Alrighty, then, it’s Uniden Day. While getting links for the earlier entry, I spotted this new Bluetooth cordless phone system that just might be terrific for bigger yachts. The key feature is connectivity between a Bluetooth cell phone and the base station which supports up to 10 cordless handsets. Hence you could tuck your precious cell away on the boat, safe from saltwater and preferably connected to an amp and high gain marine antenna. Bluetooth headsets are also supported, which means that some yachties may eventually look like those guys at the airports with blue LEDs blinking on their ears.
I actually think that the most important innovations in marine networking are happening over wires — Ethernet and NMEA 2000 wires — but some of the wireless happenings certainly are, er, sexy. I tested Uniden’s first WHAM wireless mic and, while it worked OK, the screen was hard to read and the overall build quality didn’t impress. Now I’ve seen a prototype of the second generation WHAM and it is a whole new animal. Not only does the screen look very readable, but it now has greater range and function. It seems possible that you’ll be able to wander anywhere on a boat, and maybe a ways down the docks, easily carrying full power (25W) VHF and intercom capabilities. I’m supposedly on the list to try a couple of WHAMs, along with the interesting UM625c (for color) fixed radio, soon.
SSB SailMail, Sat C, GSM phones using GPRS data, Iridium, marina WiFi, Internet Cafes (“Curses to French keyboards!”), online banking, malicious spyware — damn, some long range cruisers are becoming IT professionals. Yesterday, SetSail.com put up a series of “Sailor Logs” on the topic of “Staying in Touch & Paying the Bills While Cruising”. Very interesting stuff from 5 cruisers in different parts of the world. Among other things, I learned that Iridium now has $1/minute pre-paid SIM cards and — they’re popping up everywhere — Australia has a marina WiFi service.
SetSail is the work of Steve and Linda Dashew (and family), and it’s loaded with content. In fact you can get lost. Do check out the radical cruising powerboat that the Dashews will soon launch in New Zealand. Sometimes called FPB for Fast Pilot Boat, sometimes “The Unsailboat”, it is wired.
Yesterday KVH announced that ISDN (by-the-minute data) service for its big Fleet 77 Inmarsat communications systems is going from 64 to 128 kilobits per second. And hence “with KVH's exclusive Velocity™ Acceleration software, broadband data connections as fast as 500 Kbps - roughly the speed of residential DSL or cable Internet service - can be achieved, depending on network traffic and the data being transmitted.” The release says that existing F77 systems are compatible with the upgrade, and seems to imply that 128 Kbps will be charged differently than 64, though the new rates aren’t yet on KVH’s Inmarsat Airtime sheet (a PDF file here). It’s amazing how connected a deep sea vessel can be these days, but the difference between the hardware and costs involved and what’s happening on land, or near to land, remains profound. Some coastal cruisers complain about high power marina WiFi services that cost about $10 per day while Inmarsat ISDN is $7 per minute. And boats using satellite Internet have to be careful about leaving computers online or letting programs like Windows automatically download updates. A few years ago I attended (and wrote about) a communications seminar where several mega yacht captains spoke of accidental $50,000/month Inmarsat bills!
I’ve learned a lot about how boaters are using WiFi along the our coasts, and it’s darn exciting. Savvy folks are using the Internet to the max for fun, work, and even cruise planning (weather, slip reservations, etc.) using fast wireless connections, either free or from dedicated marine services, in anchorages and marinas from the Abacos to the Straits of Georgia. You won’t hear much about this in the marine press because it’s kind of a helter skelter scene with very few big players.
Yet a clear key to success is good equipment. You might find an occasional hotspot using Centrino built in WiFi and standard Windows XP WiFi software but you’ll do a whole lot better with a high power (200 mw) WiFi card or USB device connected to a high gain (6–12 db) 2.4 GHz omnidirectional antenna with low loss LMR400 coax cable and some decent WiFi software (like the free program available from Boingo). You won’t find this stuff at Staples! And so far hardly any regular marine electronics outlets have gotten into this market. Places to look for long range WiFi gear are: Broadband Express, a Pacific Northwest marine service provider (gear shown); MarineNet, a Florida marine communications outfit; and HyperLink Technologies, a commercial all-things-wireless equipment vendor (where there’s also great detail on which cards use which connectors, etc.).
I was talking to the anchorage in Key West again last night, only this time I was using the remarkable over-the-Internet phone service Skype. I just had to dig out an old computer headset/mic, download Skype’s easy software, and I was registered, tested, and ready to make calls in minutes. Now I feel like the last geek on earth to discover Skype (free PC to PC calls, modest charges to SkypeOut to actual phones)—there are 2.5 million users online as I type this!
What got my attention was learning from Jeffrey Siegel that cruisers are happily using Skype in places like the Bahamas where WiFi Internet connections are fairly common, but cell phone service expensive and/or complicated. Jeff is a terrific resource; for instance, he’s currently cruising the East Coast with high power WiFi gear and two cell phones with different services and data plans, and he’s sharing his findings with mutts like me, not to mention the denizens of the Trawlers & Trawlering E-Mail List. Jeff and Karen make their home port (below) near me in Maine and I profiled them for the first issue of Voyaging last fall. I’ve been researching marine WiFi recently and Jeff has been a big help, including my experience with real off-the-boat Skype last night. I thank him.
Last night my May PMY electronics column went up on the magazine’s Web site, one of the first up for this issue for some reason (probably random). I don’t think there’s another boating magazine on the planet that publishes so much of its content to the Web so quickly, not to mention so well. I’m one writer who really appreciates it (there are some freelancers who fear that Web publishing will lead to theft of their work, but that’s another subject).
At any rate, the column is about the U.S. Coast Guard’s new search and rescue communications system, called Rescue 21. It’s going to be extremely powerful, but has suffered recent delays, which come on top of previous delays. Naming it after a century—instead of a year like NMEA 2000, also powerful but also slow to really happen—was a good idea.
ACR sent out a press alert about the first rescue credited to its relatively new GPS equipped Personal Locator Beacon. I can’t find any other Web references to the incident, which involved a pair of divers off Bradenton, Florida, but it certainly sounds like ACR and the whole SARSAT system have something to brag about. The little beacon was set off “around 7pm”, seen by a GOES Satellite at 6:58pm, sent up a GPS fix at 7:01pm (presumably from a cold start), and a Coast Guard 41 footer had steamed 10 plus miles to the scene by 8:10pm. It wasn’t until 7:47 that the LEOSAR satellites could resolve the beacon’s location by the standard Doppler method, a delay that might have cost a life in this case. Hat’s off to ACR’s apparently speedy GPS PLB technology and to the fast SARSAT dispatch system! Here’s an article I wrote about SARSAT last year, ACR’s AquaFix site, and an early look at these units by Doug Ritter at the Equipped to Survive Foundation (which will hopefully conduct a thorough test of current PLBs soon).
Over at Ocean Navigator, SkyMate's CEO John Tandler has a few things to say on the cost of using a system like theirs.
"First, SkyMate transmits text email files much more efficiently than connection-based systems. This is because satellite phone airtime is billed in one-minute minimum increments, so for a message of less than 1,000 bytes, 98 percent of that one minute of airtime is unused. With SkyMate, the user is only charged for the amount of data actually transmitted. A user sending five separate emails per day over a Globalstar phone would use about 150 minutes of airtime per month, which in the Caribbean would cost more than $120. The same usage profile using SkyMate would cost less than $70."
Check out this article if you're thinking about Wi-Fi enabling your boat. Also have a look at HauteRoute's Distance Calculator...
"When used in conjunction with extended range base station equipment such as the HauteRoute HR-2611DX 802.11b Access Point, HR-3054DX 802.11b/g Access Point or the HR-5354DX 802.11a/b/g Access Point, and appropriate outdoor antennas, users can expect line of sight and near line of sight performance ranges measured in miles rather than feet."
I actually think that the most important innovations in marine networking are happening over wires — Ethernet and NMEA 2000 wires — but some of the wireless happenings certainly are, er, 
Yesterday KVH 
I’ve learned a lot about how boaters are using WiFi along the our coasts, and it’s darn exciting. Savvy folks are using the Internet to the max for fun, work, and even cruise planning (weather, slip reservations, etc.) using fast wireless connections, either free or from dedicated marine services, in anchorages and marinas from the Abacos to the Straits of Georgia. You won’t hear much about this in the marine press because it’s kind of a helter skelter scene with very few big players. 
ACR sent out a press 
Over at Ocean Navigator, SkyMate's CEO John Tandler has a few things to 
Check out