patgiron wrote in news:bbab3281-e437-430a-
:

I really need a good hook up for off shore.
Thur. 11/29/2007 we will be leaving Norfolk Va and going to St
Marteen, approx 1600 miles across Atlantic. We head south out
of bay,
run 15 to 20 miles off shore till we reach Hatteras, turn left
cross
the stream and head south east.
We use commanders weather service, but it is like NOAA not
always
accurate. We did deliver one boat that had Sirus weather and it
worked
well. But it was a beautiful sail in the spring and did not
have any
weather system that we needed to watch. While we can still
connect to
internet Bermuda weather is pretty good. I will usually print
off 4
or 5 days of predictions before we leave just to see how close
they
come.



My friend Joe just took his Jeanneau 40DS sloop to Tortola,
joining up with the Carib 1500 race, Cruiser 1 class, out by the
rhumb line from Norfolk to Tortola. Carib 1500 had a satellite
GPS transponder on every boat that broadcast its position every 3
hours, 24/7, and placed them on the race's webpage so we armchair
sailors safely ashore could keep an eye on them and see how they
are doing. Their mere movement and speed tells you a lot how
things aboard are going and what weather they are in, of course.

Here's information from www.carib1500.com about the satellite
tracker:

"tarting now, we will provide free real time tracking of all the
boats in our rallies.
A self-contained, sealed AXTracker miniature transmitter will be
placed on each boat. Every four hours it will send a new position
to a Globalstar simplex data satellite which will forward the
message to the Magnalox software interface to our web page at
www.carib1500.com. In this way the positions of all 70 boats in
the rally will be updated 6 times a day without need for human
intervention. It will add to the interest in the event for the
families and friends of our ralliers, but more importantly it
will allow the race committee to arrange rendezvous with boats
with problems and to anticipate night time arrivals. The Magnalox
software provides user friendly tools that allow viewers to
superimpose boat tracks and positions on both graphic and
satellite image maps. Helping us pull the whole system together
with product and technical support was Fleet Analytics' President
(and fellow boater), Mark Eklund. To learn more about our service
providers visit the following web sites: www.Axonn.com,
www.Globalstar.com, and www.Magnalox.com. For help in planning
tracking systems write Mark Eklund at ."

Wouldn't it be reassuring for your family ashore to see where you
are and how you are going on this trip with a simple webpage that
automatically updates every X hours?

Joe also carried an Iridium Satphone portable that belongs to
another captain on our dock, here. He called me many times (at
$1.49/min which is most reasonable, considering) whenever he had
a question about my electronics suite operation or other
problems, notably DC power. He used the Iridium's data link for
email, too. It runs about 15Kbps, slow but steady and not really
expensive if you keep it down offshore. Sure beats being alone.

Larry
--
Isn't it ironic that the same ISPs that are telling you
you're downloads threaten their networks......
.....are testing 100Gbps TV to sell on the SAME systems?
http://tinyurl.com/27qx3v