The mariners of yore had it easy; oh, sure, the boats were frail and wooden, the weather was unpredictable and the waters uncharted… but did they ever have to try to pull in a wireless Internet signal from five miles out?
There are still sailors, of course, who hold to a philosophy of austerity, spurning fancy electronics, power-draining appliances, and complex gadgets like watermakers and satellite TV systems. Mandy and I ascribe more to the Einstein theory of systems complexity: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. The catch, of course, is what you consider to be the lower limit of “no simpler.”
In our case, Internet makes the list. Both of us run businesses that are heavily dependent on Internet communications. We can get away (and indeed enjoy doing so) from it for a few weeks at a time, by planning ahead and making some allowances, but for living aboard, intermittent or low-speed connections to the web just weren’t going to work for us.
At Shilshole, we have the option of getting Comcast cable internet, but cable is expensive no matter where you are and is an even worse deal for boaters: you only get it when you are tied up in the marina. Satellite internet was both outside our energy budget and price range. We don’t have, and don’t otherwise need, a High Frequency radio aboard, so HF modems aren’t in the picture, and are too low-bandwidth for our needs besides.
But we’re not going particularly far afield except in small doses, so easier solutions present themselves. In this case, in our region, wireless Internet is the clearest choice. Almost all marinas are equipped with WiFi hotspots, and here in the Pacific Northwest, most of those are controlled by a single wireless provider. That means a single subscription has us covered up and down the coast in both Canada and the United States.
Equipping ourselves to use that service was considerably more straightforward than most of the other alternatives. Although the provider does sell hardware packages for boats which they claim are necessary for the “marine environment” it’s not hard to roll your own solution at much less expense. For most circumstances, we’ve been well served by a fifty dollar USB-powered signal booster and an old 8 dbi antenna I happened to have laying around. As long as we are within a mile of one of the marinas, we have good luck connecting at high speeds with that rig.
We had another challenge that was a bit stickier, though. Our “winter quarters” where we are house-sitting are right next to a marina… but not one served by this particular company. The closest marina with that provider is five miles away across the length of the bay. Our cheap booster and omni-directional antenna were not going to cut it.
But five miles, across open water, is still within the realm of the possible when it comes to wireless connections, and using some handy web-based calculators, and some educated guesses about the equipment the provider was using, I was able to run the numbers. I could still use our existing booster, and with a vertical height of at least 21 feet and an antenna gain of 20Dbi, a connection should be possible.
I went with a 24Dbi parabolic grid just to be safe, mounted it on an 8 foot galvanized pipe atop an embankment to get to the minimum height necessary, and lined it up with a combination of binoculars and a basic wifi signal strength meter on my laptop. When it was all connected up, presto: Internet access across the bay.
Fine, you say, but what does this have to do with you and being aboard your sailboat? How does that help?
Ah, but that’s the best part. Even during the summer months, we spend quite a bit of time moored out in front of this very same place. With the cooperation of the rightful tenants, I can leave my arrangement up year around. Plugging it into another common wireless access point or to a computer with wifi and Internet Sharing capabilities (which describes most Macs and newer PCs these days) I can create a secondary wireless signal at the house… which we will then be able to link to with our standard equipment aboard the boat when we are dangling off the mooring ball out front.
Okay, this isn’t a solution available to everyone, but if you happen to find yourself in a similar situation, it might be an option. Get to know the neighbors in places you moor or anchor frequently! The antenna is relatively small (and for most connections, you could use one much smaller) and the power consumption is minimal. And if you share (subject to the provider’s terms of service, of course), they might even let you do it for free!