As far as my experience goes, this is fine for very low bandwidth data (sub-100KB text-only email) but no good for anything else. I used an SSB radio with a Pactor modem and SailMail while crossing the Atlantic, and it was great for staying in touch with friends but it wouldn't handle attachments, so photos and suchlike were out of the question. A lot of the sailors I've met opt for satphones with data capabilities, from providers such as Thuraya, which give something like 9600 baud at a reasonable cost, but the coverage isn't as complete as what you'll get with SSB. Either way, there's no chance a student can afford these: an SSB with a modem is way more expensive than a cheap satphone, and the cheapest Thuraya Hughes phone I found was around $500 second-hand (excluding any data topups).

It's pretty clear if you know a bit about marine data comms that Ubergamer's data quotas are actually extremely generous: 100 minutes of net access and permanent e-mail use with a megabyte message limit is a good deal. My advice would be to use a WordPress blog and set up the e-mail posting option, forget photographs or perhaps use them as part of the 100 minutes quota. Forget Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites; point your friends at your blog and stay in touch via e-mail and the occasional phone call (assuming you get a reasonable voice quota). Read more books, get to know the people you're sailing with and Enjoy the travels!