Skype and WiFi aboard Seal - 23 April 2007
by Kate Laird

We asked all the SetSail correspondents about using WiFi and Skype to stay in touch while cruising.

Aboard Seal we haven't really embraced Skype as we should. We set it up last winter, but every time we called one of our few friends with Skype, they weren't online. We finally persuaded Kate's father to set up a Skype account, and had one conversation, and then a friend rolled an office chair over our headset and we lost heart. We have been meaning to get a new headset ever since, but we've now forgotten our log in, had the computer fail (so we've lost our Skype software), and generally given up. Friends of ours use Skype and SkypeOut continually. We use email. The big advantage of email is we have a written record of what is said, the other person doesn't have to be online, and it is brief. The few Skype calls we've had tended to go on and on, since it doesn't have that handy conversation-ender of international phone calls: "This is costing you/me a fortune; I'd better go..."

However, we've taken WiFi a step farther...when we are in Ushuaia, we have a local wireless internet account, and a big antenna that is hose-clamped to a broom stick which is in turn hose-clamped to our chimney guard. It works fine at dockside and when we're on the mooring in high winds. (In light winds, when the boat is spinning around, someone needs to go point at the tower every few minutes.)

For the Ushuaia winds - over 50 knots at the dock twice in the past two weeks - the broom stick needs to be supported by three guy wires and we look like we'll never move anywhere again. It's the geek equivalent of having flower pots in the cockpit. You might as well pay your poll tax and settle in. Fortunately, the antenna takes about two minutes to dismantle, so we're not completely dock-bound. We enjoy Internet madly for a week in Ushuaia then motor away from it and into the Chilean channels, where there is no WiFi, no cell phone service, nothing (except Iridium).

We spend enough time in Ushuaia (roughly one week a month) to make it worthwhile to keep our monthly subscription - friends insist we could do it more cheaply by taking the laptop to the Internet cafe, but since the Internet cafe serves the best coffee and croissants in town, I have no doubt that I am coming out ahead (and thinner) despite my mostly "wasted" $23 a month subscription. Plus, with Helen and Anna on board, I can work on the Internet while they are at school at the raised saloon table, rather than having work time eat into my very precious and rare private time.

Our Internet connection is the slowest (i.e. cheapest) of the three available speeds. We may bump it up to medium for a week and download Skype and try again (at our present speed, we can't manage to download the Skype software). On the other hand, we might not get around to it. At certain times of the day, the Internet band is oversubscribed and grinds to a halt. When this happens, we stop downloading pictures. You can still do this on the latest Internet Explorer, although it is not as easy as it used to be.

To remove pictures:

on Internet Explorer:

click on "Tools"
click on "Internet Options"
click on "Advanced"
scroll down to "Multimedia" and uncheck "Show pictures" (you might wish to check "show image download placeholders" to keep the page layout correct.

on Firefox:

click on "Tools"
click on "Options"
scroll to "Content"
uncheck "Load Images" (if you want to permit specific sites to load pictures you can add them to a list by clicking "Exceptions" and copying in the url.)

This can get you through Internet "rush hour" when every boat in the harbor is trying to use the same very thin band.

We have found quite a few places farther north with WiFi at the dock, either accidentally or on purpose...some seem to penetrate through our raised saloon windows, some are stymied by the aluminum hull (while our neighbors on plastic boats can surf down at the waterline at the saloon table.) We could add a more streamlined external antenna, and we would if we were cruising in places with more Internet access, but it isn't practical for us.

The charter season is over, so we're now on a sailing holiday in the Beagle Channel, staying as far away from WiFi and Skype as we possibly can for the moment (we're sending this by the still-remarkable-to-us 2400 baud Iridium). Tomorrow, we're going explore a seno that is not on the chart at all. There's no two ways about it - this is a much better place to be. When I first began cruising in Maine, I used to use a road map to judge anchorages - if there were no roads leading into it, it was bound to be a good place. Now we're more exacting: if there's no WiFi, it's bound to be good.

To read more about Seal and next season's charter schedule see http://www.expeditionsail.com