March 9, 2013
I know I said that we might not be posting much while we’re out cruising the islands so what happened? Turns out we have pretty good internet access out here. In fact, we’ve had internet everywhere we’ve anchored using the Vodafone dongle we bought in Opua.
This little USB device plugs in to the computer and provides internet access over the cell phone system. While it’s not going to break any internet speed records, it is fast enough. It’s a bit expensive to use at $50 NZ per 2GB of data but that’s a lot of blog posts.
For anyone planning to do this, I would suggest getting a USB extension cable so you can move the dongle higher to get better reception. Plugged directly in to my computer, it would be at about the water level when sitting at our chart table. I use a short extension cable to get it up to the cabin ceiling and that helps a lot.
Just a quick note: usually, in the marina, we use wifi with our wifi booster antenna. It’s faster and less expensive. Here’s a previous post where we mention the booster antenna (link). -Rich
