"Cruisers WiFi"

[devins]

Ahoy! We just returned from a two weeks in the Caribbean (11 days from Martinique to Grenada) and had a wonderful charter. Of course we occasionally tried to make sure everything was ok back home by hitting spotty Wifi along the way. We noticed that in virtually every anchorage, a "Cruiser Wifi" would pop up on the WiFi search while on the boat but could not connect. The park ranger in the Tobago Cays said that a subscription was required and that he though it was a service available up and down the entire chain.

This morning I decided to find the site on line to figure out if it is a worth while option for when we do get a boat and spend the winters in the islands, but am unable to find any service such as "Cruisers Wifi."

What up ?? I'm sure many use it, as the signal was fairly strong everywhere it popped up.

Thanks
Dave

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by devins

Ahoy! We just returned from a two weeks in the Caribbean (11 days from Martinique to Grenada) and had a wonderful charter. Of course we occasionally tried to make sure everything was ok back home by hitting spotty Wifi along the way. We noticed that in virtually every anchorage, a "Cruiser Wifi" would pop up on the WiFi search while on the boat but could not connect. The park ranger in the Tobago Cays said that a subscription was required and that he though it was a service available up and down the entire chain.

This morning I decided to find the site on line to figure out if it is a worth while option for when we do get a boat and spend the winters in the islands, but am unable to find any service such as "Cruisers Wifi."

What up ?? I'm sure many use it, as the signal was fairly strong everywhere it popped up.

Thanks
Dave

Dave, shore based Wi Fi systems are sometimes hard to connect to unless you have a strong WiFi booster on your vessel; your phone or computer can see the WiFi signal from shore but the Access Point on shore cannot see the weak signal coming out of your phone or computer.

When we cruise in the Caribbean we put a Digicel sim card in our phone and buy a data package then use cellular data for our connection. This will get you fast and solid Internet in most places and as long as you avoid watching videos it does not cost very much.

Of course the hassle of getting to a Digicel store and buying the sim card and data package in every country may not be worth it for a short duration charter.