assume you are referring only to its satellite communications branch ;-).
Which is called Station 12, incidentally. They advertise a lot on CNN International...
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Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
The amateur radio packet solution on HF at 300 baud is possible as others have mentioned, but does require a license. Doesn't matter that you are in international waters or not, amateur radio is an internationally regulated set of frequencies. It takes a license in all cases.
At the same time, if this lady is sailing on a commercial liner getting permission of the captain/cruise line is also mandatory to setup an Amateur station on their vessel! Just an FYI.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
If you're sailing in the Gulf of Mexico, there's a decent chance that your regular old digital cellphone will work. Apparently, some enterprising companies have set up a lot of cell towers near/on oil rigs for the offshore employees to call home with. I'm not sure how far out you can go and still get signals. We were about 60 miles out when I found out about this. The good thing is, line of sight on the ocean is pretty damned far!
A lot of comments so far have brought up a good point, though. You're sailing! What the hell do you need e-mail for?!?! Me, I'm tied to this damned computer/laptop/cellphone for about 50 weeks a year. During the couple of weeks that I'm on vacation, I like to get as far away from this crap as I possibly can. I don't really miss it, either. Sure, it's always nice to come back home and have a mailbox full of messages from friends and family and to catch up on
There's nothing like grilling up some kingfish that you caught earlier in the day with some italian salad dressing marianade and a nice plate of rice. Sit and watch the sun set while sipping on a Myers and Coke, while listening to some Jimmy Buffett. Why would you want to screw that up by reading e-mail from work?
What's the possibility of someone creating underwater cellular/gsm towers? It'd take a whole lot less power than what's required to reach a satellite, and we've already got fiber optic on the sea floor, so why can't we tap into that and build towers that hang below the surface of the water (over the surface would probably be dangerous). I imagine the signal could be boosted much higher than is allowed on land, and the lack of obstructions should make reception great.. Anybody know if this is/isn't possible?
Well, a death in the family is. For me, anyway.
Jordan
QUAKE Wireless, Inc.
5575 Ruffin Road, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92123
USA
Phone: (858) 277-7290
Fax: (858) 277-7293
E-mail: info@quakewireless.com
Web Site: www.quakewireless.com
pronoblem
More OT. There is an old trick that is sometimes hoisted on naive newbies out at sea. Get some more experienced ppl together, and have someone announced that the ship should be reaching a mail buoy the next day. This buoy is the ocean version of a mailbox. Everybody gets excited and goes running off to write letters to their love ones. If the rookies sort of bite, then the next day bring out some type of grappling hook/pole. Fill a bag with junk. Tell the rookies to look for the buoy on one side of the ship, while you look for it on the other side.
Attach the bag to your grappling hook and excitedly shout, I got it, I got it. Go to "distribute" the mail. Tell the rookies that another mail buoy will be by the next day.
Oh yes, take lots of pictures.
Non-geeks can use the Internet too! Perhaps this guy's mom wants to keep in touch with people. Perhaps she's using email to write letters to people, not keep up with the latest new Internet IPO. Perhaps the point of going on vacation is to spend time relaxing and catching up with friends who she hasn't had time to talk to in a while.
Just because you think one way, don't assume everyone else in the world has to see the world through your eyes.
Sheeeeesh......
-- Your Servant,
Your Servant, B. Baggins
You should ask them how they do it.
With a satellite dish the size of your sails, and power from a generator that weighs an order of magnitude or so more than your entire boat, lead keel and all.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Aircraft carriers also have aircraft and surface to air missiles. I wouldn't expect to find net access for the masses while at sea (not yet). How many cars have internet access thus far? Not many I would 'spect.
I don't know about you, but my car has surface to air missiles. I hate it when people cut me off.
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I post links to stuff here
Get a sat-phone and modem combination that works (make the salesperson demonstrate it live, NEVER EVER believe a salesperson) This will run you about $3000.00 in hardware (Phone and modem) next you pay about $3.00 per minute online. this is the sat time and long distance charges. (They will rape you for long distance charges in every way they can... hell it's long-distance in some places to call the payphone you are physically standing next to, the definition they have stating to what is long distance is very vague and designed to steal money from the users)
This is your ONLY option for deep sea comms. ham radio is not an option unless you can get your mom to agree that everyone can read her email (and post it on the internet publically if desired by the recieving party) and she can get her advanced Ham radio ticket by then, permission from every country to transmit that she will be near or in their waters, etc.... ham radio will get you email only at 300bpsSIMPLEX! with HUGE latency and large periods of no-connectivity. if you recieve more than 300 characters in an email, and then have 10 of these emails it will take about 30 minutes to retrieve them, and only if you are a seasoned Ham radio operator.. Ham equipment to do this? I suspect that you want to have automated stuff, Probably $12-14K new, or on the cheap end $600-900 for really old used stuff.
BTW, if you never worked HF you'll have hell finding stations to recieve, then try and get your modem setup, recieve the data, retune as you didnt recieve it correctly, fight propagation problems.. etc....
no, unless you have been a HAM for 12 years, you are NOT going to get your email via HF in the pacific.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Inmarsat announced a GAN solution on their website:
http://www.inmarsat.com/gan/staynet.html
It supposedly offers 64kbps ISDN speed from a device which weighs 4kg and is about the size of a notebook.
This is from their website:
The mobile satellite communications units needed to access the Inmarsat Global Area Network
are small, completely portable and simple to operate. To link into the network, no matter where
you are, all you need to do is switch on the unit, orientate the antenna in the general direction of
an Inmarsat satellite, plug in your pc, and go.
A clarification is in order.
:)
ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) communication is in military use now. I don't know how far beyond research it has gone, but it's been discussed in the likes of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics years ago.
ELF waves are acoustic, but inaudible to humans. They've been compared to geological events like magma flows and earthquakes or distant thunder. Very low signal carrying capacity, but good distance - trans-oceanic. From what I've read, they're (or at least have the potential to be) used to get the attention of, or send pre-expected messages to, remote sites and submarines on long-range, silent patrol. In effect, a set of messages is already held on a sub, and only the ID of the message is transmitted.
There's some question about the effect of ELF waves on biologicals...
Whale/dolphin modes of communication are much higher frequency, and should support signal carrying. I agree that this might be a very promising method of communication. Hopefully those with some know-how will spot this thread and illucidate the matter.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
It's proven technology.
Write your email on a piece of paper, slip it into the bottle, and heave it in the direction you want it to go. Remember, nothing beats a station wagon of DAT tapes for bandwidth.
Carrier Seagulls? Now that the Carrier Pigeon is extinct, and considering the resources you'll have at hand, you must make due with what's available. Just don't bother the albatross, it's bad luck.
Have you considered ELF? Whales use them to communicate over thousands of miles. It should be no problem. Just stick your head under water and move some mucous(um, SNOT) around in your sinuses. The only risk is getting water up your nose, or getting blasted out of the water by a North Korean sub... But hey, that's a small price to pay for low-cost global connectivity.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
That last one, ELF, sounds like a area that needs some research. I imagine it would be possible to use the ocean itself as a medium for digital
transmission. The frequencies and digital encoding you'd have to use would probably limit the bandwidth to something pretty low and there would have to be receivers near shore with, umm, "land"-based connectivity, but it sounds cheap enough.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Cheers! this is really excellent
where's the f£$#@= score?
*y2k -Azathoths minions had it coming*
HTH.
Hehehehhe =:-) Kick ass. I think you'd need to make your hostname FUCKUP at that point...
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Play Six Pack Man. I
In the past week I've had to get a producer setup to send back images, video and text via Satellite from the upcoming surfermag.com op boat challenge in Indonesia. This is my very recent first-hand account of getting a usable connection up and running.
/only/ $2.90 or so per minute.)
The setup we're working with is an Thrane and Thrane Comsat Messenger (3680A?) M4 ($3000 laptop sized bag phone) attched to a Macintosh G3 via a standard Diva TA PCMIA ISDN card ($250.). It took me about three days to get it working, and then another half-day of TCP/IP stack tuning to get it going at a usable speed. (When you dial #92 you get the most laid-back technical support in the world -- from an aussie 30 miles north of Perth sitting next to giant array of sats that make up a LES/Land Earth Station..)
If you're going to be on a boat, you have to use a tracking attena that can deal with the movement. The default with the M4 is this folded flat cardboard looking thing that needs to be stationary. There are warnings throughout the manual and attached to the front of the attena that say to stand at lest 1.8meters back when in operation.
The ISDN connection is just one B channel (64Kbits/second) and raw speed, even with tweaked TCP/IP settings to deal with the latency, is only about 2KB/sec. Round trip ping times from Inet hosts in the US back to the ISDN Sat connections are about 1200ms.
I wouldn't suggest trying this to anyone who doesn't have a lot of experience with dialup ISDN connections and a solid working knowledge of TCP/IP. Oh, the kicker - the ISDN connection is something like $8/minute, so make sure someone else is paying for it too. (Voice/regular 9600Bps connections are
Abe
Try SailMail.
http://www.inetvu.com
400Kbps to a moving target? Sounds good to me!
Check out the:
www.sailmail.com
I'm not so familar with that, I guess you are supposed to be an regular sailor to use it.
Go and find out yourself.
Jii
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Aircraft carriers also have aircraft and surface to air missiles. I wouldn't expect to find net access for the masses while at sea (not yet). How many cars have internet access thus far? Not many I would 'spect.
I don't know about you, but my car has surface to air missiles. I hate it when people cut me off.
s/air/surface is what you mean, unless you are constantly getting cut off by Mollier skycars.
George
what about VSAT. I know Digicom has satellite internet access at a "affordable" price.
http://www.digiro.net/intdis.html
Am I the only one sitting here going "They're talking about the length of the cable and how that wouldn't work and not even noticing the fact that he also said to tap into a undersea cable?" I love this place for that very reason. We see the forest for the trees alright. So much that we miss the forest.
Sounds like someone needs to lighten up. Give the guy a break, he was giving what info he could. All you could give was flames. Try saying what's incorrect about something before just flaming for no real reason.
Honestly, I don't know why the rest of us bother. With people like you, that is.
There is no mystery here, and no great difficulty. All you have to do is drop by the nearest marina or yacht club and look at the magazines that are lying around. There are lots of ads for commercial email services for people on the high seas.
Some work by means of HF SSB marine radio telephone, (you can get a license by paying a fee)with a smart computer box doing audio modulation. It is a very specialized modem. The data rate is very slow, just a few bits per second. But it works world wide, and is very robust in the presence of interference. When you are spending months sailing across the ocean, it doesn't matter if your computer controlled radio has to grind all day to download a small email.
But if you want web browsing then you have to go with a much more expensive solution, like INMARSAT.
One thing to remember about satellites.... Boats move. They rock back and forth a good bit even if you don't notice it. On our ship, the Internet cafe was useless when the boat would hit some rougher areas. I don't mean like slamming you from side to side but even gentle rocking.
Personally, I like the idea of sleeping late, smelling the fresh sea air, hearing the crash of the waves, and reading Slashdot. There's nothing inherently unrelaxing about technology.
grep -ri 'should work'
Ask Slashdot:
I am going to be incarcerated in a federal prison in a few weeks ( after sentencing) on charges of insider trading, sending unsolicted commercial email, and trading MP3s. I was wondering if Slashdot readers had any information on the best free, Linux based ISP to use while in the ole' pokey (no pun intended)...
I have already contracted with VA Linux and CompaQ to custom build me a 'matchbook pc', running Slack, that I can safely and happily keep in my rectal cavity, but, again, the big problem is getting that high speed and stable access.
Also, I need to know if it is possible to post to Slashdot through a federal firewall. I understand that they use Windows NT...is that hard to hack through?
Thanks a bunch guys! See you in 2 1/2 - 5 years! (Well, probably not...but I'll talk to whoever takes Slashdots place as 'ridiculous quesions on the web.com...)
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"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)
Power Consumption: Use solar cells to help charge power system, as well as a few wind generators. Waterproofing: Have your computer sealed in a watertight cabinet. The only external devices could be a waterproof LCD and keyboard. Just figure out how to waterproof the VGA connector using o-rings. Antenna: Has anyone thought of using a weather baloon type of setup? Basically have an antenna that all you do is send it up, send your messages, send an ID code so a server or HAM sat or something knows you are online and sends your messages and sends an end-of-transmission signal when done. Then reel it back in. Hmm, what about that mirror they put on the moon to test it's distance now and then. If you had some damn good shock equipment that would be able to adjust itself very quickly to motion, maybe you could shine a laser to the mirror. Hell, if you have the power you could shine a laser to the moon and have some friend with a really good telescope watching a specific area. Then pipe the image from a CCD attachment on the telescope to a computer to convert the data (ala Timex Watch) OK, I know the power consumption is a joke. Never mind... Hmm, why doesn't someone make some automated packetradio repeaters and put them on floating bouys so they just wander the ocean and make cells. That would be pretty cool, and the cost of the service could pay for the occasional theft or drunken sailers too happy with their harpoons... Any communication on the ocean could be figured out. The problem is a good electrical source. I can't wait for the day when they finally figure out a cost efective way to beam energy from space. Until then, there are the conventional ways as well as one coolone that works on a peltier principal. Lower a wire very deep and have the other end near the surface. The difference in heat is supposed to generate electricity (I think it requires that each end of the wire be a different metal). Or go to Russia and buy a surplus satellite nuclear reactor. Well, it's not really a reactor, but a nuclear battery with a 45 year half life. Not the biggest energy output, but it never has to be recharged. What about that bacteria they found in a Colorado mine that eats copper and secretes sulphuric acid? Could you put that in a battery and just replace the coper when it gets low instead of having to replace the acid? Anyway, I'm ranting now.
tasty and delicious
i saw a show on the discovery channel recently detailing the life of the crew on an aircraft carrier. computers were present in some of the crew's rooms, which had internet access. Does anyone know what method was used to supply email and internet access to the ship??
Actually, I thought that regulation was tied to the radio equipment encrypting transmissions. If the data it was handed to transmit (say ssh traffic) was already encrypted, I don't think there's a problem. Anyway, the password is the only thing that needs to be "scrambled" -- it's just email :-)
Most of the ocean isn't that deep -- 300 miles above sea level is in orbit. Unless you're sailing over an oceanic trench somewhere, you'll only need about 5 miles of cable (on average.) Of course, it would be much simpler to find one of the cable trallers and tap in while it's near the surface *grin* (AT&T has a fleet of ships the pick the cable up, clean it, etc. There's a small problem with continental drift.)
As the Navy Capt'n joke goes... you're never more than five miles from land. (i.e. five miles straight down.)
Unfortunately I think you have only two options.
Packet radio - the data protocol for radio hams. As I understand it data is bounced from node to node, and there are a few nodes that offer gateways onto the internet. Very slow, but you might just be able to get e-mail happening. Oh, and you'll need a licence
Satellite - I think I can be pretty sure this is what the US Navy uses. I know it is quite common for ships to get data this way (the British Antarctic Survey use it for one). Sadly nothing else much is going to reach the oceans - and this is why it is expensive.
TJ
Owl tried to think of something wise to say, but couldn't.
Orbcomm units are perfect for email. (you can only check email that goes to the account they have assigned for you). However you can't do ICQ over the Orbcomm system. It's strictly email based. You will also have to use email programs that are designed for a particular orbcomm mobile.
They have a few mobiles (the Panasonic and the Stellar ST2500) that have a built in API that you can use to write imbedded apps in C. This is mainly for assest tracking. The compilers for these are pretty expensive. (~$2000.00)
Yes we have a system that will be availble in October, we cannot release too much data about the dish. Hughes provides the satellites and the datalink but the dish is custom for marine use. In short you can have cable modem/DSL speeds anywhere on the 7 seas.
Poseidon Digital is releasing a Hughes system and dish at the same time as the bidirectional service becomes available. It is gyro stabilized and digitally locked so it will work in very rough seas. It includes a computer system that works perfectly in the marine environment too. If you have questions you can email me at killion@poseidondigital.com.
When you are talking about sailing around a small area, usually you can find some sort of local service - but you're not. You're not even talking about making a costal run, where usually you can get pretty good service (if you hug the shore). You're talking about 2000 miles(wild guess) of open ocean ocean. To date, there has been little market for this. Anyone who is making such an extended trip is usually part of the merchant marine, a fishing vessel, or some country's navy. Satalite is the only market that covers everything.
A buddy of mine in the merchant marine is given 15 minutes of phone use every four weeks or so. This article might shed some insight to you about all of the problems you'll really face.
I'd say w/o satalite, you're SOL. I would point out though... if you can afford a sailboat and take 3 months off of work for a criuse... well splurge a little if its that important.
-nut
You say you want a revolution?
I took a 6 week long (work) trip on the Altantic last year, and INMARSAT was the only answer. But it is very expensive. In addition to the expensive INMARSAT equipment, you're going to need a stabilized antenna to keep the antenna (a small dish) pointed at the INMARSAT satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The small suitcase sized INMARSAT terminals are really meant for stable, static locations, like solid ground.
I don't know the true price of the connection, but $10.00/minute was what the ship's personnel kept chanting when I was logged on.
We had Iridium too- but I believe that the raw data rate there was only 2400 baud, but you couldn't even get that since they never let us use the data feature of the network. Iridium service was crappy at the best of times, in terms of quality, availability, and just keeping the call going.
Matt Bennett
They use the Military Satellite network which civilians do not have access to.
aem
-a.e.mossberg
If you're a thousand miles off-shore, the only radio signal that will reach land would be a shortwave radio signal, and you are limited, by law, to only transmitting at something like 300 or 1200 baud on the amateur shortwave bands (if they didn't limit it, a small group of people could quickly use up the entire shortwave spectrum doing high-speed packet, leaving no frequencies left for anybody else to use for voice or code use).
Sorry, it had to be said. ;-)
Every few days we see an "Internet access while/from something" topic. Slashdot is hurting for topics.
Technically its very possible and as a previous poster pointed out the extra costs may not be so great when compared to the rest of your fitting-out bill. I've sailed for many years and used a variety of electronic devices aboard small craft, some designed for marine use, some not. Heres some of the things to beware of.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Now I'm just as big of a geek as the next, and anytime I make a 5-minute stop somewhere I'm ssh'ing in and firing up Pine to check my mail ... but it's interesting that activities where the central point was to "get away from it all" now just mean "get away from people, but keep the net access."
Hrm. No people. Smell of fresh air. Net access. Maybe I need to take a 3-month trip on a boat after all.
"Dear Slashdot, I am not on the net when I blink. Is there anyway to give my eyelids IP addresses? Thanks."
I can't find the original Ask Slashdot that this comment appeared in, but it was something very similar to this. (Maybe the one about net access when travelling Europe?) Man, this cracks me up everytime I think about it, heheh.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Yea i can just see it now, a Pirate Warez server Farm in the middle of the Atlantic, doing nothing but serving Illegal Software. AAARRRGGGG MAYTEE. WALK THE PLANK!
--Unborracho
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Try www.sailmail.com.
You need SSB radio. It's a non profit service. You aren't going to be able to surf with it, but it works for e-mail. Stan Honey, a fairly legendary ocean racer and tech head, runs it.
John.
Anyone know of any international maritime treaties covering this?
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
That someone else thought up that pun before I did.
...bastard.
*sob*
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
they've got a heap of info up at L0pht's site here
I saw these guys at the Ft. Lauderdale boat show and their stuff looks like it will be very cool. Vaporware right now, but shipping RealSoonNow (tm). It's the kind of thing that will turn any Slashdotter's yacht into a connected pleasure palace...
Coffman Comm/Media: No computers. Ever.
Having never gone sailing, I'm not sure what kind of power is available, but is it possible to hook up to DirecTV or another provider that allows for internet access? Last I knew these only worked for download, but for some reason I'm thinking I heard about the possability for two way communication on some of the newer models. Even if she can only download, at least she can stay in contact and recieve important messages. Perhaps use that for download (and watching TV while she's at it) and use some other means for upload. Of course, the problem of keeping the dish aligned correctly would probably be the most difficult problem, and even an elaborate gyroscopic and dampening system would be marginally succesful, at best, out on the high seas...
Isn't the point of sailing/backpacking/lunar travel to get away from it all anyway? IMO, if staying in contact is of the utmost importance, a sattelite phone is the best option.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
if you can place a toll free call from the ship, pocketmail might be just the thing. I've used their devices in canada before, and they worked fine. I'm not sure what the policies are with toll free calls from a cruise ship, but it might work.
Although I'm sure that I would make for an interesting project, I'm not sure if it's worth kitting out my 10'9" Mirror with Nav quipment and net access.
Though with the range on that thing I could have a microwave link as long as I kept a LOS.
Anyone wanna help with kitting Southend Pier out with some microwave gear? It could replace the burned down bowling alley.
Geeks with boats, what will they think of next.
Liam.
--
The opinions contained in this document are in no way expressed.
As an IT guy for the Navy for the last 8 years, I can tell you that we use satellite technology for internet access. Every crewmember on nearly every ship has an email address. Most of the smaller ships get web access and all that stuff. They like to block ports for IRC and so forth as to keep mission sensitive material from leaving the ship. Not that you can't email it out, but I think they can filter email on it's way out. As for larger ships like carriers and so forth, I know they pretty much restrict everyone to just email. Most CO's, XO's, and Department Heads get full web access... These restictions are due to the fact that a carrier gets a lot of tactical data which sucks the bandwidth. But there are ways around it.. bring the right tools with you and you can get your full access. (: Most Navy IT guys only know what IT school taught them. Very few of them are 31337. Also.. we get the SIPRNET(Secret Internet Protocol Routing NETwork) on board ship, which rocks. Any of you ever surfed the classified internet?
I actually met this guy back around '86 when I was still in Jr. High. The thing I remember most was the fact that he controlled a little Radio Shack Model 100 "laptop" via two buttons (one on each handlebar grip). One button was the 0, and the other the 1. He could bike from city to city and write code and text in binary. It completly blew me away.
These days, some of the "crackly" sounds are almost gone... thanks to DSP technology in either the IF or AF (audio) modules of amateur HF receivers.
It's nice to stay in touch (over voice radio links) with people while sailing, I just want to say that several of Amateur Radio's [Digital or] Packet Radio Modes -has- connected people over long distances, typically using HF radio wave (3-30 MHz).
(It's -great- to have an on-air Amateur Radio chat going while one is (e.g. surfing_ online, if only to make the latter feel "warmer".)
Speeds are lower than the 1200 baud mentioned in another post on Amateur Radio... typically, more like 300 baud.
There's nothing to stop maritime Ham's from accessing any of the open store-and-forward Ham satellites, as they fly overhead (or even one in a geostationary earth orbit). Here, we're talking baud rates of 9600.
For more info on Amateur Radio -or- its various Digital Modes over HF, VHF or UHF radio links (local or over long distances), c f:
Source In USA (ARRL):
- http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/digital.html
Source In Australia (WIA):
- http://www.wia.org.au/links/Packet.html
(Packet Radio - apparently, a spin-off of X.25 - also has a place for TCP/IP over radio)
I am reminded of a guy who's built a high-tech bicycle + trailer combo... he has "all" flavors of computer (MacOS, UNIX-like, Windows, et al.) and radio (HF, VHF, UHF; voice, data, et al.) on board.
(For a fee - reportedly, US$ 5000, last time I read about him - he'll bring the thing to your science/technology fair or other event and explain it all to anyone who asks about it...)
Maybe there's an idea for a /. article here. ;)
Exactly. I'd rather have people from home e-mail me than call me at a hotel when I'm on vacation. That way, I can selectively chose who I want to talk to and who I want to get away from.
Globalstar is another LEO satellite phone system, but it differs from Iridium in that it: (a) offers significantly cheaper and lighter phones, and (b) is not bankrupt and deorbiting its satellites. You can get a tri-mode Analog/CDMA/Satellite phone for about $1200, and there's no reason not to expect that price to fall further. They plan to roll out internet access later this year, at [a whopping] 9600 baud. I've used the phone for voice, and it's comparable to digital cellular in clarity. A really amazing device.
Admittedly $1200 isn't cheap, but I would imagine if you're the kind of person that is on boats a lot (your own or a cruise line's) it's not a big investment. Their website is http://www.globalstar.com
Yes email via H.F. radio is being done. See the info at: http://winlink.org/k4cjx/ for more info. You do need a licensed amateur onboard though... Cheers, Larry ( VA3LDM )
Well, I've found that a tri-band world phone (readily available in the States) and a laptop work wonders -- just connect and go! (: I've never had problems connecting (then again, I tend to try connecting closer to port -- it's not often I need to connect in the middle of the ocean!).
if you don't like the system, change it.
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
- Transmit encrypted data
- Fail to identify yourself properly
If you are out of the way (i.e. the middle of the ocean) and keeping your transmissions short while comunicating with a gateway you have configured and run back on land you may get away with it.But remember, hams are very resourceful and very protective of their bands.
-Chuck
> Wouldnt work, cat cable can be a max of 100m, 300 miles is definately out!
This isn't exactly true. 10/100baseT over cat5 is limited to 100m, but 802.2 isn't the only protocol that can be run over cat5. In a lab where I work, we have ADSL running over 30,000 feet of twisted pair.
While no current flavor of DSL (that I know of) will reach 300 miles, I bet that there is a data protocol that will.
You can probably get dial tone over 300 miles of cat5. If that is the case, then a modem will do.
The US Navy Sailors have e-mail. I e-mail my brother on the USS George Washington all the time. You should ask them how they do it. heh
used to work the radio room myself, and all the companies that had email qued it and i had to dl 2 or 3 times a day. The ship would have its own lan, at least for the officers.
anyway, best bet now is either live w/o it for 5 days, or be ready to shell out 5-10 bucks a minute for access. (I thought the whole point of going to sea was to get away from it all)
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Though it's perhaps a bit beyond this particular application, check out Nomadic Research Labs. This is Steven K Roberts' page, the fellow who created his Behemoth bike years back and travelled rather widely with it.
The technomad resources list might be the most useful part of the site in this case, but overall there's a lot to explore. Steve's been doing this for years, and has been extremely willing to offer assistance to other technomads in training throughout the years.
There also exists a Technomads mailing list for those who are interested. The traffic's pretty slight, but there have been some decent discussions of the issues involved over the years, and a reasonable number of the members of the wearable community are subscribed (and ostensibly interested in the field) as well.
I often send email from the internet through a gateway to my bother on his boat. He has an imarsat system. Works really well.
I don't remember which issue, but Sail magazine did a piece on this sometime within the last year.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Isn't Jim Clark's sailboat supposed to be fully wired? Do what he did. Unless you don't have 70 million to spend on a sailboat.
I have been an arm chair sailor for most of my life. I have spent quite of bit of time and thought on this problem. Immersat-C and similiar are extremely expensive. The boat end of the station is $1200+ with some units being in the $10,000+ range. Often times on a sailboat the more expensive option is needed because it is stabilized and will comepensate for the boats heel. When I heard that some people were pushing to turn the Iridium satellites into IP network. I guess that flopped. IP Packet radio has reach speeds of up to 1.3 mbites. There is a great site with a lot of information at www.tapr.org. Hope this helps. dorzak
Well, wireless is certainly not the answer. Stay wired! Use a 500-mile extension cord and 500-mile phone cord. Sure, it may be a flaky connection, but you can't beat the price.
Well, on second thought, such a cord would be expensive, so if cost is important, you're screwed.
For those of who haven't found it yet, there was a related article posted a while back about SeaNet check it out, aparently the largest transfer they've ever done was a 22MB file in about an hour, not bad for the middle of an ocean.
I've heard good things about Sail Mail http://www.sailmail.com/. Put together by Stan Honey who is both a engineer and I beleive the current holder of the monohull singlehandle record from San Francisco to Hawaii.
Grow Up.
Take a look at http://www.sailmail.com. They may be your best bet for messages.
"Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps"
Don't rip on the Bourgeoisie, please....
I love the smell of napalm in the morning....
SHEESH.
--
--
fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
Don't worry about being anal, fiber optic cable (At least single-mode FDDI) can only go 40km, not quite the 300 miles that was originally mentioned.
imagine a boat filled to the brim with DVDs, you just cannot beat the bandwidth it gets you. yes, latency is somewhat suboptimal, but throughput is really, really amazing.
There's actually an internet protocol for just this kind of situation. I don't know of any real-world implmentations, though. See RFC 1149.
Were you planning on using ethernet on those cables? You can't use ethernet over distances of a few kilometers without a repeater.
If you traveled on a cruise ship, or stayed in a hotel, wouldn't you be pissed if there was no television? Maybe you would miss watching the news, catching a movie, or just vegging to some moldy old show.
Now imagine that the "television" is an interactive medium that you rely on for news, information, maps, human contact, etc. Not having that available would really suck. I respect someone who longs for the Net more than someone who misses the Boob Tube - it is far less "pathetic" IMO.
-L
These guys have a complete digital video solution based on Immarsat / 1394 / and DV cameras. Speeds to 384 kbs.
I assume it could do email.
http://www.tokovast.com/vast-dv/index.html
There are a couple of options, none of which seem particularly viable.
/. on a hourly basis (or every 5 minutes, if you're more like me) and have any money left over at the end of the trip.
1) Amateur radio satellite: This can be done with a modest amount of equipment, and does NOT require steerable antennas. In fact, a number of hams are running mobile satellite from their cars. It's based on LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites, and can run at 1200 baud, 9600 baud, and a few cases, a downlink of 38.4K. You can NOT pass commercial traffic, good passes are infrequent for reliable communications, most cruise ships aren't going to let you set up a station, and the equipment cost, while modest by most standards, is still going to be in the $500-$1000 range. A tad expensive for a cruise, not too bad if you plan on being out for a number of months, and can amortize it.
2) Amateur HF radio: Pretty much limited to 300 or 1200 baud, again, no commerical traffic, antennas of the required gain are going to be either too long (1/2 wave 40 meter band dipole is 66 feet), or too large (a 40 meter beam). Again, most ship operators are not going to allow you to set up a HF station on board.
3) Iridium: Burn, baby, burn! As we all well know, offline, and soon to be de-orbited. You're mom may be in a good location to see one splash, if she's lucky. Even if Iridium was up, it was extremely poor at passing data, and cost prohibitive.
4) Inmarsat: Just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I believe it was designed for exactly this kind of use. Alas, it was not designed for most mortal persons budgets. It's feasible to run Inmarsat from a non-motion compensated antenna, assuming you're sailing straight and level.
5) Cell phones: A possibility, assuming that A) the carrier in your area supports digital, or, B) you have all necessary adapters to run as with a conventional modem (and 14.4K or 9.6K is acceptable), and, C) you're close to a cell station (I've heard that some cruise lines have micro-cells with relays to land, but I've never seen one. Of course, I can't afford to go on cruises, either). Cost prohibitive is a watch word here, also.
I expect in the near future that cruise ships may have some kind of cost-effective internet access, but it's not going to be cheap. Unless the ship itself has satellite uplinks, or a commercial HF connection (which won't be fast), you're not going to be checking
This whole deal we're talking about is one of the services that commercial LEO satellite operators want to provide. Besides Mom checking e-mail in the middle of the Pacific, there are tons of other uses. Reporters in the fields, remote telemetry from oil wells, cargo vessels, small countries that can't afford to run fiber to the mud-huts, etc. Unfortunately, these same people wanted to try to take a chuck of the amateur radio spectrum to do just that. We held them off, this time around (and remember, if you think cell phones are a replacement for amateur radio in times of emergency, well, just consider how cellular towers are connected to the lines they serve. Amateur radio has time and time again been the first to provide communications for disaster areas!).
Mom's best best, on this trip, may be to use a conventional shipboard phone, and use one of those new services that can read your e-mail back over the phone (just don't use a speakerphone. It's embarassing to hear Amber tell you about her hot slutty little friends while everyone in the board room is listening...) I don't have links for any of them, but I've heard them advertising. I'm sure a good websearch will turn up exactly what you need.
There are probably several other solutions that I don't know about. And while we can all argue that any of the above methods will work, they're not practical, not cost effective, or not legal for commercial traffic (such as web browsing).
Hope this helped some.
The crown prince of Denmark just came back from pretty much crossing Greenland.
The team updated their web-based diary and sent pictures over their radios. This is distances of up to about 1000 miles, and WHILE talking on nearby frequencies.
-qabi
On one Sunday per month, me and my friends have pre-scheduled sessions in the Queen Mary's radio room to have contests to see how many contacts we can make. If you don't know, the Queen Mary is a large boat that the gay Disneyland owns and they welded the boat to a moat of large 10000 lb. rocks and are using it as a tourist area. It is pretty much an umaintained wreck now, but things change when there is a new owner. Everyone from Bob Hope to Maralyn Monroe has dined on this ship. I think CowboyNeal used it as a suiced platform, but the water wasn't shallow enough(he friggin' lived). I am not talking about a little boat that compared as a pimple on the ocean's ass, but a huge boat that I roughly estimate is 1/2 mile long, 200 ft wide, and it sits about 600ft above the water. Besides, we're a bunch of hams, as you would say, and it has a perfectly well-placed radio room that has been equipped with the latest expensive radio equipment while sporting its old bulky radio equipment just above the new stuff to campare. However, I am not just a lame-ass radio operator like everyone else plainly-is. I often experiment in radio propagation and the sort. Anyway, besides my other experiments, on the Queen Mary there is a TNC packet terminal attached to a 486 dx2/66 MHz computer system that is used for strictly packet radio communication using the AX.25 protocol. Damn them for using MS-DOS. That will change from my influence in knowing the manager. Besides the Queen Mary, A large company in southern California has a few repeaters that you can get on and they even offer a free service for you to receive packets from the internet. More specifically, they allow you 24/7 eMail access and chat via the airwaves. I am talking about the TRW building over on Marine Drive in Redondo, California. However, you must have a license to use this form of communicaion, as you would need a no-code license just to be a radio operator. Anyone who is interested in using a wireless service should pick-up a book in their local RadioShaft(RadioShack) that is titled "Now you're talking!" This book will give you all the information you need on radio operation and it will educate you on the fundumentals of electronics. Packet radio just requires you to have a TNC packet modem and a well-grounded dipole antenna. The antenna you need isn't an eye-soar, so please don't think that you need another yaggi UHF/VHF television antenna on your roof. The dipole is just like it sounds, one rod sticken' up on the roof, though you must have it at the correct wavelength for the frequency you will operate on. Packet radio is actually quite long-range. A guy I know is about 40 miles from the TRW building and he is using a 2400 baud external TNC with no problems! Best of luck to anyone interested. Packet radio is long range if you use an amplifier on both transmitting and receiving terminals. If you use an amplifier, get plenty of skip on the ionosphere, and have a nice dipole sitting on a nose-bleed tower, maybe you can route some TCP or UDP packets from your desktop to your mobile setup on your boat when you are about 1000 miles away. It is known to work. Everyone with a brain uses it. The FCC may bight your ass, but heck, go for it! It isn't a problem using an amplifier with packet radio as it would be when you use a linear amplifier on a sucky-CB Radio. You'll have about 1000ms ping with maybe some duplicated packets. Bummer on the performance meter, but usable. You'll have to use satelite phone for performance-wise. Packet radio is free. TRW offers their service for free too! Rod-Rod-ger-ger that-that-that Roa-Roa-Road-Road- Run-Run-Run-er-er-er. Those people bother like hell. That is all I hear on my CB radio, heh, not like I use it all the time. DoorMat, MudDuck, WingNut! Their ain't no doubt about it!
without prejudice
I have a friend sailing around the world with his wife and they faced this same problem a year ago. They found that the cheapest solution is to use Ham radio. Pretty much they setup an account with their harbor master (Coyote Point in the Bay Area), and brought their laptop with them on board (by the way, the laptop does a lot of other cool things. you can see everything about the ship on it!). It costs them quite a bit of money to send e-mail, so they tend to abbreviate and shorten messages quite a bit.
Now, if you have a bit of money you can invest in a satellite phone, and connect using that. Plus, with that you can get Internet access (just use that 1-800 number for your Internet provider). This will be extremely expensive, but it is possible (I would rather spend money on a nice Hotel or perhaps a nice dinner. Actually, i would buy one of those Tiki dolls that brought the Brady's bad luck).
Man, not start a flame war but your the one that is pathetic. If you don't like the subject why the hell are you wasting YOUR time reading it? And why the hell are you wasting my time (and bandwidth, as trivial as it is) bitching about it?
sig this
fiber baby! only way to go
on a serious note, I think satelite would be to only viable solution for internet on the high-sea's, of course if the IRIDIUM project had actually worked out, that would have been fine for e-mail.
Atticka
No sig here...
She can't use Iridium. However, In the Pacific she may get hit by burning Iridium parts
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
http://www.hns.com/spaceway/spaceway.htm contains a press release for Hughes' Spaceway product, coming RSN. It's basically a bidirectional DirecPC, data rate to 6Mb if you're willing to pay for it. Is uses a 66cm dish, on the same order of size magnitude as most DSS dishes. Keeping the thing pointed properly while in the water on anything smaller than a frigate is left as an exercise for the reader. :)
You can afford a wife? I'm so poor I can't afford a wife of my own - I need to do a time-share thing with the guy up the street...
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I work in the merchant marine and a number of the companies I have worked for utilize GlobeWireless (http://www.globewireless.com/agw.stm) for email deliveray aboard ships. It uses a Single Side Band Reciever connected to a proprietory card. I believe it only works under Windows the email listed on their page for sales info is sales@globewireless.com hope this helped.
Aircraft carriers also have aircraft and surface to air missiles. I wouldn't expect to find net access for the masses while at sea (not yet). How many cars have internet access thus far? Not many I would 'spect. -Dynoman7
Blarf.
when i went from vancouver to victoria i saw rj 45 connections that where labeled internet. of couse that could just be cell cause we wern't ever 2 far off land.- ---
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*.sig
I agree ... where do these idiots come from? And I consider myself a geek.
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Refer to RFC 1149 - You might be able to work a solution by applying the standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers.
Ham Radio would work. However, she wouldn't need the morse code. All she would need is the tech license to get the bands that can hit the hamsats. If she ran packet off of them (aiming will be fun on those waves, hang ten Mom!!!), she could do quite well. Land based packet radio will be difficult because of the distances involved, but theoretically could work.
I'm not sure about boats, but for long range airplanes over water, the two options are satcom or HF radio. The situation is probably similar for boats. There has been some work done reciently about HF data-links for airplanes.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
There are alot of people who live on boats and in RV's. This type of communication would be alot better than forwarding all your mail from one city to the next. Besides when I retire I will still want my /. no matter where I am!
duh. iridium.
They probably use something like this on cruise ships. http://www.intersat.com
I've tried 1.2kbps on the CB-band with TCP/IP on top of AX.25. Not exactly very fast, though.
The US Navy uses both military and commercial satellite networks. Your best bet right now is INMARSAT, but it will still cost you many dollars per minute.
I have no personal experience but the sailors aboard Northern Magic send and receive email and transact other business regularly. Perhaps you can learn from their home page http://www.instantweb.com/~normagic
--
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It's like distributed.net, but you get paid
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It's like distributed.net, but you get paid
SailMail, while "slow", works nicely. It does require an SSB radio (a good thing to have in the Middle Of Nowhere anyway), but NOT a HAM license (at least as I understand it).
Unlike, apparently, many others replying: I sailed to Hawaii (and back-- something to do... _once_) in '98. Having email was great - not only for the crew on the boat, but also (and probably more importantly) for everyone back home.
However, you do lose something of the "away at sea" mystique. Take your choice: Connected with home, or 1-2+ weeks without any news. Not sure how I will choose next time.
Work (ugh) is keeping me from racing the PacCup this year (I'm guessin' that's what we're really talking about?)... but maybe a "Sponsored By /." effort in 2002? We'd certainly have the most technologically-advanced effort. : )
Safe sailing, and wish her good luck.
Jim
You can get access over HF SSB. I have done it using SLIP over MIL-STD-188-110A and STANAG-4285 PSK HF modems which give a reasonably reliable 2400bps. You'll need a shore based proxy to hook into and you'll have to set it up yourself. The modems are available from Fredericks and Harris for something like $5K each. You need HF radios, frequency allocations and a license to use them. The USN uses these systems for intranet style access within their task groups. I'd stick with INMARSAT M - or the Amateur radio option if you are really strapped for cash.
Rent a satellite phone, and set up an account with Webley. (http://www.webley.com) Webley will allow you to dial in, listen to your e-mail (text to speech engine is surprisingly good). For replying or sending e-mail, Webley will convert your voice message to a .ra file and forward to your designated recipient as an attachment.
I read your article in slashdot with some interest and was amused by the
responses which range from fairly good to ridiculous. As far as I know, not
one is truly "out there"! The nearest I could find was the guy who had a
buddy who sent him email via win-net (www.win-net.org). That is the best
solution and works world wide, but someone on the boat would have to have a
General class ham license. As of April 15, 2000 the requirements are: 5wpm
Morse and 3 tests on radio technology and rules. The tests are 1 for each
ham license level BTW. See www.arrl.org for complete details and exam schedules worldwide. You do NOT have to be a US citizen or even a resident to get a US ham license, you merely need a mailing address with a US Zipcode.
First, you are quite correct in assuming the satellite solution is
expensive, an Inmarsat D terminal costs around $5K installed and has a
subscription of around $50/month plus a per character charge. Great if you
are running a business or a shipping line, but a lot for individuals who really just want to tell "Aunt Martha" that things are OK.
We have lived aboard for 6 years and are currently in Australia, having
sailed here from Florida. We have circled the Caribbean and crossed the
entire Pacific under sail. We have had voice communication via Marine SSB
and ham radio the whole time, and HF email on board for the past year. I am
an Extra class ham (AA4MW), an ARRL Acredited Volunteer Examiner and have
been a ham since 1961. My wife currently holds an Advanced ham license
(KI7IY).
You didn't state whether the trip was a one time passage or the start of a
long term cruising lifestyle. For genuine cruising information go to:
http://www.ssca.org/
Another good source of real information is http://www.latitude38.com/
Latitude 38 is THE "gossip rag" of the West Coast, and makes interesting
reading when you are away!
For information on the win-net client software (i.e. mail software) go to:
http://www.airmail2000.com/index.htm
The software is free for amateur use and works very well. There are
excellent instructions that come with it.
I suggest the PTC2e TNC controller, which allows up to approx 150 characters/sec
through a 300 baud connection.
For more details see: http://www.scs-ptc.com/
There are a bunch of links to radio manufacturers on these pages, all of
them produce good radios for the amateur market. Get the "low end" version of one of them
since they are simpler and she would never use the more advanced features.
We have used a Kenwood TS-50 for 6 years now with no problems. This radio
has the advantage that it is the size of the average CB or VHF marine radio,
but transmits over the entire HF bands with 100 watts. It has all of the features you need built in, and is simple to operate.
There are a bunch of excellent Ham Gear dealers around, but I have dealt
with AES http://www.aesham.com/ by mail order for over 30 years now with
absolutely no complaints. Tell them what you need and they will give you
good advice.
Mike Waters
Yacht ICHI, Mooloolaba Australia
Web site: http://members.xoom.com/aa4mw/
Clearly none of you have ever been on an ocean passage with a small boat (under 500 ft is SMALL out on the ocean!).
... YOU get to handle the situation.
Being able to yell for help is a matter of survival if something goes wrong. For 3 weeks or so YOU as Captain are the paramedics, fire dept, police dept. etc., etc. No matter how sick someone gets or how beligerant, or
One of the nastiest pages in my notes from the courses I took preparing for our trip is two pages on burial at sea! Since I am alone out here with my wife, that is definitly NOT something I want to have to use.
Email (NOT full net access!) is one way to stay in touch with the outside world and to remind yourself that the world doesn't consist of a lumpy blue horizon! Likewise a regular schedule ensures that someone out there knows if you dissapear. There is no place in the world as bad being adrift in a lifraft at sea watching your supplies dwindle away.
Two cents worth from one who has been doing this for 6 years and sailed from Florida to Australia.
Mike
Yacht ICHI
See our website: www.xoom.xom/aa4mw/
B, M and mini-M are all digital services offered by Inmarsat through their "signatories". In the US you'd probably go through Comsat, although you can connect to most any supplier (BT and Telstra are the biggest). B offers toll-quality voice plus 9600 bps fax and data, and also a high-speed data service (64 kbps). M and mini-M use high-compression codecs so the voice quality is not as good - recognizable but clearly codec-y, and highly specialized for voice (music sounds like crap over the M and mini-M codecs but fine over B). Inmarsat-B is a really expensive solution, both the phone and the air time are costly. B is mostly for commercial shipping or for rich guys. If you go Inmarsat for personal marine use you'll want M, which offers 2.4 kbps data. mini-M has cheaper and lighter terminals than M and about the same quality of service (including 2.4 kbps data), but they don't offer a marine version. I believe the marine version of mini-M is in the pipe, not sure when the service will be available. You could probably make a mini-M phone work on a boat but it would have to be a calm day as they don't have the marine antennas with the radome. I think a mini-M phone is on the order of $US 2-3K, plus you can expect a couple bucks per minute air charges. M phones are more, don't have current pricing. Personally I'd want the satphone not so much for connectivity as safety issues. The maritime models of B and M support distress signalling (push a button and you're connected to the maritime distress centre, which can save your ass). I know all this stuff because our company builds a lot of stuff for Inmarsat services, including the gateways used by Telcos and the overall control systems used by Inmarsat. Neil Gendzwill SED Systems
"Connection reset by pier"
my mom uses a laptop/gsm cell phone combination on her boat. i tried to find something else, but relized its either - too complicated (using the radio is possible, but *very* complicated) - too expensive (satelite phone) - too big (pc with wintv dbs for satelite access is a workable solution) since she is only sailing the mediterrean sea, cell phones work sort of, as long as you can see the coast :)
I dont know where you'd get a liscense for this, but surface waves (across the sea) can carry huge distances.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Now that the clueless have chimed in, here's how my sailing partner keeps in touch while off-shore:
**********
NOTICE: Mail to the sender of this message is via a
(slow) radio link. PLEASE be brief and send only PLAIN TEXT.
Consult the help file for your EMail program for information
on how to send Plain Text messages.
Also DO NOT copy the sender's messsage text back to them.
Processed by Amateur Radio Station W4NPX, w4npx@sprynet.com
using NetLink (c) 1996-99, W5EUT, KN6KB
For Help - http://www.win-net.org
Check it out.
Ciao,
David A. Bandel
Next up, you can build a system that conforms to the TCP/IP over Homing Pidgeon protocol, which has been defined by the IETF and is available as an RFC.
Third up, you -could- use amateur radio. It's pricey and interference is likely to be high right now (high sunspot count), but the speed's not really going to be -that- much faster than the other two options.
Lastly, for a REALLY good connection, load up the vessel with a tightly-wound reel of optic fibre. Plug the other end into a DSL or cable connection, and lay cable as you sail. You should get the full speed of the ISP's connection, that way.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Note that, although this seems like a fantastic idea, airtime is bone-crunchingly expensive - I think it's something like $ 0.10 a character (!). Even Inmarsat is cheaper than that.
D
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I knew someone who had satellite access via Inmarsat B. He had a 120' motor yacht he was running on an open-ended round the world cruise. Since he and his wife are gregarious people, they financed the whole thing by chartering out the parts of the boat (little ship, really) they didn't use. You could go with them for some $45,000 a week all-inclusive. Amazingly enough, that is actually a bargain rate for the services they offer - check out http://www.cnconnect.com/ for some of the ghastly rates charged by other charter firms (normally not all-inclusive).
:-(.
I think it's a reasonable statement to make that money is not a significant problem for those folks. They quite happily paid $9 a minute for their 56k Inmarsat B connection, which gave them trouble-free live Internet access. They told me the equipment cost is about $50,000, at least when they had it installed.
Of course they absolutely hated spam. Can you imagine downloading a 50k Make Money Fast message at $ 9 / minute? They wound up doing it all the time.
A very nice couple, very friendly. I think they were run off USENET by some of its less friendly denizens, which is why I haven't heard from them in an age
Unless things have changed significantly in the year or so ago since I've heard from them, Inmarsat B equipment is extremely bulky and heavy and can't be carried on vessels under 100'. This is a huge and expensive boat, making it cost-prohibitive for most sailors even if the cost of the equipment itself wasn't already.
If my memory serves, the suitcase-sized stuff is either C or Mini-M with maximum data rates in the slug-like 2400-9600bps range.
Telephone services via SSB were all but shut down a few months ago, which was probably no big loss since the satellite-based systems are both cheaper to use (SSB phone service was billed out at $5/minute!) and more reliable. I don't think SSB is a good long-term bet.
D
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Sadly, I don't remember the name of the company, but they were working out of South Florida if my memory serves. It looked like a really cool concept.
D
----
There are HAM band packet radio systems in excess of 56k last I checked.
The bigger problem, I'd think, is obtaining the appropriate license to operate said device.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Actually it's a question of national security. They don't want spies communicating over amateur radio. It sounds a bit silly today but there are still many countries that keep a close watch on amateur radio activity. Some limit it to officially authorized club stations where it can be supervised. Amateur radio in the USA was shut down during World War II.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
but this was sposed to be one of Irridium's neato factors. You could access data from anywhere on the planet including the ocean. Now Irridium is just crashing into the ocean. The only solution I can think of is get your mom a Tech or General license so she can bouce RTTY signals off AMSATs. Doing RTTY whilst on the road is a great thing if you can manage it. It might be a little slow but if mom is just getting text she might do ok. Has she though of just taking a train though?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Hmmm...
This is an oddly appropriate question, given that Hawaii was the birthplace of the first wireless data network, ALOHA Net, which was developed at the university of hawaii.
I think he was actually bitching about my comment. Not yours. I've been looking at using packet radio equipment in my car for simple messaging and email and the last I checked, everything I said in my comment was true.
Who cares anyway? It's not the real Bruce Perens, just some loser troll. Plus, he's moderated to -1 anyway.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Keep in mind that it is illegal to use encryption over Ham radio airwaves, you cannot use it for work either. Anyone can legally sniff and listen to any data that goes over the Ham radio frequencies.
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Check out this link on how to do it WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS. I'm not sure of the legality in the US, not to mention they claim a range of only 45 clicks.
In fact, as you move up in the boating hierarchy the owners are more likely to have laptops and desire remote access, and as already pointed out, cell phones suck and satellite is too expensive.
Idea: T1 to a marina running a moderately powerful server (cobalt, linux, etc) providing wireless access to an area covering roughly a few acres. Provide wireless lan pcmcia cards to users...Premium rates would probably apply ($30/month?). The folks I've talked to would be happy to pay it!
Ethernet was a direct descendant of the alohanet protocols. The first ethernet was a 3Mbps implementation of aloha, contained on a thick coax cable with terminators at each end, and each machine was assigned a callsign in what are now destination and source addresses. The original project was to simulate a number of radio stations, without actually transmitting, hence the name ethernet to indicate the coax was simulating the ether.
When BBN was developing IP, they looked at alohanet and liked what they saw. So many of the problems worked out by radio amateurs working across a "1 transmitter, many listener, non-reliable transmission" network were incorporated into IP.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Alright let's clear this up. International waters does not mean that you can do whatever you please. It simply means that you can't interfere with a ship from another country. [example] if the ship was from Great Britian it could go were ever it wants in international waters. As soon as it enters a countries waters though it is subject to inspection, boarding, etc. [/example] The ship is still held to the laws of the country it is registered in. So if the boat is registered in America then it would be considered part of America and would be held to it's laws but couldn't interfere with anyone else in international waters except under very certain circumstances (time of war, etc).
1. remote and obscure location(s)
2. what you do every day
3. a whiz-bang internet gadget
4. expensive internet service
5. signifacant other
I have been swamped at work lately, 2., and feel totally burnt out. So I figured I needed a vacation. So, this summer, myself and 5. are going to 1. to get away from it all. However that will leave me without internet access. Without internet access I will be stranded, unable to do 2. Does anybody have any ideas? I mean, I could use 3. with 4., but is that necessary?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I had a friend (who may very well read this, and want to speak for himself,) who worked on a research ship in the Pacific a year or two ago. Whenever they needed net access, they just dropped a cable down and plugged into the trans-oceanic lines that sit on the ocean floor. Nice and fast, if you don't mind being tethered to one place.
No, this is not a terribly useful suggestion for most people. And yes, it is possible that this guy was putting me on, although he swore he was serious.
MSK
There are a number of emailham radio bridges operated by yacht clubs for boaters.
Contact the clubs in the area of your home port for more info. (Please don't contact them unless you plan to actually use it for offshore boating - the clubs have limited resources, so we'd ruin it for real users by slashdotting them out of curiosity.)
You can use an off-the-shelf ham TNC and your boat's longwave radio. (You don't have a longwave? Well GET one if you're going offshore! Longwave licenses for boaters are easy to get, and your boat's HF is line-of-sight, so it quits once you're over the horizon from land.)
They must be used sparingly - it's a single 1200 baud channel (further degraded by by the protocol's handshaking turnarounds), shared by everybody using that bridge (which essentially means everybody in that part of the ocean).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
[Weather reports] can make the difference of crossing on your 40' Hunter or your 10' life raft.
Especially if you're chosing a Hunter to take offshore. B-)
Sorry, couldn't resist. My wife the marine-architecture fan has a LOT to say about Hunters.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is it also available on land - say in valleys surrounded by mountains and far from an ISP's POP?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ok.. Internet access is tough get in out of the way places, but if E-Mail is all you want, you have several options:
SailMail, PinOak, or other SSB EMail: You'll need a Single Side Band reciever and a terminal node modem (a fancy accoustic modem) PinOak and several other companies provide SLOW email over the SSB airwaves for a low fee. If free (like beer, and kinda like speech) is what you want, look at SailMail. A network of volunteer HAM radio buffs around the world and a handful of free windows software make up a pretty good free solution
Satelite: Garmin's GSC-100 is a dandy little handheld GPS/Satelite EMail Gadget. Ususally theyre around $1000 but Garmin is selling them off for $99 plus like 3 years service. Check out West Marine and they'll hook you up (Yes, I work there). There are also some more expensive, larger satelite solutions like C-Sat which can also provide phone and data calls (At like $2/min!) but those require a greater starting cost.
Feel free to email me if you have questions!
http://chrismetcalf.net
Use Iridium, it works anywhere in the world.
Think about it - what would be happening that would be so urgent as to require your immediate response? And if there is something like that, then what the hell are you doing out sailing?
I'm just as much as a technofreak as the next person, but when I go out on the water or into the woods, it's to get relief from the email or the pager.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
Seriously, you have two realistic options: Inmarsat and cellular. Either way you're using a modem and getting a slow connection. Inmarsat is expensive, as in an investment that becomes part of the boat. Probably beyond your vacation budget. As some others have speculated, I can confirm that this is what the Navy uses for unclassified Internet email on all but its largest ships. Alternatively, Cellular is probably the most cost-effective and easy to use option. The downside is the range is limited to about 10-15 miles offshore, depending on conditions. You will want to use a marine-grade cell phone, rather than a hand-held, in order to get the best range. You can probably rent one of these.
Even more seriously, doesn't email sort of defeat the whole purpose of sailing as a vacation?
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
The answer is pretty straight forward - Inmarsat.. Depending on the solution (or actually the cost, as allways...) You can get in touch with e-mail, the internet in general, god, your mom etc... Check www.eik.com for further info. We use it on our boat in the cheap version and it is all :-) to *8-). You even get weather forcasts..
The more alternatives, the more difficult choices.....
A service like Inmarsat is a better deal for data as they charge by the minute. Most of the research ships I have been out on use Inmarsat for Net access. Some of the ship use Inmarsat when offshore but switch to cell phone when close to shore.
Globalstar is another possibility (www.globalstar.com). They have a medium earth orbit satellite network (a somewaht less ambitious version of Iridium) but due to licensing issues they only offer service in the Pacific out to the 200 mile limit. This situation probably won't change until someone builds a downlink in Hawaii.
Personally, if I were sailing to Hawaii, I would just relax and enjoy the ride -- sometimes it's good to be out of touch ...
--
Mike
If you're having trouble with this, maybe you should be running a more appropriate networking protocol. Actually, Microsoft has made a fine contribution to this field... netBUOY.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
SatCom is probably your only real choice for E-mail. Expensive? Yes. But it works. Check out the Singlehanded round the world racers. Not long ago a fantastic rescue was performed in the South Pacific when a racer was rolled and dismasted. Her rescuer was alerted to her trouble and given her location....by E-mail. I'd check out with the orginizers of the event. I'm sure they'd be more helpful than the people here are being, and more understanding of why you might want to do this. There are a lot of valid reasons for having E-mail access on a private boat. Safty is just one of them. So everybody take off their holier than though geek hats and stop flaming this person who is just looking for help. Jesus, no wonder nobody likes geeks.
These would be pretty useless to browse the web, though... AFAIK, they're just for relaying messages.
The . at the end of the name should have tipped you folks off.
Ha makes it a valid point, one that I've echoed above. Why so defensive?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
(excuse the Chandler impression)
I don't know about you but when I go sailing I don't want to be bothered with the "real" world. I guess this is good for some people but I don't need access to the internet 24/7.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
A few years ago, I had the privelege to do one of the coolest consulting gigs of my career. The job was for a global oil company that ships more oil than anyone else, and was very concerned about minimizing environmental damage and having the right command and control structures in place instantly in the event of a spill. Here are a few tips based on that experience:
We wound up using an Inmarsat phone by Magnavox (back then only Magnavox and NEC were *seriously* in that business, but Nera and Thrane & Thrane seem to aim more at the serious marine market now.) Inmarsat is rather expensive, but other than the protocol performance problems inherent in the horrible latency to geosynchronous orbit, it works reliably. Prices have come *way* down from the $17/minute of a few years ago to monthly fees of a few dozen dollars plus airtime of $2-5/minute.
The Magnavox phone we used had a folding parabolic antenna which had great response, but was finicky w.r.t. alignment. Many of the newer (and lower cost) phones use multiple phased array antennae which are much better suited to a smallish boat - you don't want to be trying to keep an antenna pointed straight at the bird while on the seas in a rocking boat! You get what you pay for here. There are some decent entry-level phones that are compact, easy-to-use, and affordable, but they often have data rates of around 2400 bps! 64 kbps phones have been out since late last year.
Also, pay atention to how you get connected to the Net on the ground end. I've heard (second-hand) that the Dutch PTT has good Internet access and competitive rates.
Make sure the computers on both ends have RFC 1323 (the LFN RFC) compliant TCP/IP stacks. This makes a *huge* difference in the way your machine will handle geosync latencies! Most modern machines will have this feature by now, but if it's missing on either end, you'll see big performance problems.
Inmarsat is probably still the best bet for a boat because you get voice and data and they're on pretty much every ship in the world, which can be handy for checking weather, etc. from your neighbors. (Learn the wetiquette for this before spamming folks at high connect charges!)
Iridium would have been a good choice, but sadly, they're gone. Globalstar is still an option, and one that might work for you, but despite their name, they're not global yet, so coverage may be an issue. Globalstar phones though, have the advantage of being seriously multimode: Globalstar satellite, AMPS analog cellular, CDMA Digital, or the crude, brain-frying GSM. These could save a lot of money near shore, if roaming doesn't bite you worse than satellite time!
Good luck. I'm envious of anyone heading out to sea...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Obviously, the best person to ask this question of is Hagbard Celine. Of course, they're looking for a sailing solution, and he uses a submarine.... Might not work out quite right.
Lots of people have email on boats now, it really is the best way to stay in touch at sea.
:-]
There are two ends to your problem, the boat end and the land end. You'll need to have radio gear on land, turned on 24/24, 7x7. Given how crowded the HF bands are these days, its not practical to set up your own landside transceiver. There is no way to connect to a dialup ISP these days by tunneling through a radio connection, so abandon that idea now. But there are many boater email services available, a few are linked below.
Satellite gear is expensive, ignore it if you can. It is all high-latency 1200 or 2400 baud packet transmissions, and you end up using the providers email service, and they aren't in the email business. You can't really use satellite phones to make modem calls to any ISP, but if you get desperate set up a 110/300 baud FSK modem on a phone line at home with UUCP on a linux box.
I would assume the boat is already equipped with a good HF radio. If not, then start shopping for a higher end radio with computer control designed to integrate with laptop computers and an SSB HF modem. Read a few boating mags, and a few amateur radio mags for reviews, and search deja for other reports.
In addition to a good HF rig, you'll need a good HF modem. Look at kantronics website for starters.
Get your mother trained up on HF radio operations. There is no easy shortcut when you are 1000 miles from the nearest land. It is as important as learning how to sail and basic emergency procedures.
No matter which route you go, it will be necessary to have a server landside to store the email and filter out spam whenever possible, and to intercept messages containing large attachments. Keep the email address off the internet, don't post it prominently on a web page, or post to usenet from it, or spam will follow. Give it out only to those who your mother wants to communicate with, and send out an explanitory email to her friends not to try to send pictures or big attachments.
The link will be between 300 and 1200 baud, so plan accordingly. But any modern HF gear can run in unattended mode, so picking up email can happen over a period of hours.
There are a bunch of commercial email gateway services to boaters.
Check out Message Center , Mobile Marine Radio , the HF on Board guys are cool for DIY, and globe wireless are expensive but reliable.
Disclaimer, I've used globe, they work but you'll still need to know what you are doing on the boat end. And they cost a lot of money. And they don't have any spam filtering, since they make about $2 to $5 per message transferred.
Test out the service for at least a month before heading off to sea. Try it on a shakedown voyage as well. No sense on spending all that money and time just to haul a bunch of useless equipment to hawaii.
the AC
[ I'm jealous as can be, now my day is shot thinking of sailing to hawaii
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Not the quickest or most effective but traditional.
A new protocol for the previous generation (maybe I should RFC it)
1) Place a disk into a bottle, this should be an automatic email reader that encodes the recieved data an puts it into a file.
2) Put bottle in sea
3) Wait
4) When bottle is recovered the recoveree will place the disk in their online computer and the program will store all the current emails onto the disk.
5) Replace disk in bottle
6) Put bottle in sea
7) Pick up bottle, decrypt and read email
Error correction is left to the user.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Orbcomm makes a satellite based internet relay network. It is burst-message based, so it can't be used for telnet sessions, or other sessions that require low latency. E.G., you can't play quake...
However, the orbcomm units are perfect for email, ICQ, and other message services that are very burst oriented, and don't care what the latency is.
So, if you are looking for something that can do email, and is in a reasonable price range.. try Orbcomm.
Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
-----
Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe.
Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
-----
Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe
Actually, it is alot easier than this, because seawater is an excellent conductor. All you really need to do is leave your phone line dipped in the ocean before you leave, and plug into the Pacific on the other side. But watch out for Aqua-Boxers; they might use your phone to set up a party line while they are on cruise.
I know folks into amature radio can get internet connections pretty much anywhere. Connections are 1200 baud, and it is shared, so don't expect much. Web browsing is out, but email can work.
Note that my information is a bit old in this area. I used to know one of the admins for the Minneapolis amature radio IP network, but that was a few years ago and I've since lost touch. Seems like someone in this crowd would have a solution though.
...you can take a big box, fill it with lots of MP3s and run the world's first real pirate MP3 server...
We went on a New Years cruise on the Norwegian Sky and it had an Internet cafe and in room access (via a fake dialup to an on-ship extension). It is EXPENSIVE and slow, but it works.
I know this was the first ship with access, but supposedly most cruise lines are now putting it in the older ships as well.
It was funny to be checking mail in the Internet cafe and have people ask the help guy why they couldn't connect to AOL and what was the local number out there. Maybe AOL should consider putting some POPs on bouys. :)
Several friends out there sailing (mostly cruising in the Carribean, Bahamas, and along the south and east coasts of the US) use PocketMail http://www.pocketmail.com/ . Unfortunately, this is a send/receive you email from a fixed telephone land line solution. Other options are: ham radio with a TNC (this runs at 300 baud and is limited to non-commercial application), a commercial 'portal' using SSB and Clover modulation techniques (this is generally charged by the character transmitted), a cell phone with a digital interface to your PC if you are close to shore, or one of the satellite products.
Being a bit of a chinch mite, I'd opt for the pocketmail solution, you just have to wait to do email until you get to shore.
Additionally, they would have to learn to understand Morse Code at a rate of 5 words per minute (in order to get Shortwave privileges, which would probably be necessary for getting email in the middle of the ocean).
If you are interested in getting more information about becoming an amateur, go to:
http://www.arrl.org/hamradio.html
For information about digital wireless communication over amateur radio go to:
http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/pktf.html
There are only three things I know of that work well from a boat in blue water:
:-)
1. Satellite comms, preferably Inmarsat or some other well established crowd with geostationary sats. Yes, it's expensive, but kitting a boat out for that kind of voyage is _really_ expensive anyway, so maybe another grand or so won't hurt. Check out:
http://www.inmarsat.com/suppliers/index.html
Inmarsat-B may be the one - 56kb modem equiv, fits in a suitcase.
2. SSB radio, but I've never heard of anyone running digital comms over it. And it depends on weather conditions how far it goes. But, it's nice to be able to hear real live crackly voices 1000 miles from land...
3. Set off the EPIRB and when the come to rescue you tell them you're fine but could they send this message for you?
What boat is being used here? Are they looking for crew?!
-----
There is one quite amazing guy -- calls himself a technomad -- that seems intent on building for himself (and his current girlfriend) a human- (or wind-) powered mobile home jam-packed with electronics. He started with a bike, switched to trimaranish kayak, then to a big almost-blue-water trimaran, then back to a canoe-based small trimaran. The site is called www.microship.com and there are, basically, work diaries online -- makes for very interesting reading.
I think that of all people he should be the most knowledgeable about the issue of 'net access from the middle of nowhere. There may even be information on his site -- plenty of stuff there.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
A while back a couple sailed around the world and recorded their trip through the Houston Chronicle newspaper's web site. All the stuff is still up at the At Sea site and if you take a look at the FAQ I think you'll see they sent and recieved e-mail via Inmarsat-C satellite transmission. BTW I coded up the mapping from open-source tools -- gnuplot and perl :)
You will need:
1 Wire cutters
1 RJ45 crimper
1 foot of electrical tape
300 miles of CAT5 cable
First, locate the underwater cable running to Hawaii. Use the wirecutters to strip to pierce the shielding and strip the end of your CAT5. Use the electrical tape to splice into the cable. Use the crimper to put an end on the CAT5. Now you can sail anywhere within ~300 miles of your splice. For longer distances, use a longer cable.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
On the satellite side, there is exactly one product on the market. I don't remember the name or mfgr, but you can find them in any boating gear catalog. This is a small, self-contained unit with a small keyboard and LCD display. They go for about a grand, plus you need to subscribe to service and pay per message. Not cheap, but I hear they work quite well.
The other, and much more common, option is HF/SSB/Marine Radio. Any ocean-going vessel will (or should) have a SSB radio, although you need a fairly decent radio and a good antenna for data use. If you have a General (or better) class amateur radio license, then your choice is simple: WinLink 2000 http://winlink.org/k4cjx/ is pretty much the defacto standard for amateur radio internet email. Yes, the software runs under 'doze, but it is free, and the service is also free, run by fellow ham operators.
If you do not have a General Class license and are operating on Marine SSB frequency bands, there are a number of commercial solutions that work just the same as WinLink. Unfortunately, they are not cheap, and none of them provide service any where near as good as the amateur WinLink setup.
In either case, (Marine/commercial or Amateur/Ham) you will need a radio modem to sit in-between your laptop and your radio. Which one you get will be determined by which service you use. If you go with a commercial provider, they will tell you what unit to use. If you use WinLink, there are many more options, all well documented on k4cjx's web site.
Also, if you are serious about this, I *highly* recomend that you take at least two laptops with you and that someone on board knows how to re-install both of them. Yes, your laptop will get fried, so make sure that you have an extended service policy on it! Why? I guarantee that someone will start the engine, start the anchor windless, or kick in the wind generator while the laptop is plugged in, sending a nasty spike through the electrical system and frying your laptop, or at the very least scrambling memory and corrupting the disk. Keying up 1KW on your HF radio can also do nasty things to your laptop as well.
BTW, I spent nine months as a live-aboard in the carribean, so I know all these issues only too well. If anyone wants more info, I'd be happy to provice all the gory details...
-p.
I can just see it now...
"Warning, unable to connect: Connection reset by pier"...