Internet Access While Sailing?

ryan schroeder asks: "My mother is sailing to Hawaii this summer and is wondering about solutions for checking e-mail. I know a cell phone modem won't work and a satellite phone sounds a little expensive. I bet someone out there had looked into this. If anyone has a direction to point me to that be great." It would be interested in hearing if any of you folks have gotten Internet access working while out at sea and what degrees of success you've had with it. Who needs land anyway? Give me a boat, the stars, working global wireless Internet and a wind to sail by!

Re:Underwater cell towers?

Yes, submarines actually use what is called Very Low Frequency or VLF (Sometimes called Ultra Low Frequency or ULF.) Unfortunately, they only get in the neighborhood of 1 character every 3 seconds. (If I remember what my US Navy Sumbariner friend said.) Yes, that is a whopping .3 baud. But, the good part is that the chosen radio frequency actually travels through the Earth, so the US Navy actually only has two broadcast antennas, both in the mainland U.S., to broadcast to all US Navy subs. They really only use it to tell a sub to come to periscope depth so they can recieve a higher speed satellite-based message. (It's kind of like emailing someone to tell them to turn on ICQ...)

Satellite Links for anywhere

A few years ago, I had the privelege to do one of the coolest consulting gigs of my career. The job was for a global oil company that ships more oil than anyone else, and was very concerned about minimizing environmental damage and having the right command and control structures in place instantly in the event of a spill. Here are a few tips based on that experience:

We wound up using an Inmarsat phone by Magnavox (back then only Magnavox and NEC were *seriously* in that business, but Nera and Thrane & Thrane seem to aim more at the serious marine market now.) Inmarsat is rather expensive, but other than the protocol performance problems inherent in the horrible latency to geosynchronous orbit, it works reliably. Prices have come *way* down from the $17/minute of a few years ago to monthly fees of a few dozen dollars plus airtime of $2-5/minute.

The Magnavox phone we used had a folding parabolic antenna which had great response, but was finicky w.r.t. alignment. Many of the newer (and lower cost) phones use multiple phased array antennae which are much better suited to a smallish boat - you don't want to be trying to keep an antenna pointed straight at the bird while on the seas in a rocking boat! You get what you pay for here. There are some decent entry-level phones that are compact, easy-to-use, and affordable, but they often have data rates of around 2400 bps! 64 kbps phones have been out since late last year.

Also, pay atention to how you get connected to the Net on the ground end. I've heard (second-hand) that the Dutch PTT has good Internet access and competitive rates.

Make sure the computers on both ends have RFC 1323 (the LFN RFC) compliant TCP/IP stacks. This makes a *huge* difference in the way your machine will handle geosync latencies! Most modern machines will have this feature by now, but if it's missing on either end, you'll see big performance problems.

Inmarsat is probably still the best bet for a boat because you get voice and data and they're on pretty much every ship in the world, which can be handy for checking weather, etc. from your neighbors. (Learn the wetiquette for this before spamming folks at high connect charges!)

Iridium would have been a good choice, but sadly, they're gone. Globalstar is still an option, and one that might work for you, but despite their name, they're not global yet, so coverage may be an issue. Globalstar phones though, have the advantage of being seriously multimode: Globalstar satellite, AMPS analog cellular, CDMA Digital, or the crude, brain-frying GSM. These could save a lot of money near shore, if roaming doesn't bite you worse than satellite time!

Good luck. I'm envious of anyone heading out to sea...

Obligatory Reference

Obviously, the best person to ask this question of is Hagbard Celine. Of course, they're looking for a sailing solution, and he uses a submarine.... Might not work out quite right.

You've searched the web and deja, right?

Lots of people have email on boats now, it really is the best way to stay in touch at sea.

There are two ends to your problem, the boat end and the land end. You'll need to have radio gear on land, turned on 24/24, 7x7. Given how crowded the HF bands are these days, its not practical to set up your own landside transceiver. There is no way to connect to a dialup ISP these days by tunneling through a radio connection, so abandon that idea now. But there are many boater email services available, a few are linked below.

Satellite gear is expensive, ignore it if you can. It is all high-latency 1200 or 2400 baud packet transmissions, and you end up using the providers email service, and they aren't in the email business. You can't really use satellite phones to make modem calls to any ISP, but if you get desperate set up a 110/300 baud FSK modem on a phone line at home with UUCP on a linux box.

I would assume the boat is already equipped with a good HF radio. If not, then start shopping for a higher end radio with computer control designed to integrate with laptop computers and an SSB HF modem. Read a few boating mags, and a few amateur radio mags for reviews, and search deja for other reports.

In addition to a good HF rig, you'll need a good HF modem. Look at kantronics [kantronics.com] website for starters.

Get your mother trained up on HF radio operations. There is no easy shortcut when you are 1000 miles from the nearest land. It is as important as learning how to sail and basic emergency procedures.

No matter which route you go, it will be necessary to have a server landside to store the email and filter out spam whenever possible, and to intercept messages containing large attachments. Keep the email address off the internet, don't post it prominently on a web page, or post to usenet from it, or spam will follow. Give it out only to those who your mother wants to communicate with, and send out an explanitory email to her friends not to try to send pictures or big attachments.

The link will be between 300 and 1200 baud, so plan accordingly. But any modern HF gear can run in unattended mode, so picking up email can happen over a period of hours.

There are a bunch of commercial email gateway services to boaters.

Check out Message Center [std.com], Mobile Marine Radio [wloradio.com], the HF on Board [hfradio.com] guys are cool for DIY, and globe wireless [globewireless.com] are expensive but reliable.

Disclaimer, I've used globe, they work but you'll still need to know what you are doing on the boat end. And they cost a lot of money. And they don't have any spam filtering, since they make about $2 to $5 per message transferred.

Test out the service for at least a month before heading off to sea. Try it on a shakedown voyage as well. No sense on spending all that money and time just to haul a bunch of useless equipment to hawaii.

the AC
[ I'm jealous as can be, now my day is shot thinking of sailing to hawaii :-]

A simple solution...

Not the quickest or most effective but traditional.

A new protocol for the previous generation (maybe I should RFC it)

1) Place a disk into a bottle, this should be an automatic email reader that encodes the recieved data an puts it into a file.

2) Put bottle in sea

3) Wait

4) When bottle is recovered the recoveree will place the disk in their online computer and the program will store all the current emails onto the disk.

5) Replace disk in bottle

6) Put bottle in sea

7) Pick up bottle, decrypt and read email

Error correction is left to the user.

ORBCOMM - www.orbcomm.com

Orbcomm makes a satellite based internet relay network. It is burst-message based, so it can't be used for telnet sessions, or other sessions that require low latency. E.G., you can't play quake...

However, the orbcomm units are perfect for email, ICQ, and other message services that are very burst oriented, and don't care what the latency is.

So, if you are looking for something that can do email, and is in a reasonable price range.. try Orbcomm.


Reach out, extend to, and embrace the universe.
-Einstien
-----
Embrace, extend, and engulf the universe.

Re:Easy!

First, locate the underwater cable running to Hawaii. Use the wirecutters to strip to pierce the shielding and strip the end of your CAT5. Use the electrical tape to splice into the cable. Use the crimper to put an end on the CAT5. Now you can sail anywhere within ~300 miles of your splice. For longer distances, use a longer cable.

Actually, it is alot easier than this, because seawater is an excellent conductor. All you really need to do is leave your phone line dipped in the ocean before you leave, and plug into the Pacific on the other side. But watch out for Aqua-Boxers; they might use your phone to set up a party line while they are on cruise.

Amature radio?

I know folks into amature radio can get internet connections pretty much anywhere. Connections are 1200 baud, and it is shared, so don't expect much. Web browsing is out, but email can work.

Note that my information is a bit old in this area. I used to know one of the admins for the Minneapolis amature radio IP network, but that was a few years ago and I've since lost touch. Seems like someone in this crowd would have a solution though.

If you figure it out...

...you can take a big box, fill it with lots of MP3s and run the world's first real pirate MP3 server...

Some Ships Have Access

We went on a New Years cruise on the Norwegian Sky and it had an Internet cafe and in room access (via a fake dialup to an on-ship extension). It is EXPENSIVE and slow, but it works.

I know this was the first ship with access, but supposedly most cruise lines are now putting it in the older ships as well.

It was funny to be checking mail in the Internet cafe and have people ask the help guy why they couldn't connect to AOL and what was the local number out there. Maybe AOL should consider putting some POPs on bouys. :)

eMail access options

Several friends out there sailing (mostly cruising in the Carribean, Bahamas, and along the south and east coasts of the US) use PocketMail http://www.pocketmail.com/ . Unfortunately, this is a send/receive you email from a fixed telephone land line solution. Other options are: ham radio with a TNC (this runs at 300 baud and is limited to non-commercial application), a commercial 'portal' using SSB and Clover modulation techniques (this is generally charged by the character transmitted), a cell phone with a digital interface to your PC if you are close to shore, or one of the satellite products.

Being a bit of a chinch mite, I'd opt for the pocketmail solution, you just have to wait to do email until you get to shore.

Ham Radio? Could work

The person in question would have to be willing to learn a little bit about electrical/radio theory, FCC rules and regulations, operating procedures, etc in order to take the Technician Class license exam, but they could have email almost anywhere in the world if they went to the trouble. (As a ham with a technician class license, I'd like to say the exam isn't really too hard, most people could get the license if they cared too).

Additionally, they would have to learn to understand Morse Code at a rate of 5 words per minute (in order to get Shortwave privileges, which would probably be necessary for getting email in the middle of the ocean).

If you are interested in getting more information about becoming an amateur, go to:
http://www.arrl.org/hamradio.html [arrl.org]

For information about digital wireless communication over amateur radio go to:
http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/pktf.html [tapr.org]

Satellite probably best bet

There are only three things I know of that work well from a boat in blue water:

1. Satellite comms, preferably Inmarsat or some other well established crowd with geostationary sats. Yes, it's expensive, but kitting a boat out for that kind of voyage is _really_ expensive anyway, so maybe another grand or so won't hurt. Check out:

http://www.inmarsat.com/suppliers/index.html

Inmarsat-B may be the one - 56kb modem equiv, fits in a suitcase.

2. SSB radio, but I've never heard of anyone running digital comms over it. And it depends on weather conditions how far it goes. But, it's nice to be able to hear real live crackly voices 1000 miles from land...

3. Set off the EPIRB and when the come to rescue you tell them you're fine but could they send this message for you? :-)

What boat is being used here? Are they looking for crew?!

Technomad

There is one quite amazing guy -- calls himself a technomad -- that seems intent on building for himself (and his current girlfriend) a human- (or wind-) powered mobile home jam-packed with electronics. He started with a bike, switched to trimaranish kayak, then to a big almost-blue-water trimaran, then back to a canoe-based small trimaran. The site is called www.microship.com [microship.com] and there are, basically, work diaries online -- makes for very interesting reading.

I think that of all people he should be the most knowledgeable about the issue of 'net access from the middle of nowhere. There may even be information on his site -- plenty of stuff there.


Kaa

Around the world sailing email

A while back a couple sailed around the world and recorded their trip through the Houston Chronicle newspaper's web site. All the stuff is still up at the At Sea site [chron.com] and if you take a look at the FAQ I think you'll see they sent and recieved e-mail via Inmarsat-C satellite transmission. BTW I coded up the mapping from open-source tools -- gnuplot and perl :)

Easy!

You will need:

1 Wire cutters
1 RJ45 crimper
1 foot of electrical tape
300 miles of CAT5 cable

First, locate the underwater cable running to Hawaii. Use the wirecutters to strip to pierce the shielding and strip the end of your CAT5. Use the electrical tape to splice into the cable. Use the crimper to put an end on the CAT5. Now you can sail anywhere within ~300 miles of your splice. For longer distances, use a longer cable.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?

HF/SSB Solutions

There are two solutions for email when you are in the middle of the ocean: HF/SSB and satellite.

On the satellite side, there is exactly one product on the market. I don't remember the name or mfgr, but you can find them in any boating gear catalog. This is a small, self-contained unit with a small keyboard and LCD display. They go for about a grand, plus you need to subscribe to service and pay per message. Not cheap, but I hear they work quite well.

The other, and much more common, option is HF/SSB/Marine Radio. Any ocean-going vessel will (or should) have a SSB radio, although you need a fairly decent radio and a good antenna for data use. If you have a General (or better) class amateur radio license, then your choice is simple: WinLink 2000 http://winlink.org/k4cjx/ [winlink.org] is pretty much the defacto standard for amateur radio internet email. Yes, the software runs under 'doze, but it is free, and the service is also free, run by fellow ham operators.

If you do not have a General Class license and are operating on Marine SSB frequency bands, there are a number of commercial solutions that work just the same as WinLink. Unfortunately, they are not cheap, and none of them provide service any where near as good as the amateur WinLink setup.

In either case, (Marine/commercial or Amateur/Ham) you will need a radio modem to sit in-between your laptop and your radio. Which one you get will be determined by which service you use. If you go with a commercial provider, they will tell you what unit to use. If you use WinLink, there are many more options, all well documented on k4cjx's web site.

Also, if you are serious about this, I *highly* recomend that you take at least two laptops with you and that someone on board knows how to re-install both of them. Yes, your laptop will get fried, so make sure that you have an extended service policy on it! Why? I guarantee that someone will start the engine, start the anchor windless, or kick in the wind generator while the laptop is plugged in, sending a nasty spike through the electrical system and frying your laptop, or at the very least scrambling memory and corrupting the disk. Keying up 1KW on your HF radio can also do nasty things to your laptop as well.

BTW, I spent nine months as a live-aboard in the carribean, so I know all these issues only too well. If anyone wants more info, I'd be happy to provice all the gory details...

-p.

Uh-oh...

I can just see it now...

"Warning, unable to connect: Connection reset by pier"...