{"id":611,"date":"2001-06-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-06-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=611"},"modified":"2012-03-07T21:08:08","modified_gmt":"2012-03-08T02:08:08","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew119","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew119\/","title":{"rendered":"Communications in the 21st Century – A Benefit or a Curse?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Benefit or Curse? Steve and Linda write about 21st century cruising communications.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

It boggles the mind, but in the 21st century the vast majority of cruising boats we’ve met in the Caribbean have some form of reliable, relatively fast communication with home. <\/p>\n

From single side band radio based e-mail systems like SailMail, ham win-link, or commercial operations like PineOak and WLO, to satellite systems such as Iridium (now back in operation), Globalstar (which we just tested), Sat C (text only) and mini-M (voice and data) there is a huge array of options. Throw in cell phone usage as you travel – usable of course for voice and e-mail, plus the plethora of Internet cafes now close to the water around the world, and you can always be in touch. <\/p>\n

Is this a good thing? We’re not sure. It is nice to be able to easily communicate with the family – and this does allow the cruiser to stay on top of business issues if he or she so wishes. But it feels like we’re now missing a certain level of serenity – part of getting away from it all – that used to be part of cruising. We know that for ourselves, if we can communicate, we will. <\/p>\n

This instant ability to know what’s going on in the outside world dilutes the pleasure of the precious mail package from home – delivered now with reliability by DHL, Federal Express, or UPS. In some respects this is a lot like navigation in the age of GPS. There used to be a sense of accomplishment (and relief!) with each safe landfall when we had to dead reckon and celestial to find our way. But would we give up our GPS? Not a chance. And the same applies to the ability to hear daily in some form or other from family and cruising friends around the world. I guess we’re stuck with this 21st century communications revolution – like it or not. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benefit or Curse? Steve and Linda write about 21st century cruising communications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beowulf-logs","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}