T&T: E-mail at Sea 101 and 102 (Long)

[Milt Baker]

Thanks, Georgs.  Ibm afraid I donbt have a broad view of e-mail at sea,
but I can report what works aboard Bluewater.  I donbt suggest for a moment
that my way of doing it is the only way or the best way, but it works for me!
If  others know of faster, better or less expensive ways to use e-mail at sea,
letbs hear from them.

For inshore U.S. waters I use Verizonbs b
Mobile Webb
 with a Verizon V620
aircard which connects to the Internet at b
broadbandb
 speeds. This is
entirely satisfactory, though the speeds vary depending on signal strength.
East of Boothbay, ME, and in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas we find the
service spotty to non-existent, but generally as long as webre within a few
miles of shore we have a usable signal.  My cell service is also with Verizon,
and the monthly charge for the b
Mobile Webb
 service is $59.99 plus the
usual taxes.

I also make it a point to use Wi-Fi when available because itbs often faster
than b
Mobile Web.b
.  Wi-Fi was a lifesaver for our five months in
Venezuela where the Internet connections were few and slow and using Iridium
for all e-mail would have been quite expensive.  Likewise our month in
Bermuda.

When offshore or away from both Wi-Fi and Verizon service, for e-mail I use
the combination of Iridium and Ocens.net.  My Iridium service is with Stratos
(www.stratosglobal.com) with minutes purchased from Andy Cool at Explorer
Satellite (www.explorersatellite.com) and it now costs $1.35/minute (no taxes
or other charges) purchased in prepaid 500-minute blocks good for one year.  I
use an old model brick-sized Motorola 9500 Iridium phone mounted in a Motorola
9570 docking station.  The docking station will also accommodate the newer,
smaller, faster Motorola 9505 phones.  If I were doing it from scratch today,
Ibd buy a 9505 and a docking station.

The docking station provides a neat and tidy permanent installation, using an
external antenna and an integral dataport.   The docking stations are no
longer made, and they are hard to findbdonbt believe what you see on the
Internet when you Google for them because most companies listing them do not
actually have them in stock.   Youbll probably have to settle for a used or
refurbished one.  Explorer Satellite had some in stock a few months ago.  If
you donbt mind a klunky package involving the phone, antenna, and power
cord, you can make do with a much less expensive data port in place of the
docking station but take it from me: itbs not pretty or handy to use!

For e-mail, I use Ocens Mail from Ocens.net (www.ocens.net), billed as b
the
fastest, most reliable e-mail . . . allows you to use your current e-mail
software to cost effectively send and receive e-mail over satcomm services.b

Pricing as shown on the Ocens website is: $59.00 one-time signup fee plus
three months for $72.00, 6 months for $120.00, or 12 months for $220.  Ibve
found this to be a very good value!  When you sign up, you receive an
ocens.net e-mail addressbmine is: bluewater@ocens.net

With the Ocens e-mail account, I have chosen to limit incoming e-mails to 50K;
anything larger goes into my b
bigmailb
 mailbox at Ocens and I receive a
short e-mail saying that an e-mail greater than my limit has arrived in the
mailbox from (sender) and is being held for disposition.  I can choose to
download it or hold it until another convenient time when I might have a
faster connection.

As noted in Sat Phones 101, the software used by Ocens was written by Luis
Soltero, a former cruising sailor.  From all I can see from a userbs
perspective, Luis has done a fine job of creating bullet-proof software that
takes maximum advantage of the slow data rates available on satphone
connections.  Ocens Mail was written specifically to reduce the number of line
turnarounds while using compression to increase upload/download speed. Its
proprietary e-mail protocol eliminates line turnarounds by sending large
compressed streams of data to Ocensb server. The server unpacks the data
stream and then, to actually send the mail, carries out the SMTP (Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol), the standard for e-mail transmissions across the Internet.
Receiving mail uses the same wireless-enhanced technology. All incoming mail
is collected by the server, then packaged into a single compressed stream of
data which is sent to the e-mail client in a single unidirectional transfer.
The e-mail program on your computer parses the data, breaking it up into
individual mail messages and presents them to you for viewing.

What does all this mean? According to Ocens, the bottom line is that on
average Ocens Mail is 7 to 10 times faster than the competition when it comes
to delivering e-mail.  More details on how it works and what it does are
available on the Ocens website.

To connect your computer to your Iridium dataport, you can use the built-in
serial port on the computer.  No serial port on your bputer?  Then you MUST
use the proprietary USB-to-serial adaptor sold by Ocens ($70).  Ocens does not
support other USB-to-serial adaptors because they generally do not work to
connect to satphones.  Take it from me, donbt waste your time or theirs
trying to use one you already own; I tried it and wasted everybodybs time!

In my case, setting up the Ocens e-mail and getting all the software settings
right took some hand-holding from Ocens tech support.  Rachelle Gregory at
tech support patiently walked me through the setup, offering many helpful
suggestions.  I was clear she'd gone down this road hundreds of times before!
Several months into my use of Ocens (when the boat was in Venezuela) I
experienced hardware problems that were hard to trace, and Rachelle showed
great patience in helping me pinpoint  the problem.   This one proved beyond
Rachellebs reach, so it was on to the big gunsbI began dealing with Luis
Soltero, who is not an Ocens employee but who clearly has a real interest in
keeping users happy; he was like a bird dog running it down!  After we
trouble-shot the problem together every possible way, all evidence pointed to
the Motorola 9500 Iridium phone itself.  I replaced the phone with another and
the problems disappeared.

So, how does it all come together in the real world when I want to send or
receive e-mail?

When I use the Iridium connection, I write my e-mails in b
IScribeb
, the
e-mail client (program) that came as part of the Ocens Mail software package,
though you can use most any e-mail client you want, including Outlook or
Eudora.  Once my e-mail is ready to go and b
sentb
 from the e-mail client
(but not yet from the computer), itbs time to put the Iridium connection to
work.  I plug the USB-to-serial adaptor into my e-mail laptop and Iridium
docking station, call up the Ocens Wireless Mail Gateway program on my laptop,
then press the b
Gob
 icon which automatically dials and connects the phone
to the Ocens server.  Then I watch while the program goes through the
following steps:

CMail[0] 12:15:00 Opening connection to email.ocens.net
CMail[4816] 12:15:00 No mail to send
CMail[4816] 12:15:00 Receiving mail for bluewater
CMail[4816] 12:15:03 Receiving 2 mail messages total size = 2637 bytes
CMail[4816] 12:15:03 Receiving 1158421065.M826130 3447
CMail[4816] 12:15:03 Receiving 1158422961.M980855 1686
CMail[4816] 12:15:03 Done receiving mail for bluewater
CMail[4816] 12:15:03 Mail transaction complete
CMail[4816] 12:15:03 Finished.

The exchange above was done using the Verizon Mobile Web connection, so it
took only three seconds.  The same exchange done with Iridium might have taken
40 b 60 seconds, including the initial b
handshakeb
 connection.  The
Iridium phone is on line only from the time the connection is opened until
itbs b
Finishedb
; the Ocens Wireless Mail Gateway software automatically
makes and breaks the connection.  Once the program reaches b
Finishedb
 I
remove the USB-to-serial adaptor from the laptop.

I find that I can typically send/receive five or six short e-mails in a minute
or two of Iridium online time.  To save airtime, I rarely send or receive
attachments, though I choose to receive weather maps from time to time and
halfway between North Carolina and Pureto Rico I sent a sketch of a broken
part so a replacement could be fabricated and waiting for me when I reached
port.

Itbs probably clear from this that I do not keep my e-mail laptop
permanently connected to the Iridium phone as some users do.  This is simply
because the way we have things laid out aboard Bluewater itbs more
convenient to plug in only when we need to upload/download mail, something
that takes a few seconds.

How do I know when we have e-mail?  Our Iridium phone sounds a b
beepb
 each
time an e-mail is delivered to our Ocens mailbox, and I can scroll through a
list of the e-mails awaiting downloading right on the Iridium phonebs tiny
screen.  Typically on a passage I connect twice a day to upload and download
mail.

Let me mention one more nice Iridium feature: anyone who has an Iridium phone
and a service account can receive an unlimited number of very short (160
characters including spaces) free e-mails right on the phonebs screen with
no need for Ocens software or even a computer!  (A sample message might be
along the lines: b
Good news . . . itbs a boy for Mike and Maria!
Everybodybs delighted.  See you in Papeete on the 15th.  Love, Mom)  A
sender can send the e-mails by going to www.iridium.com and clicking on
b
Send a Satellite Message.b
  The sender must have the Iridium number of
the subscriber to use this service.  Unfortunately, there's no equivalent for
the Iridium user for responding to the short message e-mail.

Is the Iridim/Ocens combination perfect?  Absolutely not!  But having a basic
e-mail capability anywhere on earth one can take a yacht truly adds a new
dimension to cruising.  At bottom line, I am a very satisfied user of Iridium
and Ocens mail and would not want to be without it.

For the record, I have no ownership or financial connections with any of the
companies mentioned here.  I should mention that have recommended Explorer
Satellite to many people, so owner Andy Cool is always very attentive when I
call and ask for help.

--Milt Baker, Nordhavn 47 Bluewater, Annapolis, MD


Georgs wrote:

Thank you, Milt, for the excellent recap of what's what with satellite
telephones.

I'm sure there would be a lot of takers if you gave the same 101 treatment to
email at sea, when you have some time.

--Georgs
--
Georgs Kolesnikovs
Your host at Trawlers & Trawlering, formerly Trawler World, since 1997