Communicating With Home
We only occasionally use the telephone, we have my Guernsey number still which we pay roaming tariffs for. I collected details of all the tariffs for the countries in the Mediterranean we expect to travel to before we left Guernsey, so we have an idea of costs of usage. Although the bill is variable it is paid by direct debit so it is convenient and we feel the pain much less. This number is useful also for emergencies, it can be used nearly anytime, even most of the coastal passages we have made have been within reception range.
In Spain we paid 60 Euros for a Movistar number which we have used to receive calls and to send texts, but have probably not done justice to the cost. In addition we cannot really understand how to use the phone as the manual is only in Spanish. We could have used this phone in Gibraltar as Spanish networks are still available, however we had run out of credit and couldn’t find anyone in Gibraltar to sell us a top-up.
In Portugal we decided not to do the same thing. We made a couple of calls from the Post Office (Correos), and also eventually bought a local phonecard, to use in payphones. This was good value. Unfortunately however, my parents were not able to call me back in the callbox I used, I don’t know if this is always the case in Portugal .
In Gibraltar I used a local shop by the Queensway Quay marina which offered cheap international calls, to call home on Dan’s birthday, this was definitely good value at 8 pence per minute.
Since leaving Spain I have found the Spanish number is still useful to have in order to send texts, and I used it as an emergency phone while travelling back through France to Guernsey , as I left the Guernsey SIM card with Nigel in Toulon .
I am still considering the options regarding phones if we stay in France for the winter. As we will be at a marina we may well rely on buying Telecartes for use in phoneboxes (here you can be called back), together with our Guernsey roaming number for emergencies. However I am looking at buying a French SIM card on Ebay. The biggest problem is that the French pre-pay system forces you to pay for a lot of minutes in order to be able to continue to make any calls on the phone, the cheapest top-up card is only valid for two weeks, and even the largest top-up cards are only valid for six months.
You can get a pre-pay international roaming SIM card from United Mobile, which allows you to roam more cheaply, but some of their charges are high and I am certainly not convinced yet.
We will only consider a satellite phone for ocean crossings, for example the Atlantic . The minutes are very expensive to buy and are only valid for a year. However we did purchase the bare phone before leaving Guernsey.
We initially were able to retrieve and send email using our laptop with Outlook Express and a Bluetooth connection to Nigel’s mobile phone when at La Coruna , in NW Spain. My phone would not work with it. However our experiences got worse, firstly we couldn’t send mail, then the whole lot seemed to pack up. We gave up on using the laptop for email and spent the next three months just using internet cafés for email using the webmail facility on the Cable and Wireless Guernsey email service. The only problem with this was that by default your sent messages are not kept. I changed this when I realised the problem, but once I found that it again reverted to not keeping sent emails. I also later found that some attachments I sent were not arriving properly.
In August we took our laptop to an internet café to download all the email from the webmail. Although this took some setting up to use on their ASDL connection, I know how to do it next time, and it certainly was quick. However Outlook Express was no good for sending email out again and I had to send messages using webmail.
Later we tried again to use the laptop with mobile phone. Although it got to dialling out, the calls were cancelled before being put through, we really are not getting anywhere with this.
In some marinas a wireless network is available, but we haven’t been able to try this yet.
We have sent only birthday cards and CD’s of photos etc by regular mail. We have not needed to receive anything yet whilst travelling as my mum is very good at dealing with our mail, and we discuss anything important by email or phone. Therefore we have no personal experience yet of using Poste Restante addresses.
However if we stop in a marina for the winter we will be in easy postal contact.
Our website is still under construction but provides a simple way for many relatives and friends to keep at least somewhat up-to-date with our voyage. The website is kindly provided by Shane Marriott who I worked with at NRG International, together with one of his friends. While I was visiting family back in Guernsey in September we were also able to substantially improve the site. The current site address is www.aquasail.net/spinalonga . It will later become www.spinalonga.co.uk
The site currently contains our diary, some notes about life aboard, and many photos up to Gibraltar .
I took Daniel home to Guernsey in September for a couple of weeks, he was tremendously grateful and I am completely convinced it was the right thing to do. He remembers most things, although a few things are a bit confused. As he is so young I need to remind him about Guernsey , and not let him forget too much. It will maintain something stable in his life when everything else is unstable. We have photos of family and friends on the boat, which he looks at whenever he wants, and we have visited as many friends as possible during our stay back in Guernsey , so Dan can continue and progress his relationship with the people he has known all his short life. Especially important are his grandparents (my parents), who used to look after him regularly, he has missed them a lot, and they have equally missed him.
I will try to visit regularly for this reason more than anything. But it also gives me a chance to catch up with everyone at home, take care of some admin, get a few spare parts we haven’t been able to get abroad, and maybe get a few foodstuffs which we miss.
Daniel has been back to the pre-schools that he used to attend, apart from seeing everyone I believe it is a good way to get back into the school routine whilst on familiar territory, before trying him at a French pre-school (Ecole Maternelle) in France where we hope to stay the winter.
I have also taken the opportunity while being back in Guernsey to help improve our website. The more information I am able to record during our voyage, and the more interest I can get in our trip, the better off we will be later if we are tempted to try and write articles, or even a book! We had an article published in Practical Boat Owner, August 2004 edition, called “20 Great Ways to Improve your Boat”, which focused on the innovative solutions that Nigel had come up with and implemented when he was building the boat in preparation for our long cruise. Now we need to look at documenting various aspects of the voyage, life aboard, life with a young child on board, further additions or innovations to the boat, etc.