On extended cruising, relationships, and cruise logs....

[sundowner]

Originally Posted by Harriet

As for communication nowadays, I am currently sitting in my main salon in my pajamas reading and responding to these posts. We are on a mooring, but I could also do this at anchor with an antenna that we haul up the mast and a signal amplifier. Wifi signals abound in many many places, at least in the Caribbean. I am a wifi junky, and I love nothing more than sitting with that first morning cup of coffee reading the news online. With both Skype and a GSM cell phone, I never feel deprived of communication with friends and family.

Harriet,
What kind of external antenna and signal amplifier to you have? Does it work well? Sounds interesting and probably worth the investment.

[Harriet]

Sundowner - I'm not sure when I wrote that, but I suspect it was on a mooring in Jolly Harbor, Antigua. If so, then I was just using the internal antenna built into my computer. However, I also have a system utilizing a PCMCIA card equipped with external antenna jacks, an omni-directional antenna, a length of low loss cable, and a pigtail to connect the cable to the card. Unfortunately, the pigtail broke, so I can't use the system. A friend suggested I get a "genius" or "ingenious" power amplifier that would connect directly to the computer via a USB port. That would eliminate the card and pigtail, which is very fragile. I plan to get that when I am back in the States this summer.

Hope that helps.