All of these are things that we have done with our smartphone many times. In addition, we often check out possible destinations through local websites – almost every town has a website with a calendar – and look into available marinas and anchorages for the days and nights ahead. We have sought advice on maintenance issues, found the closest supermarket and even ordered a hard-to-find part and had it delivered to a marina. All without plugging in our laptop.
PHONE VERSUS LAPTOP
It is true that much of what we have described can be done on your laptop and our experience has been that about 90 percent of our fellow cruisers have a laptop onboard. But a laptop has some drawbacks over the smartphone.
Your typical laptop computer was not designed to work in the harsh and often unforgiving marine environment. It is more fragile, takes up more space, has a longer boot up time and uses far more power. Finally, when it comes to true mobility, a smartphone blows a laptop away. Try taking your laptop with you for navigation on your dinghy or connecting to NOAA while still under the covers!
Windows mobile smartphone shows a general weather forecast.We are not suggesting that you can take your laptop off your boat -- at least not yet. There are still tasks that will most likely require your laptop. Some websites use embedded software such as Java or Flash, which will not run on today's smartphones. And for some tasks, the small screen and keyboard may be a detriment. But we believe that 85 percent of what you are doing with your laptop today on your boat can be done as well, if not better, on a smartphone. We believe the day may come when a smartphone, or whatever it becomes in the future, will be your only onboard computer.
EMAIL AND WEATHER
Of course, you don't have to wait to use many helpful functions. Today's phones are amazingly capable.
Email is probably the single biggest use of any Internet connected device. We seem to do everything with email today Рand the very nature of email lends itself perfectly to a smartphone. Messages and replies are typically brief, and we have come to expect fast responses. Your smartphone can be with you at the helm if you are waiting for an important message, and you can read and reply to communiqu̩s at will. The keyboard on your phone may look tiny, but they are surprisingly reliable. Best of all you can easily take it with you, going ashore, visiting another boat, or tootling around in your dinghy, and have access to your email, the Internet or other applications as needed.
Access to the Internet and email on our boat was literally a life changing experience for us. It made the difference between cruising several months of the year and staying ashore. For the past 5 years we have been able to run our business from our boat while exploring the east coast from Maine to Key West and the Bahamas. Now we are hardly ever out of touch with our customers and business partners. On our last cruise we managed to be continuously connected the entire distance from Castine, Maine, to Vero Beach, Fla., with the exception of 25 miles on the Pungo-Alligator Canal. And that included being up to 20 miles offshore.
Apple's iPhone and Google maps.As we all know, access to timely, accurate weather is critical for added safety and enjoyment. Your smartphone is perfectly suited to this task, too. You can easily access and display NOAA marine text predictions from the NOAA website. General weather predictions are available from places like Yahoo and Weather Underground to find out what's happening ashore or back home. One of the things we liked best was being able to bring it with us.
A couple of years ago we were stuck in Salem, Mass., for almost a week on our way south due to weather. It's not a bad place to be stuck. The Salem harbor is well protected and has an excellent launch service, so we went ashore every day to see the sites, have a nice lunch and just walk around.
As nice as it was, we were anxious to get to our next destination, a half-day trip to Marion, Mass., to meet friends. One quickly figures out the timing of the NOAA updates for an area, and we were able to check each one usually within 30 minutes of its posting. We didn't feel the need to be "tied to the helm" listening to the radio. We relaxed and awaited our opportunity for the weather to break. In fact, it was on a morning walk when we saw that the latest prediction had finally changed for the better. We were able to return to the boat, contact our friends, make our preparations and shove off before lunchtime.
Similar to weather are tides and currents. There are excellent applications that run on the smartphone itself and provide tide and current predictions as tables or graphs. Our trip to Marion harbor required us to pass through the Cape Cod Canal, which is notoriously difficult against maximum current. After seeing the positive weather forecast on our walk, we quickly checked the current flow prediction for the canal based on our anticipated arrival time. If conditions weren't good, we could have had a leisurely lunch and made our plans for the next day.
