Internet Access While Sailing? (Revisited) 308
El Genio Malvado writes "10 years ago the question was asked, What is the best way to get Internet while at sea? After reading the responses — and after a decade of technological advancement — is there a better, more reliable method? For someone with the ability to telecommute 100% of the time, then the idea of sailing around the world with a paycheck direct deposited must be getting more and more tempting. What does the community at large have for modern resources for constant streaming internet at sea?"
Not just internet (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm actually in the same position. I am able to do all of my work online and my workplace doesn't have a problem with me traveling at the same time. It is really great when you can move to life in a different country for a few months and see various different places and people. It's amazing how much it relies stress too, so it's a win-win for both me and the company.
But if I went sailing around the world, how do you get everything else too? Food, drinks, health and hygiene stuff, what about getting sex and what do you do if you need emergency help?
However, it would be great way to start a day by waking up in the morning and take a swim in the sea in middle of nowhere.
Re:Not just internet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not just internet (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in the middle of DC and I'm probably getting as much as I'd get in the middle of the ocean. I am posting on Slashdot after all ... I do enjoy how you commoditize it though. "Sir, may I take your order?" "One hot steamy cup of sex, please!"
I feel for you; I understand that what with all the high paid bureaucrats and politicians, hookers cost a fortune there. Here in the midwest you can get a cup of hot steamy sex for twenty bucks or even less.
Re:Inmarsat FleetBroadband (Score:3, Interesting)
The ocean is a tough environment.
The antennas are gyro stabilized and have a lot of moving parts.
Lighting is common at sea and does terrible things to radios.
Radios in general get hot and fail sometimes. No ship goes out to sea with only one means of communication, usually 3 or 4.
Re:Get off my seagrass lawn! (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1980 I went sailing. I had made heaps of money in - of all places - Belgium, where we wrote one of the first commercial packet switching networks in the world. It was cool. And no installed base, oh joy.
Anyway I bought a 30' Iroquois catamaran and set off. I sailed about 2 years, down to the Med, over the Atlantic, around the West Indies. Sometimes single-handed, mostly with 2-4 folk aboard. There may have been some drinking.
It was, without doubt, a high point of my life, despite the storms, loneliness, terrible food, sunburn. And did I mention the storms?
No GPS then - we had to use a sextant. I wrote some nice sight reduction programs for it on my HP 41C calculator - you just can't kill off habits, can you?
Communication - we didn't have no stinking communication! A VHF radio, range about 20miles, and otherwise we could listen to shortwave radio sometimes.
We could only send the odd postcard from ports, and look - without much hope nor any success - in the poste restante in the main post offices. Phone calls were very expensive and we did this rarely.
We didn't have comms - there was no internet (we were just inventing networks - inter-networks lay in the future) HF radios would have weighed more than the boat. Food, water more important.
(And in case you cared ... I ended up selling the boat in the Virgin Islands - it's still sailing in Florida apparently; moving to Australia, where I still am, happily in the sun, still writing the odd bit of code. And I still have the sextant in the garage - it's a lovely thing. The HP41c has not survived. Nor has HP, not really).
Pah - on-board communication, nah - listen to the waves. Enjoy the quiet. Watch the sky. See the moon rise, blood red, from the sea. Let your mind actually think, perchance dream.
Crossed the Atlantic in 1969 on a 56 footer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Our electronics, freezer and refrigerator was powered by a 32 volt battery bank that was recharged via a 15KW diesel generator or the diesel propulsion engine. For entertainment, we had a Zenith Transoceanic radio for BBC, VOA, etc and we had a reel-to-reel tape deck stereo system that we could use when the generator was running as was usually the case at meal time since the main stove was electric.
Re:Not just internet (Score:3, Interesting)
A better question is this: If you were in international waters is it even a violation of copyright? What jurisdication's rules would be followed? What court could the plaintiffs sue you in? And, after reading this, who is going to go set up a new floating island in international waters with massive bandwidth and call it a "download destination" for a piratical getaway? "Come stay a week with us and torrent every movie and song ever written." BYOS (Bring Your Own Storage).
yeah.... set up a flotilla in international waters and have a LAN party share through an open access point... doesn't need to actually be connect to the Internet.
Re:Not just internet (Score:3, Interesting)
Seascape, not landscape, and it changes all the time.
The weather changes all the time, the sky changes all the time, the watery bit does everything from being as flat as a billiard table to rather frightening (you must have heard the phrase "mountainous seas". We certainly see a lot on the small island I live on). You get different animals, you can be amazed that there is a bird this far out. Etc.