Cruising America's Great Loop and other inland routes
View all threadsI would like to learn from other people's experience with email en route. I
see two choices, either PocketMail or a laptop with a telephone, and a cell
phone, modem. Maybe there are other choices I dont know about. Would anyone
comment on availability along the Loop of cell service or marinas with
telephone sockets that a transient could plug into for a few minutes? If
those are often available, I would prefer the laptop, which I want aboard
anyway. For PocketMail I assume that conventional telephones are pretty easy
to find anywhere???
Mike, American Tug "Easy Going" Rock Hall, MD until we start the Loop
< I would like to learn from other people's experience with email en route.
I
see two choices, either PocketMail or a laptop with a telephone, and a cell
phone, modem. Maybe there are other choices I dont know about. ...>
An emerging method for accessing e-mail and the internet is through
something called Wi-Fi, and I have been using it for some time on land, both
at home and while traveling. It is also available at many Starbucks coffee
shops. Wi-Fi is a system for making a wireless connection to the internet
at very high speed. Places that you can connect are called "hot spots", and
the number of hot spots is growing at a tremendous rate, especially on the
US west coast. I suspect that the number of hot spots on the loop is
currently very small, but there may very well be some, especially in
residential areas, and it would not surprise me at all to see progressive
marina owners to begin deploying Wi-Fi soon.
If you use Wi-Fi for home or business, there is free software available for
monitoring for hot spots as you travel. Have any of the listees been
monitoring for hot spots while they cruise?
Archie McCain
John Gill replied:
Mike,
We did not find many marinas on our first leg of the Loop -- (From Northern
Chesapeake - Lake Champlain to Sorrel, Montreal, Ottawa - Rideau Waterway - 1000
Islands - Trent-Severn Waterway - Georgian Bay - to Lake Erie) -- that had
telephone sockets for Email use. We didn't have too much trouble on the ICW
from Norfolk to Florida. As far as pay phones, they are also few and far
between these days since everyone seems to have a cell phone. Suggest you use a
cell phone with your laptop. Verizon and AOL worked great for us all last
summer.
Two J's V
Michael Lurie wrote:
I would like to learn from other people's experience with email en route. I
see two choices, either PocketMail or a laptop with a telephone, and a cell
phone, modem. Maybe there are other choices I dont know about. Would anyone
comment on availability along the Loop of cell service or marinas with
telephone sockets that a transient could plug into for a few minutes? If
those are often available, I would prefer the laptop, which I want aboard
anyway. For PocketMail I assume that conventional telephones are pretty easy
to find anywhere???
Mike, American Tug "Easy Going" Rock Hall, MD until we start the Loop
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