FPB Series

A New Paradigm for Cruising

Design Objectives

FPB 64

FPB 83

FPB 83 On Deck

FPB 83 Interior

FPB 83 Systems

Passages

How Things Are Working Out

Communications

We debated extensively about what communication gear to carry prior to installing our electronics. This subject is covered elsewhere under Electronics Decisions. Now, after cruising in New Zealand and the tropical South Pacific for the last four months, we have a better handle on things.

Keep in mind that the following comments are based on cruising in the South Pacific, and may or may not apply to other areas. Here is what we've found so far.

We decided to carry both an ICOM M802 marine SSB and an Iridium satellite phone. Iridium was chosen over Mini-M because of cost and portability. We like the concept of being able to take the sat phone ashore or in the life raft. Iridium is essentially a worldwide system, which Globalstar is not - but if we were going to cruise where Globalstar was available, we'd go that route because of the cost per minute and data communications speed (four times faster than Iridium).

We also fitted a Pactor 3 modem, so that we could use SSB e-mail with SailMail or WinLink.

We use a lot of e-mail capacity for staying in touch, business, and weather data. We assumed that in New Zealand we would use wireless Internet connections. However, this proved to be practical only at Opua - and here it worked sporadically, depending on atmospheric conditions. (The fact that we were anchored made it harder. Had we been at the marina, the WiFi would have worked better.) There were services elsewhere, but each required a new sign up and debugging, so we ended up using Internet Cafes - a real pain. If we were doing this in New Zealand again, we would get a system which works with a Vodophone portable phone system, so we could have reasonably fast connection on board with the cell phone.

SailMail via SSB is amazing with the Pactor 3 modem, when you can get connected and when band conditions are good. We saw baud rates as high as 15k. However, we found it difficult to find periods of time with both good band connections and an available station. There are several thousand cruisers around the world now using the system, but we eventually ran out of patience with it. It just took too much time to connect when we wanted to send or receive e-mail.

That's when we connected the Iridium sat phone. The phone came with a service from the phone supplier, GMPCS. However, their technical support was horrible - the folks we talked with were not fully up to speed and had a real attitude problem. These guys offer inexpensive phones and cheap prepaid minute plans - but don't expect technical support from them. However, with the help of a local cruiser, we eventually got connected using a compressing/forwarding service called UUPlus (UUPlus.com). It was actually very simple, and the tech support from UUPlus was wonderful.

There are many people now providing these gateway services - we're not sure who is the best. But UUPlus is easy to use, works well with Outlook Express, and is very fast. We can connect, send and receive 10 to 20 e-mails, and disconnect in a minute of air time. We usually check in twice a day. The knock on Iridium is that it is slow - just 2400 baud. However, we can send and receive 10-20 e-mails in one minute of air time - depending on message length, of course. With business, personal, and weather data, we are averaging about three minutes a day.

If you are interested in sending pictures, we have found that a 6" x 4" (150 x 100mm) image, at 72 dpi (compressed or optimized in Photoshop using the "Save for Web" command) will go through in about one and a half minutes. Most of the photos you see on this section of SetSail in the last two months have been sent this way.

And of course, the sat phone can be used for calls home. In Fiji and Samoa it is significantly cheaper, at US$1.05/minute, than the local phone services.

So what about the SSB and Pactor? If we were doing this again, we would go with a straight ham rig if we wanted the SSB/ham capability, and forget the Pactor modem (if we wanted backup, we'd buy a second sat phone for about the same price as the Pactor modem). The SSB version of the radio offers no advantages that we can see, takes a lot more space, and is considerably more costly.

We used the Vodophone GSM cell phone service in New Zealand. With prepaid cards it is quite costly compared to the USA; however, for a short-term solution, there seems to be no option. The same phone worked in Fiji with a local sim card. Again, this was very costly. Still, there were times when we were glad to use it for coordinating things locally.

When we are in the US we will use one of the high speed cell phone connections on the boat. We've been told that this also now works in much of Europe.

Overall, we have to say we are amazed at the ease of communicating and the amount of data that it is possible to transmit for moderate cost. Even the SSB/Pactor/SailMail system works really well, if you have the patience. Compared to the olden days - even five years ago - the change is revolutionary.