Boat Life Larks - SV Dulcinea: Boat Upgrades

We really loved a certain Cabo Rico 38 we had seen before we listed Independence. So, as soon as we sold Independence, we made a marketplace offer on her. Oh, how happy the sellers would be to finally sell a boat that had been listed for 9 months, especially since they already own their "new" boat!

Yes, but.

Welcome to buyer's despair. The sellers didn't want to negotiate the price.

Back to the drawing board....

There's approximately 1 trillion boats listed for sale. We're pretty difficult though and had narrowed our search to just Cabo Rico 38's. We didn't like the ones with new engines because the sellers had done shoddy jobs and we'd wind up paying the "new" engine price and then putting in a new-new engine the right way. In fact, seller interference with perfectly good boats is a huge problem for us buyers. We found a reason to reject all the boats listed.

For instance, this boat featured "a new engine" and was ready "to take us around the world" for "just $89,000". It appeared to be in the process of sinking.

Sail away condition!

Matt posted to a Facebook owner's group, asking if anyone wanted to sell us their boat. I was against this tactic as surely a boat that was for sale would be publicly for sale, Facebook only exists for evil, and everyone wants too much money for their 30 yr old boats anyway.

Remarkably, an owner contacted us and listed a very reasonable asking price. We drove to Virginia, saw the boat, and walked away with a handwritten listing.

Hastings checking out the new boat.

We consulted my very complicated spreadsheet and came up with a full price offer, which (thankfully!) was accepted. It was now Dec 19 and we scheduled the survey for after Christmas. Finding the surveyor was easy: we are lucky enough to have knowledgeable friends in the area. Thanks for the recommendation, Max!

Survey day was remarkably pleasant. The weather was nice. The sea trial went well and we didn't break the boat or injure ourselves. We verbally accepted the boat and agreed to meet in 1 week to close the deal. The surveyor listed 5 items to fix (fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, electrical upgrades).

Starboard side settee

Port Side Settee (and sea berth)

Saloon

Galley

Cockpit

On Deck

Stern

Survey Haul

Sea Trial!

Matt sitting on the starboard side quarter berth / guest room / battery compartment / nav station. Galley is to port.

We left our car in Virginia, rented a minivan, drove back to Florida, emptied our storage unit, and drove back to Virginia. (We drove about 4000 miles for this boat in all!)

I had already gotten the title search from the Coast Guard (even though they were shut down). Matt sent the survey to our insurance agent and organized our insurance. I prepared all the purchase documents from our hotel room. We met the sellers at our bank, had the bill of sale notarized, and wired the funds. We then emailed the Coast Guard the Bill of Sale. I was a little intimidated to close the boat ourselves without a broker, documentation agent, or escrow service, but I saved $$$ and it was very straightforward.

Closing day was 3 weeks after we had first seen the boat (only about 7 business days). Such an easy deal, and the only paid outside help was our surveyor. It was meant to be!

Have you ever had an easy transaction?

Note: Please do not read this if you are a Cylon.

Connectivity has been a recent hot topic aboard Independence as both of us have started picking up some online work and our goal of becoming "digital nomads". This is the fifth and final post in a series about our preparations to stay connected for work.

In previous posts, I've talked about three separate pieces of tech that we’ve gotten to improve our onboard internet setup:

Goals for this project:

Boost LTE and xG cell phone signal-big antenna plus an amplifier. Must be both GSM and CDMA compatible.
Boost Wifi signals from marinas, restaurants, and other open connections.
Share this connection, via a ship-board wifi system, to multiple devices including iOS (iPads and iPhones) and our Macbook computers with minimum a performance loss
Minimum setup required…ideally, something that can be mounted on the davits and left there (no daily moving antennas about, running cables, etc.)
Minimum power draw…no 110V AC routers, etc.

Now, how do you make it all work together? You could arrange the pieces any way you like. At the moment, we just have the Bullet wifi booster with its antenna plugged into the router, all of which is sitting temporarily on the helm area under the hardtop and dodger. It’s running off of the 12-volt outlet at the helm and everything is working fine. The cellular system is temporarily routed under the hardtop, with the antenna taped to the top of my boat hook (hey, this is a classy operation!)

Like the cylons, we have a plan:

Step 1: Permanently mount the Bullet and Wifi antenna and the cellular antenna to a pole on the davits and run 12-volt power to it. This is basically going to be an extension on the mount for the satellite antenna that came with our Iridium Go!. One complication in this is the cellular booster: it is not weather/water-proof and cannot be more than 3-4 feet from the cellular antenna. I’m formulating a plan to make it a housing out of simple PVC pipes and fittings from Home Depot. Since it has 12-volt power running in, I will likely stick the power supply for the Bullet in there too.

Step 2: Run the cables to the Nav station, which includes a long ethernet cable from the Bullet and the antenna cable from the cellular booster. The inside cell phone cradle gets plugged into that, and it is mounted near where my computer lives.

Step 3: Mount the travel router inside. I’m planning to tuck it behind out TV/monitor. All it needs is a USB cable for power and the ethernet cable from the Bullet.

I was originally going to mount the router in an enclosure and combine all of these elements into one place, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to keep them separate. The router is so handy I just might want to grab it to take on road trips. I also didn’t want the cellular amplifier to pick up interference from the router or Bullet. The cell phone booster itself gets used without the router most of the time, so by having it mounted inside next to the router the phone in the cradle can be switched between direct USB to the computer or USB into the router. We often use the cell phone directly to the computer because it provides the absolute fastest connect for web conferences.

If you did want to build an all-inclusive device to be mounted in an enclosure, I think it would work best without our cell phone booster. I would shop for a USB modem card that is compatible with the router of your choice AND that has a plug for an external antenna. Then you could get an enclosure to house the router (with LTE modem plugged in, the Bullet power supply and the cell phone booster. Mount the LTE and wifi antennas to the case and run 12-volt power in. This was my original plan, but we decided to go with the actual cellular amplifier/booster.

So with all this said, how much did we spend on the whole setup? Note: I've included Amazon link to products available there, but I purchased a few items from data-alliance.net, which has some very good deals on components —

weBoost LTE cellular amplifier … $199

xG/LTE antenna, antenna cable and -SMB antenna adapters …$35

Bullet …$84

8 dbi wifi antenna …$30

Bullet power supply …$4

Various ethernet cables …$15

Travel router …$27

Total Cost … $394

Cost for Wifi Only … $160

Back to Page 3: Cellular Booster

Why are we doing all this again? So we can stay connected in our favorite anchorages, like Bennet's Creek, Cat Island, Bahamas. So say we all! JUMP!

Connectivity has been a recent hot topic aboard Independence as both of us have started picking up some online work and our goal of becoming "digital nomads". This is the third post in a series we will do about our preparations to stay connected for work.

Wifi booster

While we are dreaming up the perfect solution, it would be nice to connect to Wifi networks farther way. The big time this is helpful is in mooring fields…you are paying for access to the wifi and have the password, but it is just too slow because you're too far away. This would’ve been helpful more times than I can count. Sometimes (not often, but sometimes!) you are anchored near enough to a bar, restaurant or coffee shop that you could get on their network if you could buy the password from them. Usually, this costs just as much as a cup of coffee and you get a free cup of coffee. I’m always up for free coffee.

The number one way to accomplish this is with the Ubiquiti Bullet. This unit is used on nearly all of the commercial marine wifi solutions. I ordered all of the following components from Data Alliance, but many of the parts are available on Amazon.

The Bullet is a simple radio device. One end screws into your choice of antenna, the other end has an ethernet port that brings in power to the Bullet and connects to your computer. The Bullet is far more powerful than your computer’s wifi card and you can mount a pretty big antenna.

There are actually four different models of Bullet for sale, which makes the choice harder than it needs to be and it was difficult to figure out what was what. The M2 is for 2.4ghz networks (nearly all the networks you will ever find) while the M5 also connects to 5ghz networks, which are becoming more common. The “HP” models are white plastic while the “Titanium” ones are aluminum. All are “weather-proof”, but I think the aluminum “Titanium” models may be better if you are going to hang it outside permanently without an enclosure. The Titanium models also come with a 24-volt power supply, while the HP models do not. For reference, we choose the BulletM2-HP.

Ubiquiti BULLET-M2-HP Outdoor 802.11 B/G/N M2HP

These devices are Power over Ethernet POE devices and can accept any voltage from 8 - 24 volts. Since we’re on a boat, it would be great if we could use 12 volts. This is one of the main reasons I didn’t go for the Titanium model; I wanted 12 volts. I picked up a POE injector which accepts any voltage, and a power plug to wire into the ship’s 12-volt system.

Alfa APOE02-WM1, Passive PoE Adapter

For the antenna, I choose an inexpensive 2.4ghz, 8dbi omnidirectional wifi antenna. It’s nothing fancy and not very expensive. The antenna has an N-male plug which mates to the Bullet’s N-female plug.

Altelix 2.4 GHz 8dBi WiFi Omni Antenna N Male Connector (Outdoor Omnidirectional)

When I first got the Bullet, I plugged it in and had a lot of trouble setting it up. The Bullet itself is so widely used for so many applications that it is difficult to get all the settings just right. I finally found this tutorial on the Ubiquiti website that shows exactly how to do it for our use:

https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205197710-airMAX-Configure-a-Long-range-WiFi-Client

Once I had the Bullet working on my computer and connected to the best wifi network (in my case, the marina’s), I plugged to Bullet into the Travel Router to share the boosted internet signal to everyone on board. I thought this was going to be a nightmare. To my surprise, it just worked. Now we can leave the Bullet connected to the marina (or whatever wifi is strongest), and we can make all changes and settings to the Bullet through the travel router. Amazing!

<-- Page 2: Travel Router | Page 4: Cellular Booster -->

Connectivity has been a recent hot topic aboard Independence since both of us have started picking up online work and our goal is to become "digital nomads". Fast Internet is critical now and I thought I would write down some of the lessons we’ve learned in first few years of full-time cruising. This is the first post in a series we will do about our preparations to stay connected for work.

Luckily, we didn’t need to be connected the first year. That gave us the freedom to not really worry about it and to experiment.

Connected on the go...Tiny's Hurricane Hole Bar, Long Island, Bahamas

5 Lessons Learned:

1. Don’t Count on Wifi Alone

We researched all sorts of wifi boosters before we left and asked a lot of cruisers. What we found, in actuality, were very few open networks that we could connect to. Not wanting to commit before I knew what I should spend money, I bought this simple USB wifi card with a huge 9dbi antenna. This was a perfectly acceptable solution for experimentation. If you had only one computer on board, you could totally mount this baby in a waterproof housing, get a proper marine antenna and call it a day.

We used this onboard to help us connect at marinas where we had a passcode and could just barely get a signal. It helps you get a stronger signal, sees more networks and you can put the antenna outside and as high as possible. The downside is that it is of limited use...very few marinas have good wifi. Sure, you can get online and check email, but you won't be web conferencing because it's just too slow.

One note: it wasn’t always easy to get this thing to work on my Mac. Check your OS compatibility before buying. #firstworldproblems

2000mW 2W 802.11 G / N High-Gain USB Wireless Long-Rang WiFi Network Adapter With Original Alfa Screw On Swivel 9dBi Rubber Antenna and Suction cup Window Mount dock

Here’s a tutorial on how to use the Alfa card in a waterproof case as a booster (it’s an older article, but it still works fine and is simple)

http://www.practical-sailor.com/blog/Build-Your-Own-Long-range-WiFi-Antenna-for-Less-than-100-10081-1.html

2. Cellular is the Way to Go for Dependability

After traveling the ICW we learned there was only one cellular carrier that works everywhere: Verizon. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile went miles and miles (which means days and days for us!) without any signal at all. Often Sprint would have a voice signal but not data. North Carolina and Virginia are very rural…and Verizon is the cellular king in rural America. When we spent a month in Ocracoke (a popular tourist spot!) we were surprised to find that neither of us had a usable cell phone.

Luckily, my unlocked iPhone 6 (and all iPhones since, I believe) are true world phones that work on every network. You can get a prepaid SIM card from Verizon for $35/month for 3 GB data, and you can add another 3 GB/90 days for just $20. Those rates are basically identical to Ting (cheaper if you include talk and text) and cheaper than T-Mobile or AT&T. Verizon is fast and has consistently gotten 30Mbps or more the entire trip! Ting is often 15-20Mbps…still good, but not as good.

3. For the Bahamas, BTC is the Bomb!

We picked up a BTC prepaid SIM card last year for our travels in the Bahamas. BTC is their local cellular provider, formerly Batelco. There is no monthly fee, you just add more money to the account when you need it. 15 GB of data is $35. Yes, you read that right. That’s about 20% the cost of data in America. What is up with that? It must suck, right? Au contrair mon ami…it is awesome. There are towers almost everywhere, and they are fast with LTE technology. I recently posted to Facebook and asked cruisers to report in their findings. Many reported that it worked faster than their home cable internet. Need to make a call or do a web conference? Look at your charts to find the nearest tower, and find an anchorage as close to the tower as you can. If you plan to go back, you can keep the same card and number IF you add $5 at least every 90 days. That keeps your account active, and you can use up that money when you go back.

4. No Need for a Mifi — Just Tether!

I see lots of folks online swearing by mifis. I don’t understand it, why pay for two devices when you already have the smartphone? I’ve been tethering data from my cell phone since I had a T-Mobile flip phone in 2002. I think it’s never caught on because the cell phone companies didn’t want you to know you could do it, and then when people got smarter the companies tried to charge for it. AT&T even went so far as to remove the function from the iPhone they sold you. Now it’s swung around again, and you can do it simply. Again, your iPhone might have to be UNLOCKED. iPhones can tether data via wifi, Bluetooth or USB cable. USB is by far the fastest, followed by wifi and then Bluetooth comes in slowest. One note about Verizon: I recently found out that you cannot use tethering (also known as a personal hotspot) with their "Unlimited" prepaid plan. Bummer.

5. Satellite is Nearly Useless and Too Expensive and Too Slow

We bought and installed an Iridium Go! last summer. It was great offshore when coupled with the Predict Wind membership. Amazing data to have at your fingertips. But…the cost is amazing too. The cost is almost as astronomically high as the speed is astronomically low. The unit and equipment were $1200. The unlimited plan is $128 per month. I’ve never found a good use for it beyond Predict Wind, so that’s another $250/year. It is useless any other time than offshore; if you have a cellular signal you would never use the Go! instead. You can’t check regular email or work from it (in my opinion). We are keeping the unit, but disconnected the service for now while we are near-shore and Bahamas cruisers.

Here is a quick run-down of places we've been recently with details:

Vero Beach, FL (mooring field) -- in town with excellent cell service from all providers. Verizon LTE regularly provides more than 30 Mbps. Marina wifi extends to mooring field with multiple access points, one of the best networks we have seen, but daytime speeds usually average 0.5-1.5 Mbps...unacceptably slow for web conferencing. Sitting in the lounge and at off-peak times we usually see about 5 Mbps. A wifi booster helps here, especially the farther out in the mooring field you are.
St. Augustine, FL (mooring field) -- Excellent cell service from all providers. Lots of wifi networks, but none unlocked. Marina wifi out of range for us (we were on the farthest ball). Did some work from a Pub one night...
Ocracoke, NC (Silver Lake anchorage) — Verizon only. We didn’t know so we had no service from our Ting phones (voice only on Sprint). Wifi was available, and the anchorage is surrounded by the village, so it worked okay. Not fast, but it was something. We quickly learned that everyone on the island uses their phone number as the wifi password…handy!

Ocracoke Harbor (Silver Lake), North Caroline...less connectivity here than you might think!

Deltaville, VA — If you've ever spent time in Deltaville, you won't be surprised by the lack of connectivity. As first timers during our first season, we were shocked. Sprint worked, but not well with spotty coverage and no data. Verizon for the win again! This is true for everywhere in the lower Chesapeake Bay we visited.

Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, Bahamas -- there is no connectivity here. We used out Iridium while at Warderick Wells to check the weather. This is the middle of Nowhere-ville and is great for vacation but not working online.
Hope Town, The Abacos, Bahamas — There are lots of wifi networks here, but they are all locked. If you are on one of the balls owned by the Inn or a restaurant, you might be able to get their passcode. There are two local WiFi providers, Out Island Internet OII and Bahamas WiMax, who you can purchase connection time from. These are good for short-term solutions but are fairly slow and expensive. There is excellent BTC LTE coverage and I think it’s cheaper than the wifi options.

Hope Town Harbour...I can think of no better place to work from.

Georgetown, The Exumas, Bahamas — No wifi in sight…but we anchored a long way from town. Excellent BTC coverage.

Amazing anchorage at Red Shanks, wonderfully isolated yet only a mile from Georgetown. Excellent BTC coverage!

Salt Pond, Long Island, Bahamas — when anchored near to Tiny’s Hurricane Hole (cruisers bar) the wifi is pretty good. A good anchorage for a wifi booster. Excellent BTC coverage.

Salt Pond, Long Island -- the BTC is just out of the frame here...excellent service!

So, in conclusion, we are killing the Iridium, keeping Verizon (in place of the Ting/Sprint account), getting BTC again for the islands, and working on a cheap solution to work as a wifi/cellular booster. More on that next!

Do you like to stay connected while cruising or on vacation or do you leave your devices behind?

Page 2: Cheap and Easy Onboard Wifi -->

It's the moment we've all been waiting for: the boat has won. It has taken my soul and crushed it. I'm not even sad about it. There's just nothing where my soul used to be. Dead inside.

I don't even know when the soul crushing begins: is it at 4AM when the garbage truck comes and scares the life out of me by making boat crushing sounds? 5AM when Hastings decides he wants a walk for the 4th time this night? 7AM when I'm sitting, staring at breakfast? 8AM when I'm laboriously doing dishes and managing slop buckets? 8:30AM when I'm sanding a horrid multihull boat?

10AM when my back is so twisted I can't move? How about noon, when I really hate the thought of the repetitive motion of lifting a fork to my face to eat, or even worse, the thought of doing dishes again? How about when I can't take sanding anymore, ask for a re-assignment, and end up mangled in an engine room, cleaning engine grease? How about when I'm asked to find the johnson-keter-hoosker-do, move it half a turn with the Phillips, and paint it with 6700? Now, I didn't take shop class, so I don't know about hoosker-dos, Phillip is busy with his own project, and do I mix 4200 with 1500 to get 6700? Ah, but wait, we're all out of 1500, the hoosker do is off-kilt and needs to be replaced, and we could relax while waiting the 6-8 weeks for the hoosker to be re-engineered in Timbuck2, but we can't, because friends, there are 99 other projects left.

By 3PM I'm on the verge of hysteria, and I could be googling boat sales websites, divorce lawyers, and looking up wonderful, land-locked houses for sale, but my hands hurt too much to type, and, guess what, we don't have internet anyway and I don't feel up to standing next to the dumpster, the boat yard's version of Starbucks.

They say "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger", but the reality is "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You WIsh You Were Dead". So, instead of important google searches, I amuse myself by staring glassy eyed at the 10 million fruit flies that have overtaken the boat. Sometimes my eyes move over to all the bloody mosquito carcasses splattered on the walls. Then I notice the mold growing.

At 5PM, it's beer time with the rest of the zombies. I open our emergency tiny fridge (the regular tiny fridge needs the ocean to run) and everything falls on my feet. I sit there in my disgusting clothes, drinking beer out of a bottle. Look how the mighty have fallen!

There's a new person here. He wears a different shirt from yesterday. There's joy behind his eyes as he talks about blister repair. He doesn't sit in the dirt, but in a chair. Oh, new boat owner full of hope, may the light stay with you a little longer. It's lovely to see.

6PM, time for a shower. I forget my towel and scrubbing brush, but it doesn't matter, because no amount of scrubbing can erase the blackness on my soul. 7PM, mosquito time! Sadly, every night they leave us just enough blood so we can live one more miserable day.

Are you currently dead inside? Do you remember what pushed you over the edge? If you still have a soul, I hope you do something nice with it today. We'll just be zombie-sanding.

Full Disclosure: You should be getting a photo tour of Long Island, but I'm too lazy to find the photos. So instead, you're getting an old post that I forgot to publish. Lucky you!

So, how does day to day boat life stack up against day to day 9-5 life?

Well, here's a handy graph!

0 is neither happy nor unhappy

Positive numbers denote joy

Negative numbers denote despair

Work Day:

7AM-9AM: Drive to work. Deep unhappiness, many near death experiences, complete loss of faith in humanity. - 7

9AM-12PM: Work. Prefer to be on the beach, sure, but at work I made money, which is the source of all happiness and joy, and I got to talk to people I am not married to about things other than toilets. 0.

12PM-1PM: Lunch. Slight happiness spike. 1.

1PM-5PM: Work. 0.

5PM-7PM: Drive home. Despair level higher than drive to work as humanity has somehow gotten angrier during the day. -8.

7PM: Dinner. Yay! 3.

8PM-10PM: Convenient chores. Easy things like throwing laundry in a machine, driving to a nearby well stocked grocery store, etc. -2.

10PM: The highlight of the day: Game of Thrones! 5.

Boat day:

7AM: Sleep in. 4.

8AM: Coffee on the patio. Maybe Humphrey the Manatee will do a swim by. 6.

9AM: Take Hastings to shore for a walk. 5.

10AM: "Talk to Flex-o-fold", or "Boat Drama". Boat drama could be dragging across the anchorage, dropping a Japanese screw that will take weeks to replace, an engine belt snapping, or the dinghy engine dying on the way back from shore. -4.

11AM: Break engine. AKA Even More Boat Drama. -7.

12PM: Take a break to have lunch while enjoying a lovely waterfront view. 3.

1PM: Start fixing engines. It's not that bad really, aren't we lucky to live on a boat, oh look there's Humphrey. -3.

2PM: Still fixing engines. Oh my god, why is the engine room so small? Argh, I dropped a screw! Why is it so hot? Where is my screwdriver? I can't see it! Blood is streaming down my forehead! I hit myself in the head with the screwdriver I was looking for! HELP! -8.

3PM-5PM: Move onto inconvenient chores like hauling laundry to a machine miles away, or doing it by hand, running the watermaker, scrubbing mold from a ridiculous spot, or removing seagrass from the fridge strainer while crouched in the corner. But hey, aren't we lucky to live on a boat? 0.

5PM: Watching Humphrey the manatee, or a dolphin, or coloring, while drinking tea. Life is good. 6.

6PM: Dinghy or paddleboard trip. 6.

7PM: Lovely sunset. Isn't it lovely to have the time to watch the sunset every night? Just lovely. 8.

8PM: Dinner. Eating gourmet meals while enjoying the view. 5.

9PM: Underwater light show, featuring barracuda eating baby fish. One day Humphrey the Manatee will swim under our lights to give us a 10. Right now it's stuck at 8.

10PM: Watching DVDs. 5.

Sunset from Cambridge Cay, Exumas

The takeaway: The highlight of our day used to be watching TV, at 5 points of joy. Watching TV still gives us 5 points of joy, however it is a let-down from the many highs of the day. If you count up all the points during the day:

Work= -23

Boat = +35

So, according to this very un-scientific spreadsheet, work life was an overall negative and boat life is an overall positive. Yep, being stuck in the engine room, waiting for a Japanese screw to be shipped from Siberia, after Debbie the Parts Department person gets back from her safari, is a big pain in the neck. But waiting for the screw means I can have a more complete spreadsheet of "Humphrey's movements around Tarpon Bay, Key Largo: is it random or by design? Is the design random? Is Humphrey happy? And, wouldn't he be happier if we were swimming under my lights at night?"

What daily item brings you the most joy and the most despair?

The 5 Steps of Boat Projects

Boat Buying Blues: Finding and Buying Our Cabo Rico 38

Great Find: Cheap Dinghy Lights

Summary: How We Keep Independence Online

Cellular xG/LTE Signal Booster

Wifi Booster

Cheap and Easy On-Board Wifi

Getting Internet While Cruising

Boat Yard Battles: The Boat Yard Wins the Battle for My Soul.

Happiness Level, Graphed: Work Life vs Boat Life

Like Us on Facebook

About us

Our Route

Contact Form

Labels

Blog Archive

Search This Blog

Flickr Images