+xHi. Curious for thoughts from fellow OCC’ers…
I have a small (31’) bluewater boat and have sailed from home in Florida to Maine to the Caribbean and am planning on future voyages south and north, and hopefully a transatlantic attempt in the next year or so. I use IridiumGo and PredictWind and am quite happy with it’s stability and the weather, email, text messages, and voice I send and receive with it. I don’t have an SSB radio though. When I acquired the boat the PO had must have been planning to put one in, the boat has a dynaplate installed and insulators on the backstay.
In 2022 do others think an SSB is still a necessity? If I didn’t have the satellite comm, I would definitely say yes. However, I don’t feel like getting into the installation hassle, complexity and expense of a new SSB radio if I’m not going to use it. I’m not a chatty type so can’t see myself loving SSB nets.
Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks!
Hi Dan,
In the following, I am only referring to marine SSB, not Ham/Amateur.
As someone who depended exclusively on SSB radio for email (contact with children and parents among others), weather (gribs, wxfaxes, and worked nets) for more than a decade, I am very sorry to take the position that SSB is not necessary.
On the western side of the pond (my info may be dated), it is very nice to have SSB to listen to and/or participate in the weather and routing given by Chris Parker (Chris can also send a daily personalized report via email which you can receive via sat-comm.) I also both enjoyed and gathered much interesting info listening to the various nets. Pretty quickly, I could not sail into an anchorage where Alchemy was not recognized and made to feel welcome.
There were also the offshore jumps: weather windows usually had a number of boats leaving at the same time. An example, 5 of us took the same wx window from Bermuda to the Azores. We were quickly spread out, but enjoyed a late afternoon chat. Mostly this was social and supportive, but occasionally there was important info: one skipper needed help trouble-shooting a system and it was good to know that the winds were much stronger (gale force) only 40 miles N of us and our very pleasant 20kn breezes.
On the east side of the pond, in my experience, there is little reason to have SSB and very few use it.
So, I would recommend SSB strongly as a way of knitting the boating community together and linking you up to the community: for its social aspects. I would also say that it can make a great hobby on board, that can also end up to be quite useful. If you go down the hobby road, consider getting your Ham license as this will open up far more opportunities.
Come back with questions/ comments, Dick (WCZ 7717, KC2HKW) Stevenson, s/v Alchemy