This morning when I picked up my iPhone, I saw that I had a text from a friend and concerned blog reader, after yesterday's post. If you aren't caught up, read that post here first, and then come back.
She agreed to let me share our text conversation here, keeping her anonymous…I offered, she didn't ask.
Her: Hey. You could have some company this morning.
Me: What, who? Where are you?
Her: Well….I called the San Juan Sheriff's office and let them know they may want to check out that little hideaway.
Me: I think they already are checking out this little hideaway. That's what I think these guys are doing…monitoring this cove.
Her: So you think they are good guys?
Me: No judgment on good or bad, but I do think they are probably law enforcement, stationed in the lighthouse, watching the cove for suspicious activity.
Her: Well…the sheriff didn't seem to know about it if they are…but they did ask for your blog.
Me: Oh good. Now the sheriff is going to read my post.
Her: He did read the post. While I was on the phone with him.
Me: Awesome. What did he say?
Her: Thanked me for calling…took all my contact info…asked for the name of your boat…and said he would phone it into the marine unit.
Me: Well if this is all legit they're gonna think I'm a total troublemaker.
Her: That's why I gave you the heads up….
Me: Um, thanks? 🙂
Her: BTW, I don't think the popo are going to think you're a troublemaker. What if you just broke up an international trafficking ring???
Her: You're going to be a hero…
Me: It certainly makes for a weird state park experience here.
Her: …you'll prob get an award or something…
Her: …get on 60 minutes…
Her: …maybe even meet the President…
Me: You're such a dork. 🙂
Me: Remember, the San Juan Sheriff AND the Coast Guard were sitting in boats RIGHT in front of the lighthouse watching us as we arrived. The guys at the lighthouse have to be part of the whole thing. This is a very small island.
We left our mooring ball in Active Cove right in here somewhere, opting not to go hike back out to the lighthouse before leaving. Here are some sleepy sleepy seals on Little Patos as we exited the cove:
Meanwhile, the text conversation continued.
Her: I had my whole team [at work] read about it this morning.
Me: What did they say?
Her: They all think u are wise to get out before gunfire erupts. They can't believe you stayed there overnight.
Me: There was another boat. And it's a state park. (And we were surrounded by law enforcement who watched us come in and didn't tell us to leave or anything. If there was something dangerous going on, you'd think they'd have sent us away.)
As we continued on, we spotted some black dots in the water about a mile away. We got out the binocs and learned it was the group of 10 kayakers we'd seen arrive in Shallow Cove the morning we left. They were headed toward Patos Island.
Me: There are 10 kayaks headed to Patos now from Sucia. Kayak campers.
Her: Or…drug runners disguised as kayak campers.
Me: Right. Or that. At least they know how to dress the part…unlike the lighthouse cops.
As we made our way closer to Orcas Island, I was certain we'd be intercepted, but we weren't. We only saw one other boat and it was a police boat, but they never came toward us. At first I was a little freaked out that the San Juan Sheriff's Department read my post and might be passing it along to other law enforcement agencies, etc., but now I figure if they're trying to discourage illegal activity near the border, then having some blogger with 45,000 followers writing about how the place is teeming with all flavors of law enforcement would be a total bonus for them. (You're welcome, guys!)
p.s. We looked for more orcas today on the cruise. Nothin. Party's over folks.
Interesting solution. It looks like they’re re-packaging a Pepwave Transit device. What sort of antenna options do they provide for the WiFi as WAN?
I use a Peplink MAX BR1 on Grace (http://www.sailbits.com/blog/2016/03/sending-ais-data-slow-cellular-link/) and have meant to write up a review as I’ve gone through about the same number of solutions it sounds like you have.
I love the Peplink – I also have dual SIM’s – and use both of those as well as the WiFi as WAN depending on what marina I’m in. I’m considering adding a better WiFi antenna so I can pick up more distant signals, or potentially adding a Ubiquiti Bullet and wiring it to the actual physical WAN port on the Peplink.
Have you noticed any performance degradation when using WiFi as a WAN? Supposedly it uses the same antenna and radio both as a receiving and sending station, which should cut throughput in half. I’ve noticed a bit of that when using it on mine.
My marina has pretty terrible WiFi, and I have both an AT&T and Verizon SIM in the Peplink. I generally get 20Mbps down, and 5Mbps up on Verizon, which is more than adequate for the boat!
Thanks for posting such wonderful information. We purchased our Airstream in November and after reading your blog, purchased the Moovbox from Singlepoint. The speed is fine and very reliable, but we have been hit with HUGE data charges. We started with a 10gig plan then moved up to 20 and now they tell us that last month we used 110gb!! It is costing us a fortune. We do occasionally stream movies and we did watch the House of Cards, but it seems excessive. We are looking for comparisons to what quantity others are using. Can you advise? My husband does use the internet for business and lots of emailing with the once per week or so of movie. Advise appreciated! Thanks, Jeannie
Hi Jeannie,
The issue is video. Streaming a single movie will probably use 10 times more data than everything else you do in an entire month (it uses about 2.5GB per hour to stream video). Streaming music uses about 0.2GB per hour. Probably nothing else you do consumes even a tiny fraction of what those do. Considering that a lot data plans charge $10-$15 for 1GB of data, then watching one movie would use $50-$75 worth of data. We use a TMobile unlimited card on ours and maybe TMobile and/or Sprint don’t count Netflix on your data, so it might be worth exploring those options if you’re really wanting to stream video.
Hope that’s helpful! 🙂
Thank you so much for the info. Do you know if the sim cards can be removed from the phones and used? My husband is trying to figure it out. The hot spot usage with Sprint isn’t unlimited evidentially. We are wondering if we can use the Verizon for all internet and then the sim card from a sprint phone for the streaming?
Hi Steve,
Yes, Singlepoint is working with Pepwave to create systems with special versions of the Pepwave MAX series for RV and Marine use, bundled with antenna and cabling and even service plans. We have a test version of an antenna they’re going to be offering that looks awesome! It’s a marine-grade enclosure that has diversity LTE (two separate LTE antennas), Wi-Fi, and GPS. The router we have has two modems that each have two sim cards. So, we plan to use two of these antennas that will give us four LTE antennas (two diversity antennas for each modem) as well as external diversity Wi-Fi antennas (one in each antenna unit), plus GPS. This should give us even better performance than we are seeing today.
Yes, the Wi-Fi as WAN loses some Wi-Fi performance because of the bandwidth sharing that’s going on, but at least in any marina we’ve ever been to, that will never be the weak link in the chain. The weak link will always be the marina Wi-Fi, the number of people using it, and your distance from the marina antennas. Having the external diversity Wi-Fi antennas should give you the best solution to that problem.
The original version of these new antennas is black, but they tell us a white version that will probably look better on a boat is coming soon. 🙂
Hi Laura,
Do you have any details on the antenna or any pictures? I’ve been searching for one, and already having invested in my Pepwave, I’m not interested in buying a pre built product and spending more money!
My Pepwave has all of the same features as yours it sounds like, other than the antenna!
Yes, here’s a link to the new antenna (soon to come in white): http://www.yoursinglepoint.com/product/roof-mount-antenna/. We’d suggest contacting the folks at Singlepoint to see if this solution would work for you (if you’re interested).