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?"
BGAN (Score:3, Informative)
If you have the money, look into BGAN terminals. Hughes and Thrane & Thrane are the two major manufacturers.
I'm too lazy to insert links, google is your friend.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:BGAN (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, for near global coverage it looks like Immarsat still rules.
Here's some pricing:
http://www.ocens.com/inmarsat/inmarsat_FB_airtime.htm [ocens.com]
Looks like you'd need to be on a fairly good gig, or fill the boat with similarly employed geeks!
Re:BGAN (Score:4, Insightful)
If the middle of the ocean doesnt count as roaming what does?
Re:BGAN (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Earth does not reflects RF signals as water. RF bouncing on moving water can become a multipath living hell, thus I'd believe that solutions involving open sea should be better targeted to big boats and should be very conflicting and expensive on small on
NMT (Score:4, Informative)
Re:NMT (Score:4, Informative)
I use the NMT - system as implemented in Scandinavia (http://www.ice.no/ [www.ice.no]). It works all places I sail. It cost approx as an ADSL-connection. I opted for a plan of $30/week when in use (summer and winter holidays) and nothing at other times.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but where do you sail? I looked at the wikipedia article and the NMT doesn't seem to be implemented outside of parts of Europe these days, and even when implemented it seems to have a maximum range of about 30km for a cell. Kinda useless if you're in the middle of the Indian ocean, or even in Europe, if you're in parts of the North Sea or the Mediterranean. 30km isn't *that* far in nautical terms.
The only product that'll work regardless of where the person is actually sailing is something like Inmarsat
BGAN (Score:5, Informative)
This was asked sooner than 10 years ago, and I'll repeat my answer to that thread.
You want BGAN. It's an INMARSAT service. Designed for marine use, but will not be cheap
http://www.inmarsat.com/Services/Land/BGAN/default.aspx [inmarsat.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
From wikipedia:
BGAN terminals are not allowed to be used on the open ocean on a moving vessel. Inmarsat has created the FleetBroadband service that uses the I4 satellites for maritime communication.
Re: (Score:2)
It's been pointed out above, than BGAN is only useful for stationary vessels, it cannot be used on the open ocean. For that you need FleetBroadband also from Inmarsat. Needless to say, it's even more expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
BGAN would probably work on a sailing vessel 8 kts). It works on riveriene craft we have used. The asker unfortunately did not provide details on the displacement and dimensions of the boat used, nor the environment in which it would be used (intercostal? Open ocean? Time of year? Tropical or artic? How much actual connected time is needed to telecommute? Insert other requirement related questions here...)
Needless to say, any boat / ship that is rocking enough will have difficulty maintaining a signa
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.
MOD UP (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
"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."
This is something more people need to do. Sailing is not for me, however. For me, it's hiking or skiing. Just going out for a couple of weeks of wandering far away, without electronics and such intruding, and navigating just by map and compass when necessary. Keeps the brain healthy.(It's actually something that bothers me.... ho
Geez, call me old fashioned (Score:5, Insightful)
But I remember when a Loran-C [wikipedia.org] was high tech. Now people want to stream video from the middle of the Atlantic... Hey, back in the old day we didn't need porn we just brought women with us. Owning a sailboat and cruising the Caribbean went a long way towards getting those panties off!
But seriously, always have a good old almanac and sextant as a backup. Because if your generator gets fucked, you and your high tech toys are fucked. They never turn off the sun and stars, however ('cept in a storm of course - Murphy's law would have your generator fail in the middle of the hurricane anyway).
Personally I go sailing to get AWAY from the rest of the world, not to stay connected to it.
Re:Geez, call me old fashioned (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't just *have* the sextant. Make it a habit to take a daily noon sighting and record your distance logger.
Always assume the GPS is wrong until verified by hand.
Re: (Score:2)
Given how much generators enjoy things like vibration and being doused with saltwater, you might not even need to invoke Murphy's law...
The vibration involved on a boat is jack diddly shit compared to what you have to deal with on a car. You can buy marine generators which have sealed electronics. If you grease up the plug real good with dielectric compound you can even expect them to last for a while.
On the other hand, even a ruggedized laptop is going to breathe the air, so all your unsealed electronics can be assumed to be on their way out from the moment you bring them on the boat...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most boats use the engine as the generator. you fire up the diesel and let it charge the batteries. Very rarely do you have a dedicated generator on the boat. And you want diesel not gasoline...
Re: (Score:2)
Most boats use the engine as the generator. you fire up the diesel and let it charge the batteries. Very rarely do you have a dedicated generator on the boat. And you want diesel not gasoline...
yeah, I've done a little boat shopping, will not consider gasoline. My luxury sedan and my 3/4 ton pickup are both diesels, I don't want gas cars either. I've definitely seen boats outfitted both ways, though. On any large yacht using the engine to charge the batteries is probably overkill.
Re: (Score:2)
In my experience, most Diesel-powered cruising yachts have a separate Diesel genset. The good reasons for this should be fairly obvious.
Re: (Score:2)
Very rarely do you have a dedicated generator on the boat.
You do see them more often on sailboats. On a motorboat you assume the engine is pretty much always on, so you generate the power from the engine. You usually have horsepower to spare anyway. Not so on a sailboat. The engines are usually pretty pathetic (assuming you have an inboard engine at all). Thus the need for a separate generator on bigger boats. Smaller boats just have to make do with batteries (with a whole different r
Re: (Score:2)
a boat is jack diddly shit compared to what you have to deal with on a car.
AFAIK car engines aren't sitting a couple inches above salt-water bilge... And you should know what salt does to cars if you live up north. And that's only a couple weeks per year. Now deal with that 24/7/365 and you begin to understand how fun marine life is, and why boats are the definition of money pits.
Re:Geez, call me old fashioned (Score:5, Insightful)
Never underestimate technology that works when completely unpowered and soaked with saltwater.
Re: (Score:2)
Leave the sextant and the almac at the nursing home and have a boat with sensible design.
That's ok. When your sensibly designed boat encounters all those variables that your theoretical boat designer never thought of (because after all you can't get an engineering degree in the middle of the ocean; you tend to get them in nice, air conditioned offices on land), you'll have that "oh shit" moment.
But then again, it's your life and you are free to risk it as you plea
Inmarsat FleetBroadband (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.inmarsat.com/Services/Maritime/FleetBroadband/default.aspx
Re:Inmarsat FleetBroadband (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, Fleet Broadband is your only good option. It's not particularly cheap, though it doubles as a sat phone which you'd probably want anyway. I guess it all depends on how much bandwidth you need vs how much money you make. It's not particularly fast either, 300k-ish if I recall, and it's a shared channel(s). But it's much faster and cheaper than the older F-77 technology.
Also that equipment isn't the worlds most reliable, you either need to buy two so you can have a backup, or think hard about how much downtime will cost you when you are two weeks out of kerplopistan harbor and nobody there knows how to fix one of these things so you have to get parts flown in air-freight.
The trouble is most satellites use spot-beams to focus their signals on continental areas, where the people are. They intentionally focus their signals AWAY from the ocean, where the people are not. Services like Hugues Net, etc. They usually work in coastal areas, but that's about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Off the cuff, I would think that somebody selling a very expensive service, to people who probably have their reasons for needing it, where most of the investment is in the satellites, would want the reliability of their ground hardware to be less of a joke, and more of a chuck norris joke...
Re: (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: (Score:2)
WD-40 only goes so far.
Cut & Splice (Score:4, Funny)
Get a diving suit and a pair of wire cutters...
Dive down to an underwater cable, cut it and splice yourself into the middle of it! High bandwidth internet access at sea.
A few solutions (Score:5, Informative)
1. A lot of marina's seem to be starting offer wifi which covers the moorings. So you can at least get online when in port at reasonable speeds.
2. GSM coverage usually extends at least 10 miles offshore, if you're travelling parallel to the coast (and it depends where in the world you are) you might be able to use GSM networks. Getting hold of local sim cards is much cheaper than paying roaming fees.
3. Iridium phones can manage dial up internet access at 2400bps for around $1.50 per minute. Globalstar phones will give you 9600bps but (despite the name) coverage is far from global. Thuraya give you "unlimited" internet access for a mere $3550 per month and speeds into hundreds of kilobits per second. Other's have already mentioned Imarsat's BGAN. http://www.satphone.co.uk/index.shtml has good info on all of these.
4. Try and rig up something over amateur radio and use an AX25 to TCPIP gateway. Speeds will be slow (a few kilobits per second at best) and its likely to be unreliable. But it should be cheap/free.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
4. Try and rig up something over amateur radio and use an AX25 to TCPIP gateway. Speeds will be slow (a few kilobits per second at best) and its likely to be unreliable. But it should be cheap/free.
OP said he wanted to do work over this link. One of the rules of amateur radio is "non commercial use".
Thuraya GmPRS (Score:2)
but still at $5 per MB I would be writing a script to compress my RSS feeds using PAQ8 so I can download them over TFTP and writing a custom binary protocol IM client to save bandwidth
Thrane & Thrane SAILOR 500 Fleet Broadband (Score:5, Informative)
iridium? (Score:2)
seems they are aiming directly at this kind of market.
Iridium NEXT (Score:3, Informative)
If you're willing to wait another 5 years, Iridium is in the process of replacing their constellation:
http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/iridium/44300/ [prnewswire.com]
What does the US Navy use . . . ? (Score:2)
They must have some Internet access at sea. Not that they would want to share it, though.
Just curious, anyone know?
Re: (Score:2)
They may use BGAN for moral internet access. The Military has it's own networks for secured communications that are isolated from the internet.
And no they are not gong to share. From what I have heard they are short of bandwidth as it is.
Re: (Score:2)
They use stabilized VSAT (e.g. http://www.omniaccess.com/en/products/orbit-al7103mkii-stabilized-vsat/ [omniaccess.com] systems, as do a lot of drilling vessels, cargo vessels, cruise ships, etc.
Pigeon (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Going over your data cap will result in the drowning of your poor pigeon! Use low-bandwidth protocols!
Winlink 2000 (Score:2)
Well, you could get your Amateur Radio license, then you could use Winlink 2000 to send and receive emails while at sea.
http://www.winlink.org/ [winlink.org]
Of course, I personally despise Winlink 2000, because of the robots that never listen to see if other stations are transmitting, before they transmit, but that's just my personal opinion.
Re: (Score:2)
As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "if you want an argument, pick another subject".
I'm just providing one potential solution to the submitter's question.
iDirect (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of choices - None that good (Score:5, Informative)
Much depends on where you are going to be, exactly what access you want, and how much you are willing to pay.
Long distance cruisers generally go for SSB-based email (either Sailmail [sailmail.com] or Winlink [winlink.org]) because it's cheap and relatively reliable. Of course, "reliable" in this context means that depending on the HF propagation conditions you can probably get an email message out sometime that day. And you are limited to short, text-only messages. Still, these days you can update blogs, Facebook, etc. via email...
Other systems like Ocens [ocens.com] are also available for email via Iridium.
After that, if you are offshore and away from GSM coverage, you start talking about real bucks. Inmarsat is the most common. Iridium, Inmarsat, Globalstar, etc. all pretty much have two things in common - they are slow compared to land-based systems and they bill by the bit.. a lot. Streaming video and surfing Spring Break Girls Gone Wild is probably not in the cards. Hell, even checking a webmail email account is not really feasible unless you are Carlos Slim and own a telephone company.
So, that's a long way of getting around to saying this: In the past 10 years, not a lot has changed. Inshore, close to cell coverage, you can do very well. Offshore, you are still pretty much stuck with the same old systems that were in place 10 years ago, only now they are more expensive. Oh, and in the case of Globalstar, they are also less reliable now.
Re:Lots of choices - None that good (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention - WiFi coverage is getting to be scary ubiquitous. About two weeks ago I had a Skype conversation with a friend on his boat in Tuamotus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuamotus [wikipedia.org], which is basically a circular bump in the water that has a village with about 10 people and two chickens. Pretty much all over the South Pacific they find the same thing: there is usually a somewhat-usable WiFi connection available.
There are some realities with offshore cruising that still would probably make your round-the-world telecommuting dream possible.
1. You don't do much during passages except stand watch, sleep and eat. If you think you are going to be able to crank out that last bit of code during a passage, you are kidding yourself. It's either too bumpy or too busy. You don't want to do other things except keep the boat moving toward your destination.
2. Crusing sailboats spend a very small percentage of their lives making passages. 10% is a lot. Most of the time is spent at anchor or in marinas enjoying the local color. Assuming you are in a place with WiFi, you are pretty much good to go.
3. You can use text-only email to keep up with things during your passages. That may be enough until you get to where you have better Internet access.
4. I don't know where you thinking of going, but pretty much your longest passage is going to be around 4 weeks offshore. That's West Coast to the Marquesas. Otherwise, you just won't be out of touch for that long.
Re: (Score:2)
As a half-ass sailor who telecommutes, it sounds like cruising up and down the US, Japan or EU coast for a while is a pretty good option. Being in sight of land also makes supply and safety a lot less like a full time job. If you want endless open ocean views, just don't look to starboard.
Revisiting in-field internet access... (Score:2)
is rather like whipping a dead horse. Yes, there are sources where you can get the service, but you are going to pay a small ransom and keep paying as you use it. That's the upshot of the deal.
The downside to it is that you are going to be set back to the good ole days of 56K dialup. No viewing of multimedia stuff, no gaming, save for turn based board games perhaps, and no huge email attachments, both outgoing and incoming.
Even with the new Iridium birds being fired into orbit, you will never, ever get fast
RFC 1149 is your friend (Score:2)
Simply adapt it so that you use bottles launched into the sea rather avians. Implementing it is nothing but an hardware problem, after all.
Ask these guys (Score:2)
They seem to have it figuredout:
http://www.pegasus.com/log/pacific-cup-2010/facetime/ [pegasus.com]
Glad I'm not paying you (Score:2)
I can't believe anyone could do both of those things competently and simultaneously. I'm glad I'm not paying you, or sharing the oceans with you...
Re: (Score:2)
You assume the person working is also the person driving the boat.
An expert: Travelling geek since the 80's (Score:2)
http://nomadness.com/ [nomadness.com]
Re:Not just internet (Score:5, Funny)
... what about getting sex...
That's what sea cucumbers are for.
Re:Not just internet (Score:4, Funny)
A+++ yuck. Would spew again.
Re:Not just internet (Score:5, Funny)
If you downloaded copyrighted works illegally while you are sailing does THAT make you a pirate? If you did do such a thing where would the RIAA send the notice?
Lol this is just a joke, that is all.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (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:Islands and Pirates! (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think so:
And the text includes:
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Let me guess, you're in management?
Re:Not just internet (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing how much it relies stress too, so it's a win-win for both me and the company.
I would be afraid that whatever technology you select to stay connected with the source of all your income would suffer from outages too often. I think in this case it would increase stress if anything.
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.
Middle of the ocean? Why would such a featureless landscape seem any different from another featureless landscape? I would think it would be amazing to go to the Maldives or another resort-y area and take a swim there. But the middle of nowhere ... why?
what about getting sex
Please, 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!"
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"One fresh sea cucumber coming up!"
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: (Score:2)
Here in the midwest you can get a cup of hot steamy sex for twenty bucks or even less.
And think of all the extra stuff you can get for your $20.00.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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.
To be fair, the hot steamy cup of sex in DC is more like slow roasted gourmet coffee that was hand ground and boiled in pure aquifer water then complimented with pure cream and cane sugar. The same thing in the midwest is day-old Wafflehouse sludge that really should've been reheated in the microwave before the waitress spilled half of it on the table when she served it to you.
Re: (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.
Yeah, that's great and all... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
(Psssst: I also wish I could trade places)
Re: (Score:2)
(Psssst: I also wish I could trade places)
Wouldn't we all? :-)
Re:Not just internet (Score:5, Insightful)
"Food, drinks, health and hygiene stuff, what about getting sex "
Buy them in port like everyone else.
Re:100% if the time on a best effort service? (Score:4, Funny)
yes, nothing has 100% uptime, thank you captain obvious. It would also be helpful to let him know that the sea is in fact both blue and wet. And since we're wasting time stating common knowledge, you are a douchebag.
Re:100% if the time on a best effort service? (Score:4, Funny)
You cant find wired services that have 100% up times.Good luck with the wireless tube dream.
INTERNET IS TUBES!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Right, because rich people are inherently more knowledgeable...
No, they just have the money to buy these kinds of toys. This is the kind of information that you would probably get through the guy who polishes your Bentley every Wednesday. Oh, wait, you don't have your Bentley polished every week? You don't have a Bentley? Yeah, then at your income bracket internet access in the middle of the ocean is likely not possible.
However I'm pretty sure there have been a couple people over the history of mankind who have sailed around the world without internet access.
Re:If you have to ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, for example Columbus. Since he had no internet access, he could not just look up his coordinates in Google Earth to find out where he was, and therefore he thought he were in India when he wasn't. Also a quick check in Wikipedia would have shown him that true Indians look quite different, and he would not have mistaken the native Americans for Indians.
So you see, having internet access is quite important when sailing.
Re:If you have to ask... (Score:5, Funny)
Also a quick check in Wikipedia would have shown him that true Indians look quite different, and he would not have mistaken the native Americans for Indians.
Perhaps Columbus had a very-early draft copy of a textbook that would come to be approved by the Texas Board of Education?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, for example Columbus. Since he had no internet access, he could not just look up his coordinates in Google Earth to find out where he was, and therefore he thought he were in India when he wasn't. Also a quick check in Wikipedia would have shown him that true Indians look quite different, and he would not have mistaken the native Americans for Indians.
So you see, having internet access is quite important when sailing.
To be honest, Columbus' limitation was not so much the lack of internet access; it was the under-developed state that the Global Positioning System was in at the time (which of course rendered Google Earth nearly worthless). That said you are quite right that a cursory check of Wikipedia would have proven quite helpful in the whole Indian != Indian situation. Imagine the sheepish look on Columbus' face when he asked his hosts for Curry and he was instead offered Corn.
Re: (Score:2)
This is the kind of information that you would probably get through the guy who polishes your Bentley every Wednesday.
Wait, if only the rich people hear these options, why would the person polishing the Bentley know it? I don't think someone who works under you is going to try and run you through a sales pitch on why you might want internet while on the seas.
Regardless of its cost, it would be common knowledge amongst the technological community on whether it's possible. I mean I know I won't be able to afford Virgin's privatized space flights but I know if you want to get into space without being an astronaught thats prob
Re: (Score:2)
The article poster, in addition to assuming he can telecommute, is assuming the only way to get :
Nautical Charts
Weather Maps
Travel Guide type info
Relevant Current International and Local News (Somali pirates, etc)
Emergency and Almost-Emergency assistance
Help locating repair parts for your boat
is over the internet for free or for a small fee. You could actually get most of what you need out of a ham radio license and the mobile maritime service net. But you'd have to "talk" to other people over the radio,
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Weather maps... You can get them easily, there are several birds that pass each day that give you nice old SSTV images of your hemisphere.
Charts, if you left port without them then you deserve to die in the belly of a shark.
Pirate, sorry but maps.google.com/pirates is not functional... for some reason there are no live traffic reports of pirate locations.
If you dont have the tools, knowledge, and skill to circumnavigate the globe without internet and radio, then you deserve to die if you embark on such a
Re: (Score:2)
Also the original poster seems to think you just put it on autopilot the whole time and "work on the real (computer) job". I don't think the original poster knows much about actual sailing. Unless he is so fabulously wealthy that he's planning on hiring a crew to do all the work for him.
my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of boredom punctuated by terror, where the value of terror varies with the size of the ship. So most of the time that's a working understanding. Of course, the further understanding that you need minimum two people, and that if you only have two then you never get to sleep at the same time while under way, should put most people off sailing, and off of the cheapest yachts. You can get a two-person-sized ocean-capable yacht for a few hundre
Re: (Score:2)
my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of boredom punctuated by terror
Correction - "my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of repetitive preventative maintenance punctuated by terror". Whenever you're not at the helm, of course.
I have researched this thoroughly, I've read the Pardey's books, etc. It might be a fun retirement plan for me in a couple decades. The original post seemed to just be a whim as opposed to a carefully researched plan. Fact is, for centuries mariners have kept themselves quite exhausted when out on the sea without tryin
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Sailing is equivalent to standing in a cold shower, ripping up hundred dollar bills".
(Apologies to those who expected an automotive analogy.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In that case though I think the simple truth is that it's not a viable goal. Existing solutions are EXPENSIVE, slow, and of a reliability unsuitable for telecommuting. Sailing around the world is not something you can sensibly do while working at this point in time. It's for people who don't have to work (ie, rich kids or retirees) or people who can stop working long enough to enjoy it without being connected 24/7 (people on vacation).
However much you make, if you're still working for a living, then give
Re: (Score:2)
Still using Subversion?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cruise Ship + Cantenna = ?? (Score:5, Funny)
Arrrr! there be WiFi pirates!
Hoist the Wifi Jolly roger! Ready the laptop's me maytes this one has load balancing uplinks!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No sailboat can keep up with a cruse ship. At least not the type of sailboat we're talking about here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cruise ships are fast. They typically zip from port to port and then anchor while swapping people out every 3 nights. Sailboats are not fast.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only when Starbucks reaches the ocean will seasteading [seasteading.org] finally become a reality. That might be a ways off, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Ha, they've named it NauticCom--say that out loud. Most appropriate, considering the "loneliness" of sailors, and the content of the internet.
Re:Gotta love the irony (Score:4, Funny)
Priceless.