Category: Uncategorized

Mobilis OPT Online Recharge

October 15, 2016

We’ve been buying 5,000 Franc Liberté cards at the gas station to recharge our mobile phone for internet time. We’re a long way from a gas station right now so I went hunting for a way to do it online. Here’s what I found…

https://rechargetonmob.nc/

It was easy! I used Google Translate to read the French pages but it was pretty self-explanatory. Enter the number and type of card you want (I used 5,000 cfp Liberté card), your email, mobile phone number and then it’ll ask for payment options. Enter your cc info and make sure you check the accept terms and conditions check box (I didn’t see that box when trying it from my phone – had to use the computer). They sent me a text and a couple of emails containing the 14 digit recharge code. After calling 1088, option 2, and entering that code, I was good to go.

Catch: If you don’t have internet, if you’ve already run out, you can’t do this.

-Rich

October 12, 2016

We’re in a place that looks so much like Mexico’s Sea of Cortez (inside the Baja Penninsula), that we went out looking for street tacos and Pacifico beer. No luck. Just some goats, a donkey and dry landscape. It’s actually very beautiful and not something we expected to see in New Caledonia. See for yourselves…

Here’s where we are on an interactive Google map. -Rich

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Update: Today’s quote from Cyndi: “From now on, this bay will be known as Baja Caledonia!”

October 12, 2016

During this season, we made our second trip to Ile des Pins and we thought we’d share some of our favorite places. This is really a great place to visit for so many reasons. Stroll around our All-Posts map to see pictures and what we’ve written about it. Click on the pins below for a quick paragraph description.

Note: The Rocket Guide (the real one, not the one that’s being passed around the fleet) helped us get so much more out of our visit to Ile des Pins, and New Caledonia in general. We’ve used his routes and they’ve been great. We usually follow Richard’s anchoring recommendations and they’ve been very good for us. Don’t know about the Rocket Guide? Check this out. -Rich

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October 8, 2016

When selecting an anchorage, do we we ask ourselves…

How’s the holding?
Is there enough room?
How’s the protection from the expected wind direction?
Is it protected from the swell?

Well, yes, but that’s no longer the most important question…

Now, we first ask: “How’s the internet?”

We need our internet. What else are we going to do: scrimshaw?!

The Rocket Guide even lists the cellular data signal strength. How thoughtful. (Though we have noticed that sometimes there is internet where the guide says no. Times are changing fast!)

-Rich

September 28, 2016

We’ve been using a new feature on openCPN 4.2 that most people don’t seem to know about. You can set range rings on waypoints and use those rings to measure the room in an anchorage and select the perfect spot to drop your anchor. Here, we’ll show you…

The video is done running openCPN 4.2.0 on a PC. It also works very well on the (paid) Android version of openCPN. -Rich