Comms 101

May 31, 2013. Home



Communications are an area of concern for us, given our plans to be away for a whole year. And, much as we want to get away from it all, and explore off the beaten path, we still feel a need, at least from our current perspective, to try and stay attached at least via phone, and when possible, via internet. Especially since I plan to continue to do some work over the interweb while we are away.

There are 1000 different aspects to communications on a boat, and maybe at some point I will write a post about it (once I actually know something about it). At this point, though, I did learn a couple of useful things recently, that should be of interest to any Canadian planning to spend some time travelling in the states (maybe to come visit us?).



First thing – it turns out you don't need to rely on your Canadian cell phone carrier's extortionist phone and data roaming plans to get good access in the states. There are several American companies that will sell you a sim card that you can pop into your unlocked phone, and then you will have a number you can use anywhere in the states. The best cost I found is about 4 bucks per day, but that includes all your calls to anywhere in the US or Canada, plus a lot of data use – more than you will likely use, unless you plan to spend your whole trip watching Netflix on your phone. You can check out the company I am planning to use, called Roam Mobility, here : http://www.roammobility.com/.

BTW, I have absolutely no financial interest in Roam, and haven't used them yet, so can't recommend them other than it looks like a good deal to me. If you do plan to use them, apparently if I refer you, we both get some free days, so let me know.

"But, Scot", you might proclaim, "I don't have an unlocked cell phone! I saved a ton of dough, and bought one with a contract!"



So, here is where I can really save you some money. You can either do what I did, and buy a brand new unlocked cell phone, for much dinero (as they say in Mexican cell phone circles).

Or… and this is where it gets interesting… call your cell phone company, and ask them to unlock your phone.

After spending a bunch of money on a new phone this week, I called my cell company (Rogers) for a completely different reason, and just as an afterthought, I asked them if they would unlock my old phone. I was sure they wouldn't, since I am only 6 months into a 3 year contract, and bought the extremely expensive Iphone 5 at a really cheap price, since they included it with my contract.



Anyway, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask, so I did. And what do you know – 15 minutes later, I now have an unlocked Iphone 5, which I can use with any carrier, any sim card, anywhere in the world (cost me $50.00 to have it unlocked, but totally worth it.) I wish I'd known this before I bought my new phone. I guess I could return it, but as it turns out, I think it will be nice to have some redundancy in our phones on the boat anyway. At least one of them is pretty likely to end up in the drink at some point.

So, anyway, that is the tip for the day. Call your phone company, and see if they will unlock your phone. It will make it way more valuable, way more versatile, and if you bought it on contract, it will be the cheapest way to get an unlocked phone. In fact, I can't imagine why anyone would pay full price for an unlocked phone directly from the store, ever again.

B..B..B..Back in the BVIs

A month ago I never would have guessed I'd be back here so soon. Long story as to how this came about. I'll try to shorten it here.

After our initial offer on the boat in Florida, it appeared we would end up quite a ways apart on the price the seller was aiming for. About the same time, some huge price drops on a couple of charter boats in the BVIs, of the same make, made it impossible to ignore them. So, I booked a trip to come check them out, and here I am (I guess that wasn't such a long story).

It has been an extremely eventful couple of days here. I've been bouncing back and forth between the Voyage yachts charter base in West End, and Conch charters, where, ironically, the main boat that attracted me here has recently been moved. I've been all over the island in my rental Daihatsu, and all over multiple boats.

Today was an extremely full day with a haul out and survey on the boat at Conch. I arranged all of this before I arrived, as I wanted to make this a one stop trip – it is a full two day trip to get here, and pretty expensive, so I didn't want to do it more times than absolutely necessary.

How did the survey go? Well, there were some real high points, and real low points as well. The high points – the boat sailed beautifully despite a head sail that looked like it might blow out at any moment. Also, the surveyor, Geoff Williams of West Indies Yacht Surveyors was a wealth of information, and extremely thorough in his going over of the boat. The information and insight I gained from him regarding boats, systems and trip planning may in fact be worth the cost of the entire trip here, including the survey, given that I think it will probably end up saving me a lot of money in unnecessary boat upgrades and systems expenditures.

        

        

The low points – well, I don't really want to focus on them, but suffice it to say it is not a terribly great sign to have to call the mechanic out to the boat you are surveying, and have them install a new starter motor on one of the engines so that you can get the boat to move for it's sea trial. Also, a word of advice from a new ( but rapidly gaining experience) boat buyer. If you are trying to sell your boat, you might try having it cleaned up to some degree. At least try and clean the fruit flies out of the bottom of the fridge, and the dead roaches out of the escape hatch. I'm just saying.

        

Anyway, I am going home armed with a ton of information and ideas I didn't arrive with. I believe I have solidified a plan in terms of boat purchase, the relevant systems I need on the boat, and also a route that will work for us, taking into account hurricane risks, timing, and latitudes.

There is still some negotiating to be done, and a boat purchase to finalize, but I now know what I want, and have a solid list of priorities. I'll give you all the details once we have a purchase sorted out.

Long trip home starting tomorrow, but I can't wait to get back.

Still trying to buy a boat

Well, despite all our efforts thus far, we are, as yet, still boatless. People have been asking me for an update, so here it is.

My trip to Florida was reasonably successful, with the reward for the effort being the chance to see a number of different boats, and confirm exactly what we want. Despite the large number of boats out there, it is amazing how our list of requirements quickly narrows things down to only a few boats that are possibilities. For those who are interested, here is what we are looking for, and why:

1. Catamaran – if you want to get into the arguments between the advantages of catamarans and multihulls, you could spend the rest of your life arguing one over the other (and a few minutes looking at the cruiser's chat rooms will confirm that people do exactly that). Bottom line for us is this – catamarans are more comfortable, have more room, and are more pleasant to be sailing on with a family. It is true they are also considerably more expensive. To us, the difference in comfort is worth the difference in cost.

2. 4 cabins – given that we are going to spend at least a year using this boat as our home, we want all the kids to have their own bedrooms, so they at least have some shot at a little privacy when they need it. Happy kids, happy wife. Happy wife, happy life (or so I've heard. Seems to be working out so far).

Interestingly, this really cuts down the number of boats for us to look at. Most of the cruising catamarans for sale are what they call "owner's versions", with one hull dedicated to an owner's suite (big cabin and bathroom). This is mainly a function of the most common cruising demographic being retired couples, with money and time to take on a cruising lifestyle. The 4 cabin versions out there are mainly charter boats, set up to have 4 couples on them at one time, for a one week vacation.

3. 2 heads ("bathrooms" for you non-boaty types. Or restrooms, toilets, johns – you get the idea.) As I mentioned above, though, this is difficult to find. In fact, it looks like we will probably have to give up on this one. Most of the 4 cabin charter boats have 4 heads. Apparently when you are on vacation on a charter boat, it is preferable to have your own tiny bathroom than to share your bathroom with someone else, even if it means twice as much room. Who would have guessed? For us, it seems a real waste of space to have an individual bathroom for each cabin, but we may have to go that way, since that is what is out there.

4. Location – east coast of USA. This is not carved in stone, but we have done a lot of thinking about logistically where our trip would be easiest and most interesting to start. We've decided that getting all 5 of us to the boat would be easiest if it was on the east (or west) coast of the US, and outfitting the boat would definitely be easiest in the US in terms of cost and availability of parts and expertise.

And that's really our list of "must haves". Of course, there is a dollar value limit as well, based on our budget, which further rules out a bunch of boats. There are also a lot of "nice to have items" which largely revolve around cruising gear that we will probably need. Most of the stuff you need to live on a boat long term is not present on ex-charter boats, and given that we are focussing on 4 cabin boats, we are seeing a lot of those. We can add all the cruising gear we need after the fact – it just adds a lot to the expense and time needed to get the boat ready to go.



So anyway, with that list of needs and wants, there were a few boats in Florida that came pretty close to filling the bill, with the differences being in the details.

In fact, I saw one that we liked enough to make an initial offer on it. Shortly after I made the offer, I became aware of another boat, of the same make, but 5 years newer, with a couple of big ticket cruising items already installed. It was a bit more expensive, being newer, but still seemed to be a good deal compared to other similar boats out there. Unfortunately, this boat is located in the BVI.

Anyway, it looked like the seller of the boat in Florida and I were going to end up pretty far apart on price for the first boat, so I decided to pursue the second one instead (sorry to the owner of the first boat – who knows, we might be back).

And that is where we sit today – I have put in two offers on the boat in the BVIs (first was low, and countered). Our final offer went in yesterday afternoon, but because of the time change to the East coast, I guess it didn't get to the seller until yesterday evening (if his broker was working late). As far as I can tell, boat brokers don't really seem to work on weekends, so it looks like we will have to wait until Monday to see if we can reach a deal on price.

If we do, I still need to find the time and money to get to the BVIs and see the boat for myself, as well as have a professional survey done. I am hoping to do that all at the same time, since I don't have a lot of time off from work between now and when we leave in August.



If we end up buying the boat, we then need to decide if we want to bring it back to the US to get it outfitted for cruising, or just start our trip in the BVIs (lots of pros and cons there – I'll leave those to a separate post). If we don't buy it, it's back to the drawing board. The good news is, now we know what we like, so hopefully we can use that hard won knowledge to move things along more quickly either way.

Synthesize your happiness

On the trip home from Florida, I was listening to the in-flight radio offerings, and came across their "TED" ideas channel. I heard excerpts from Dan Gilbert's TED talk on synthesizing happiness, and thought I would point it out to anyone who hasn't heard it. It is really cool, and has implications for most of life's big decisions one way or another. Check it out:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

For those who don't want to watch the whole talk, the essence of it is that human beings have the innate capacity to make them-selves happy, more or less regardless of their circumstances (Dr. Gilbert calls it an "immune system of the mind"). Also, "synthesized happiness", which is the happiness your mind creates when things don't go exactly as you want them, is pretty much the same as "natural happiness", which is the happiness you experience when you get what you want. And finally, we are not very good at estimating how much the difference between two possible outcomes in our lives will affect us.

The implications for our current trip planning situation are pretty clear. Right now, we are spending a ton of time and mental energy on finding the exact right boat for our upcoming trip. But in reality (and I think I already knew this), it probably doesn't matter a whole lot what boat we end up on – we will make it our home, and it will be great for our trip.

And I could see this playing out with every boat I looked at. Just by chance, most of the boats I was interested in had owners on them when we looked at them. Alina (our boat broker) assured me this wasn't usual. As it turned out, though, I got great tours of all the boats, and you could see that every one really loved the boat they were on. They all seemed like they could talk about their boats for hours, and if there were small things about their boats that weren't perfect, they generally didn't seem at all concerned about them. Of course, they were trying to sell their boats, so that could all just have been strategic, but none of these people were professional salesmen. They were just boat owners, who had synthesized real happiness about their ownership. And I am sure we will, too.

An offer in – and now we wait

May 3, 2013, Ft. Lauderdale

I woke up this a.m. after finally getting a full night's sleep for the first time in about 10 days. In addition to that, I checked my email and found some amazing words of encouragement from one of my best friends, reassuring me this whole plan wasn't completely nuts. Between the two, I felt ready to face another day.

I'm finally getting the hang of the Ft. Lauderdale freeways, so it was a quick trip back to Just Catamarans today. Once there, I figured I should just bite the bullet, and so I told Alina we were ready to make an offer. Despite the fact she looked a bit worn out from our long day yesterday, she patiently sat me down and walked me through the whole offer process. After a few trips to check with Kent (the wonder boat technician) regarding pricing on some of the upgrades/changes we would want to make to the boat, she helped me arrive at a reasonable price to open our negotiations. At least we thought it was reasonable – we're still waiting to hear a response from the seller.

Once we got through all the paperwork to officially present the offer, we hopped back in the car, and this time headed north to Stuart, Florida. As we rolled along the interstate, it occurred to me that I don't think we've seen a hill in two full days of driving around south Florida. I flipped the GPS on to show us our elevation, and sure enough, on the entire hour and a half drive to Stuart, our max elevation was 50 feet above sea level. This is one flat state. It would be good for biking.

In Stuart, we had a look at another boat. This one has just finished a 2 ½ year circuit of the Caribbean, with three kids on board who are similar ages to ours. The owner again was a really nice guy, who gave us an extremely detailed overview of his boat. The best part, though, was hearing about their trip, and how great it was. Also, he had some really good advice about cruising with kids, and was very encouraging about what a valuable thing it has been for his whole family. I've just started reading their blog to get some more details about their route. The boat was pretty good too – it is nice to know we have other options if our offer doesn't pan out.

On the drive back to Ft. Lauderdale, it was pretty apparent that both Alina and I were getting tired after two hard core days of full on boat shopping. We were both pretty quiet by the time she dropped me off at Just Cats.

I needed some serious decompression time, so I took a short stroll around the docks at the Lauderdale Marina Center, then went and checked out West Marine – the flagship store of this major marine supply chain is here in Ft. Lauderdale. They definitely have everything you could think of needing for a boat – all at "marine grade" prices, which is to say at least double for anything over what you would pay in a regular store. ($50.00 flip flops anyone?)

After that, I figured I'd better see some part of Ft. Lauderdale that didn't involve interstates and boat yards, so I headed out to the Ft. Lauderdale beaches, and caught the sunset from there. I even took a few minutes to dip my feet into the Atlantic.



Then, back to the hotel to relax for a bit before bed. I have another 12 hours of flying to look forward to tomorrow, this time through New York and Minneapolis (two other places I have never been), before a three hour drive back home, so I better get some rest. Hopefully I will hear something about a counter offer en route tomorrow.

Exhausted, but encouraged

May 2, 2013, Holiday Inn Express, Ft. Lauderdale Florida

OK, reading the end of that last post over again, I realize I may have made that landing sound a bit more dramatic than it was. It was pretty cool to see the lightning out the plane window, and the touchdown was kind of bumpy, but everything went OK.

We pulled up to the Fort Lauderdale International Airport in pouring rain, which was overwhelming the storm drains on the tarmac. So much for Sunny Florida. It took a while to get the rental car, and after navigating extremely efficiently to the wrong Holiday Inn Express, I finally got to the hotel I was booked into. (Yes, it occurred to me to just stay in the first hotel, but they warned me I would be charged a no-show fee at the original one, so I headed over here).

I finally got to bed around 2:30 a.m. local time, and was up again at 7:30 to make sure I wasn't late for my 9 a.m. appointment at JustCatamarans.

I got to their offices on time, and what came after was a whirlwind day of seeing a lot of boats. Four actually, but it still took all day. The first three were in Ft. Lauderdale, and one of them was a boat I have been watching on the internet for a long time. It was a real treat to meet the live aboard owners, who were a lovely French couple. They have been cruising for four years, and are ready to head back home and settle back in to life on land. Their boat was really nice, and remarkably well outfitted. Pretty much ready to set off on a world cruise as-is, which is rare for your average catamaran. Most of them need a ton of work.



We then saw two other boats in Ft. Lauderdale, neither of which really did it for me. (One of them, I said to Sara later, looked like it just needed to be sunk and put out of its misery. It is a shame that someone would let something that expensive and beautiful become that worn out).

After that, we hopped in Alina's car, and headed off across the great state of Florida. We went through Alligator Alley (more than just a nickname, it is actually on the road signs here), and saw the Everglades. Really beautiful country, which I had only ever seen on T.V. before. It was amazing to see such an uninhabited area of wilderness right in the middle of a heavily populated state like this.

After a 2 ½ hour drive, we arrived in Punta Gorda, on the Gulf Coast, and saw another boat there. We were again lucky to have the owner on board. He was busily washing up the boat when we arrived early, and he turned out to be a treasure trove of information about his boat. He lived in a condo on the waterfront that was right next to the dock, and he could see his boat from the window. I have never seen a boat as clean and well cared for as that one. It, too was very well outfitted, but needs a few things the other one didn't. Still a definite possibility. The boat was so clean and well looked after that Alina, who also owns and runs a boat detailing business, told me after that there wouldn't have been much left to do if someone had paid to have the boat professionally detailed. You could tell this guy had taken great care of his boat its whole life. If you are going to buy a boat, this is the kind of owner you want to buy from.



On the drive home, I could barely keep my eyes open, but I still managed to pepper Alina with tons of questions about the logistics of making an offer, getting a survey, and purchasing a boat, as well as anything else I could think of. She was great, and extremely patient with all my newbie questions. Although if you go boat shopping with her, make sure you bring a good GPS ;-).

We finally made it back to Ft. Lauderdale in one piece at about 8:30 p.m. I then braved the 10 lane interstate back to my hotel in the rental car (luckily only 10 minutes), and Skyped home to show Sara all the pictures and video I had taken of boats today. (did you know you can share your computer screen via Skype? It was a great way to show her all the details). We had a long talk, and agreed that either of the two boats I liked would serve well for our trip. There is a bit of a difference in price, but not really too much when you factor in the work that we would want to have done on the second boat.

So, the plan is that I meet Alina again tomorrow a.m. to see one other possibility. Depending on how that goes, I suspect we will put in an offer tomorrow, and start the negotiating process for our new home on the water. Heady stuff! Stay tuned to hear the exciting conclusion. For now, it is after midnight here, and I have to try and get some more sleep, otherwise I will be a wreck tomorrow.