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October 25, 2006 - Keeping Up with the News while Cruising
by Al & Beth Liggett

There is only one time that we missed some serious news that I can remember. This goes back to our early years of sailing on Bacchus. We only had a portable short-wave radio aboard in those days. It was supposed to be the latest and greatest, but fell well short of being a good listening radio. It was useful for getting our time ticks from WWV, though. We needed to have accurate time for sextant navigation.

In 1967 we were crossing the Eastern Pacific, sailing to the Galapagos, Marquesas, Tuamotus, and on to Tahiti. We had no self-steering, no autopilot. We were watch-on, watch-off, and had other concerns beside listening to the radio. So it was somewhat puzzling when we finally made it into Tahiti and the few other cruisers were talking about - "The War". The War this, The War that. We said, "What's the big deal? Vietnam has been going on a long time. What happened?"

"No," came the reply, "we mean the Isreali Six-Day War."

This news had completely passed us by. And it turned out to be critical news, changing our sailing plans as it had closed the Suez Canal to all boating traffic, not just big ships. Now everyone had to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

These days we have multiple means of gathering the news. We listened to the broadcasting of the 9-11 disaster on our ham radio, in the short-wave bands. We receive our BBC and VOA news this way. The trick is to sort out the appropriate frequencies and times for your location. We listen to both stations, and I think we get better international news than what we have been able to find in the US.

The local radio stations in our area are just that - local, and broadcasts are in the local languages. There are local TV stations too, of course. There is usually a short broadcast of news in English in morning or evening though. We don't have a TV, but many who do, subscribe to a satellite service for programing in English. Quite a few yachts also have bought satellite radios so they can easily get news via BBC, VOA, and CNN, and listen to music as well.

On the ham radio, the Maritime Mobile nets offer up a variety of news and weather - particularly the bad stuff brewing, along with local news of import, or anything big on the International news scene. Of course we also have to listen to reports of rugby tournaments, cricket scores, and soccer playoffs! To each his own...

In Malaysia and Thailand there are several English language newspapers that we buy and read. You can also sometimes get up-to-date issues of Time and Newsweek, or other topical news magazines. These are avidly passed around amongst other boats, even when they are weeks or months old. It is interesting to see how the old news items have fared with time. And there are always non-topical articles of general interest too.

Now, of course, there is the Internet. We usually do all our e-mailing chores and Internet work in one of the many cybershops in Langkawi or Thailand. They are up-to-date with machinery and software and are very reasonable - less than $1 an hour. Yes, sometimes we even have Internet onboard the boat - but that is a whole different topic.