Satphone experiences...

Yeah, all those survival skills are a good thing to have but when a hurricane or storm appears unexpectedly and the only guy onboard the boat with sextant skills is down with a broken limb, my idea of self rescue is a pin point sharp GPS and a radio with backup to reach out to whoever's around. SVC Jeff nailed it pretty well for open ocean crossing. No reason not to have this stuff, today, most of it is fairly inexpensive.
Marine radio over telecom works astoundingly well. I was connected from Canary Islands to MN and it was as clear as cell quality. Sorry, nothing to add about satphone.

What happens if you lose your power source, if the electronic rescue crutch breaks, can you self rescue?

What happened to us? Afraid to Adventure?

John Muir, Danial Boone, Lewis and Clark, Columbus... what if they hadn't explored? They didn't have a map... or any idea what was over that mountain... or accross that ocean.

If they'd been afraid to venture where would we be.

My first camping trip was before WW II... my family were adventurers... they taught us how to depend on ourselves for survival.

I was in the woods every day, after school, weekends, holidays... learning to navigate by the sun, and shadows... sometimes the moon. I never carried a compass... GPS... what's that. What do you do when the batteries in your GPS fail or you drop it and break it?


By the time I was 10 years old my Xmas was a Mossberg bolt action, 410 shotgun... a realitively safe gun... you could see where the shot landed (not so with a 22 cal.) It was perfect for hunting squirrels and rabbits... we were meat hunters... no sport in that. Now people carry hand guns... they'ed starve to death if they had to depend on what they could hit with them.

How many people hurt themselves when in the back country... distracted hiking or four wheeling... looking at the screen... checking their signal.

Yes, I'm getting old... our 6 man whitewater raft with all of the helmets, paddles, life jackets doesn't get used... we go to museums and art gallerys and the beaches now... parking where ever... but still exploring new things...

Some of our critics "camp" in RV parking lots, with their outside lights on all night, sitting under their awnings, comparing the height of their flagpoles (lightnig attracters). Or getting on their computers to correct peoples spelling or telling them how to blog (about the campgrounds they have been too)

My family... we still have our memories of explorations all over North America... and we are still making new and different memories for months at a time every year.

Electronic Gizmo's... Ha! Many people do things in groups (some for percieved safety) and everyone has electronic (save me) devices...

To have my rescue on TV news, Newspapers, Facebook... OMG... it would let people know that I couldn't take care of myself.

...I'd be embarressed if I got lost or on the wrong side of a flooded river... or caught in a snow storm and had to have the tax paying citizens have to pay for my resecue.

What happened to adventure?

Emergencies at home... what about our submariners when they have emergencies at home? Anything that is an emergency will have been taken care of by the time you get home...

$1200 for a months phone bill... what could you possibly have to say worth $1200... when did you find time for the adventure that you were supposedly on?

I'm not lost... but I think a lot of people are!

Sleepy

There is also the Spot beacon for emergencies -- but if you really spend some time in really remote places, the experts say that the PLB is the way to go. We are thinking seriously about a PLB -- if I get badly hurt, DW could never carry me -- I weigh almost exactly twice as much as she does.

The PLB not only sends a signal to Search and Rescue via satellite -- it also has a homing signal for the chopper, when it gets close to your GPS coordinates. Plus it transmits at 5 watts, more than Spot, and there is no annual fee.

Two other excellent products are available.

DeLorme inReach SE

http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/delorme.htm

ACR SARLink View 406 Personal Locator Beacon

http://www.backcountry.com/acr-sarlink-view-406-personal-locator-beacon?rr=t

Doesn't take me long before I am out of cell phone coverage, but with Sat phone prices, I think the PLB is the better option for many.

SVCJeff,
EPIRB, HF High Seas, 2182KHZ, CH16...Wow, I haven't heard some of those terms in years. Were you in the Navy or CG?

artguys wrote:
Thanks folks...2 old guys in their 70s, that would be me and a friend who owns a 36' Cape Dory will be doing a Gulf of Mexico crossing in a couple of months. My friend is old school. Doesn't use any of the modern navigation methods...just charts and sextant or communication aids other than a VHF radio. I'm good with it as we've done it a few times. This time I told him that having some form of satphone might be a good idea, to which he agreed.

Since that's what you're doing, I would worry more about a good HF High Seas radio and an EPiRB. It's a voluntary "requirement" (whatever that means) for any mariner with a radio to listen to VHF Ch.16, and 2182 KHz in blue water. If you get in trouble it's a heck of a lot faster to grab the mic with an SOS and pop the EPIRB than it is to boot and get service from a sat phone. Also, take your friend to the boat shop and buy a GPS for him. It really doesn't matter how he likes to navigate, but the CG could really use those numbers while the EPIRB is getting organized and you're bailing the bilge. I don't know if she's still there, but the high seas marine phone operator did a fine job last time I listened.

I had an Iridium sat phone at the office for many years and finally killed the service because the users couldn't deal with the loop-around latency. Hopefully the newer generations can do a better job of nulling that out, but that wouldn't be my 1st choice for your trip IMO.

Satellites aren't going anywhere because of the greater reach and range they provide. Like cellular networks, satellite services will see numerous enhancements in the future.

Iridium for the Future

Like a lifeboat, one hopes never to need one. But so wonderful when it is there, when you do.

We all have different expectations, whether for ourselves or others for us. Only we can make that decision of whom to stay in touch with. Many here have family members that have expectations of contact every day. For me, I don’t. That being said, we all get older and emergencies occur. So that might be a reason to have one.

So it really depends on the person. Personally, I find that my cell phone works incredibly well, about 50% of the time. But, I usually know beforehand that the area I am traveling does not have service. But, I am still considering an emergency locater device like a SPOT.

Sat Phone? No.

b

artguys wrote:
never used one. Any real issues you would need to be aware of?

I'm just bringing the OP's initial post where people on this page can see it...

Good subject for what might be a slowly dying technology like so many that we have all watched go away...

8 tracks, cassettes, cb radios for most people... MySpace... cash registers... vehicles that have to be chipped... even uplink sat dishes on RV's... the hold outs wanting to keep technologies that are out of date have to pay more and more.

Like so many things... when people own one it's the best idea in the world... how many people do you (all of you) actually know that have a sat phone and how many of them think their moneys worth

I might want one on the ocean

BTW... childish name calling doesn't impress me.

Sleepy