April 22, 2005 - Staying in touch
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

We are old enough to remember the time when the things everyone takes for granted today didn't exist.

Not too long ago, yachts cruising deep sea seldom had a way to stay in contact with family and friends ashore. They often depended on the chance meeting with a freighter or passenger liner to have a message relayed home. When we sailed to Hawaii and Europe in the sixties, we did not have any radio transmitter, so to keep anybody from worrying about us we made a practice of announcing only our arrivals. Usually we did not know ourselves where or when we were going until we were underway anyway. To keep in touch, we depended on airmail letters.

	Jane on the mike.

The challenge with airmail was finding addresses to have mail forwarded to us. General delivery could be a problem, as mail was often kept for only a short period of time by most post offices. Knowing in advance where we were going to be next was the most difficult thing. We used American Express offices and yacht clubs. We sometimes were able to send a forwarding address only when we arrived somewhere. All a very slow process, but we managed just fine. Nobody then would have believed the way we can communicate today.

On our return to St. Thomas after the trip to Europe, we installed our first Marine AM radio, much later to be replaced by VHF when AM marine became obsolete. The marine radios were quite useful for sending and receiving messages. If someone knew where we were, they could call the local marine radio station and usually get through to us. Also we could make calls out via telephone in some places. Telegrams known as "cables" could be used in emergencies. We almost never used them.

In 1971 Jane got her amateur radio license, and with her Canadian VE0MCG high seas call sign we have been able to communicate not only with our ham friends but also with Earth People via phone patches. The ham radio became very useful to keep in touch while at sea or in remote anchorages and to send a forwarding address once we knew where we were going. We used to phone patch Jane's mother when on passage thanks to fellow hams, so we have not felt out of touch or isolated. Nor did we prior to that time, come to think of it. In fact, it was a form of relaxation to be completely on our own.

The mail hunt could get quite funny sometimes, like when we checked for mail in Turtle Bay, Mexico in 1966. The post office was a little wooden box hut probably less than eight feet square. The postmistress could not read handwriting well so we wrote down our names and the name of the yacht. She had a big pile of letters seemingly totally unsorted and she looked at all of them one at the time. Once in a while with a smile she would show us one and look terribly disappointed when we did not accept it. However she was thrilled when we did. We had to learn to check under Ridder as well as DeRidder and Magic Dragon too. Usually mail did get through. Our worst loss was a package of Kodachrome slides that never made it to us in the US from Canada. We carried on with airmail until 1999 when we finally obtained a phone modem for our laptop and got onto email.

What a big step that was. By then many of our friends were already using email and all of a sudden we could keep in touch, get answers, from any shore telephone. We still depend on shore phones today to access Hotmail and to many our methods may seem antiquated, but to us it is magic. We type our mail aboard on the laptop to take ashore to a phone plug. We bring back the mail as well as downloaded internet stuff (such as SetSail FPB updates) to read aboard. We find corresponding with friends so much easier than it used to be, now that we do a lot more of it.

And with a digital camera, no more losing photos in the post offices. We send and receive pictures for free! Photos come and go without resorting to processing ashore.

We even use cellular phones nowadays. The first phone we had when we moved aboard in Vancouver in 1965 was the plugged-in variety. We moored at the Bay Shore Inn's dock because the West Vancouver Yacht Club did not allow liveaboards. Most often when we cast off our lines we'd forget to unplug the phone and pulled the poor thing out by the roots.

Pre-computer correspondence.

After some thirty years without a phone number we finally got a Nokia 918 on a prepaid card economy deal here in New Zealand. This card phone requires no monthly payments, and incoming calls or 0800 calls are free. The $0.88 per minute for outgoing calls in NZ is not cheap but with a KiaOra Card we can make less expensive calls and call overseas as well. When its battery needed replacing we chose to buy a second phone for $99 including its battery and battery charger plus thirty minutes of calling time, rather than spending $50 on just a battery. Later we got a battery on sale for $25. With the two phones we can call each other when on separate errands or just give a couple of rings to get a dinghy ride or to get picked up somewhere pre-arranged. Having a phone number that we can be reached on has been a great asset, and it's less trouble for our friends that want to track us down.

We have looked into the possibility of doing email through ham radio, but we have not taken the plunge yet. Our Kenwood TS430S would need upgrading and all the rest of it. In our lives, instant communication is not a must. As it is, we can get weather maps on SSB, we can talk to friends on the ham bands, or we can chat on cell phone, VHF or SSB. Going ashore to use a phone for email is a good excuse to visit with friends, and we seldom have to wait very long for an opportunity to do so. Where we have no acquaintances ashore we manage to plug in at the local shop or Internet café.

However we can see the beauty of today's communication possibilities. You can have satellite live video coverage now...Round-the-world racers seem to. Satellite phone and Internet access is all there for a price. Marvelous, if you need it. We don't. When we sold our house in 1965, the idea was to be home aboard wherever we are with few commitments, and to cut down our cost of living to keep us from regular working hours. That is still our endeavor, and so far it has been great fun.

Our finances are very small and simple. Outside of a few insurance premiums we have few fixed expenses. We did sign up for online banking, but we found little use for it and chickened out after reading about the various frauds that take place online. Bankcards are marvelous and much easier than the travelers' checks we used to carry. We are not into investments or any other financial worries so we stay poor and trouble-free.