E-mail At Sea For Sailing Yachts

E-mail At Sea For Sailing Yachts Rate Topic:

#1 Gallivanters

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 04:34 PM

We have an ICOM IC-M700PRO SSB Radio Telephone installed in Gallivanter.

What is the simplest and most cost effective upgrade which would enable us to send & receive e-mail at sea?

I understand I'll need to purchase some sort of modum and sign-up with a service provider.

Options abound and I'm just curious about which is the best / cost effective way to go in these modern times.

Thanks,

Kirk

#2 svjacaranda

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Posted 26 September 2007 - 05:40 PM

Kirk - We have been using sailmail for a number of years and very happy with it

If your just going to do coastal cruising it maybe more cost effective to use a local cell phone carrier with a data plan. Like Verizon or AT&T. We used Verizon and using our cell phone was able to connect to the Internet and send/receive email. After 9pm and on the weekends it was free minutes

If your headed off shore then you will need to obtain:

1. Pactor III modem
2. Cables, ferrite chokes
3. 500W Line isolator

The above three items will run about $1100-$1200. Download airmail software program for free from sailmail.

If you're a ham then email will be free using winlink

If you are not a Ham then sailmail is $200 a year. But you will need a FCC assigned call sign. Not sure what the cost is. Also not sure if you're in Aus, SA or NZ they have the equivalent

If you want to get right into it then check out http://ssca.org/DiscBoard/ and go to there communication section. Lots of very technical advice available there.

Also you may want to review http://sailmail.com/ especially their primer download. Follow the installation to a T and you will not have any problems. Especially about using the chokes and line isolator. It is very easy to get stray RF running around when transmitting data and it can cause problems.

The great thing about airmail is you can get so many things in a semi automated way. Weather faxes sent to you, Tsunami warnings, grib files and even web pages like Latitude 38, etc. Plus there is a drop down panel for submitting location reports to Yotreps. The choices are numerous.

Thats the condensed version. My how things have changed in email communication over the years.

Cheers

Chuck
Jacaranda

#3 maxingout

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Posted 29 September 2007 - 04:49 AM

[quote name='Gallivanters' date='Sep 26 2007, 04:40 PM' post='13614']
We have an ICOM IC-M700PRO SSB Radio Telephone installed in Gallivanter.

What is the simplest and most cost effective upgrade which would enable us to send & receive e-mail at sea?

We used sailmail and winlink for our email at sea. Sailmail did restrict our access to ten minutes a day, and that meant when connections were poor, sometimes it was tough getting all our emails in and out. Airmail on the ham radio band gave thirty minutes access each day for each ham radio station that we connected with. So if we connected to different ham stations, we could have as much free communications as we wanted.

The sailmail has the advantage that you can legally send business communications over the airways. In winlink, sending business commuincations is forbidden by the FCC rules.

So there are advantages to sailmail and different advantages to winlink. Combined, they are the best of both worlds.

Dave

#4 MMNETSEA

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Posted 29 September 2007 - 08:19 AM

Gallivanters, on Sep 26 2007, 09:40 PM, said:

Hi Kirk.

Check the post to Trim 50 in Hf Radio For Cruisers in th SE Asia Group.

I have the details your Icom M700 radio - also the best person to speak to in your area (where you at this time ?

Richard