T&T: The connected boat...

[Jeffrey Siegel]

On Wednesday, November 1st, we completed the first half of our cruise from
the Penobscot Bay in Maine to New Bern, North Carolina. It took us five
weeks and one day to travel the thousand or so nautical miles although we
took our time in the Chesapeake and explored there for three weeks. During
this time I made extensive recordings and analysis of internet connectivity
at marinas and at anchor. My hardware includes:

- WiFi: Buffalo USB to 12 dB omnidirectional antenna
- WiFi: Orinoco Gold card to 12 dB omnidirectional antenna
- WiFi: Dell Latitude internal WiFi without external antenna
- Cellular: Wilson GSM wired amplifier to Shakespeare omnidirectional
antenna

I have cellular amp cables for the Treo 650 and Nokia 6682. Both phones
allow me to also connect to the PC's to give them internet access. I'm using
a Cingular plan with unlimited data connectivity. The unlimited plan allows
me to have internet connectivity 24 hours a day, if desired, with no
additional charges. I believe it costs $25/month.

We stayed at marinas about 30% of the time overall and most of our marina
time was in the Chesapeake. All of my connectivity data is skewed to
non-marina use especially in New England.

My general finding is that WiFi isn't worth the effort of all the special
hardware any longer. This is a sad conclusion. I've been using much of this
WiFi hardware over the last three years with stellar success in the
beginning. As time has marched on the success has fallen to unacceptable
levels (from my perspective). I believe that there are only two reasons
(maybe three) to install and use amplified WiFi hardware:

- You want access to WiFi connectivity at your home marina with known access
points and the ability to connect to them.

- You plan on spending most of your time in marinas.


The third possible reason is that, maybe, WiFi access is better along the
southeast US coast or Bahamas. I'll be testing that starting next March.

In general, if I was able to connect to a WiFi site reliably (a key word
here) using my high gain antenna, I was also able to connect without the
antenna using the internal WiFi hardware on my Dell Latitude. I was never
once able to use my high gain WiFi antenna to connect to an unprotected,
non-commercial access point. Not once! Two years ago I was able to connect
about 50% of the time (generally private homes). I believe that most people
with WiFi have gotten scared and now protect their sites. I was able to see
many sites out there. It just wasn't possible to connect to them.

My story isn't all bad. In fact, my "connected boat" experience during the
last five weeks has been the best experience that I've ever had with being
connected on the water. Where WiFi has fallen off, cellular has picked up
the ball with amazing results.

I maintained a continuous internet connection WHILE UNDERWAY from Maine to
North Carolina except in one 25 mile spot. This included sections where I
was offshore:  Maine (3-10 miles), Boston (12 miles), Long Island (10
miles), New Jersey (4-5 miles). The only dead zone that I experienced was
along most of the Alligator-Pungo Canal in North Carolina. It's amazing to
consider that I maintained a reliable internet connection offshore of
downeast Maine and yet couldn't even get a voice signal while surrounded by
land in North Carolina. OK, it was only for 25 miles but it was very
noticeable.

I found that having a continuous internet connection at the helm and at
anchor made a big difference in a variety of ways:

- Weather: We never listened to NOAA weather on the VHF. Never. I've always
hated having to wait around for your section to come up on the radio while
they tell you about the number of degree days used in the last month and
other non-marine things. Instead, internet access gave me direct links to
the specific NOAA releases that I was interested in. We got used to knowing
when the releases were made for each of the areas we were in and would
generally have the latest data within 30 minutes of NOAA publishing it. I
had access to this data directly on the phone and on our computers. Having
phone access meant that we could check weather quickly while waiting in
lines or at restaurants and plan our next leg comfortably.

- Email: It used to be that I would have to answer my business emails after
dinner when we were anchored. With continuous access, I would reply to
emails right from the helm (where appropriate). There are many hours where
full attention isn't required at the helm. It was wonderful to handle all of
my business requirements then. I never had to stay up late to answer any
emails.

- Marina data, town information, web access: While cruising to our next
destination, we'd look up the town we were going to and learn everything we
could from their web sites. Almost every town has a web site today showing
upcoming events, businesses, etc. We would have never known about
Chestertown's Wildlife Weekend had it not been for their web site. Because
we accessed it, we were there for it. We used Weather Underground
extensively for land-based weather to help us figure out what it would be
like at our land destinations.

- Blog creation: We averaged about 50 people a day reading our blog. I know
about 10 people back home who were looking at it. It's odd to think that
there are 40 others looking at it on a daily basis. Still, it was fun to do
and kept us connected to friends and family in a much different way than
during any other cruising we've ever done. It also created a super diary for
ourselves.


All in all, this was the most connected cruising we've ever done. We had
access every day (a first) including every anchorage and at every marina. In
fact, except for about 3 hours, we had continuous access continuously!

I'll do more experiments as we head south next year.


...Jeff

================
Jeffrey Siegel
M/V aCappella
DeFever 53PH
W1ACA/WDB4350
Castine, Maine