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Charbonneau's Communication Strategies
1/20/01
Blaine Parks
We’re often asked how we stay in
touch with family, news, mail, and financial concerns while living aboard
“Charbonneau”. The
question has been asked often enough that we thought a short article on
the subject was warranted. We’ll
outline the choices we’ve made for communications, any pitfalls with
those choices, and mention other communication strategies we’ve seen.
Let’s first define the types of
communication we’re interested in aboard “Charbonneau”.
We are primarily concerned with keeping in touch with our family
and friends back home. We
want to hear about world events, check on our bank accounts, and manage
our investment portfolio. There
is also the need to communicate with other cruisers and marine facilities.
And lastly, there’s the issue of how to get our mail forwarded.
The easiest, and most often used,
communication method is the marine radio (VHF or Single Side Band).
Charbonneau only has a standard VHF radio installed at the moment.
This limits our radio communication to line-of-sight distances only.
We purchased a Single Side Band (SSB) radio at the Annapolis Boat
Show last October, but won’t have it installed until we return to North
Carolina during the summer of 2001. With the SSB installed we can then talk with cruising friends
over great distances (thousands of mile distances are achievable).
We can also gain access to weather fax broadcasts, get world news,
and, with a HAM license, make ship-to-shore calls to our family.
Email is also possible via the SSB radio.
So, at the moment we use our marine VHF radio to contact local
boatyards, marinas, and fellow cruisers in our immediate area.
Long distance radio communications will have to wait until this
summer.
We have become firm believers in
using our cell phone and cellular modem to handle the majority of our
communications. We have a
standard StarTac phone with analog/digital service through Alltel.
Janet did an extensive search prior to our departure to determine
who would have the best service along the east coast of the US.
Alltel was her choice and we have had coverage in all but the very
remotest areas. Our cellular
modem is an Ositech Trumpcard purchased through Connect
Globally.
We also purchased a telephone coupler modem from Connect Globally,
but have had only marginal success in its use.
The cell phone’s obvious use is
to call home and check in with family.
We use it much more often, however, with the cellular modem.
We check email twice daily, manage our bank accounts with online
banking, and control several investment accounts with incredible ease from
the comfort of our boat. We
also do about 25% of our web site publishing over the cellular modem.
We still prefer the speed of a “land-line” for updating the web
site due to the large picture files associated with those updates.
We’ve also found the cellular modem very useful for getting news
via the Internet and downloading weather pictures from NOAA sites to help
us plan our offshore ventures. All these possibilities have become very reasonable with the
advent of “no roaming, no long distance” service packages from the
cellular carriers. You should
beware of services with only digital coverage.
We’ve found that digital coverage areas are very limited along
the coast. Most are limited
to metropolitan areas only. Do
your homework before you sign up.
Several cruisers have had great
success with the new PocketMail email service.
We have friends cruising the Caribbean who have used it from the US
Virgin Islands all the way thru the Grenadines and in Trinidad.
Several US cruisers we know also use it up and down the east coast.
With its built in phone coupler, sending or checking email is as
simple as dialing a phone number and holding the device up to the phone.
We’ve heard nothing but great reviews about this product.
There are also a myriad of SSB email services available. Unfortunately, we haven’t researched thoroughly enough to
make any recommendations.
We’ve been very lucky with our
mail forwarding arrangement. Janet’s
mother graciously volunteered to handle this service for us.
This works wonderfully for us since we share the same tax
accountant and bank at the same bank.
With so much of our “business” being done online, we’ve also
eliminated the bulk of mail by electing to have online statements for all
our credit cards, checking, and investment accounts.
We get emails about once a week from Janet’s mother detailing any
mail requiring our immediate attention and we get mail drops about once a
month wherever we are. This
has worked well for us and it doesn’t seem that we’ve worn out our
welcome with Jan’s mother just yet.
There are several reputable mail forwarding services available
which other cruisers are happy with.
The best advice we can give is to ask other cruisers for their
recommendations. Feedback on
individual services is all over the board and we won’t attempt to
decipher which are best.
That’s what we’re doing at the
moment. If anything in here
peaks your interest or leaves you with questions, just drop us a line. You’ll get a pretty prompt response in most situations –
unless we’re in that 1% area where we don’t have any cellular
coverage. |
