Curacao, Netherlands Antilles, Saturday 21. April 2007
I was going through my computer trying to get an internet connection on my boat. I’m anchored in
Spanish Water on Curacao and a couple of days before the internet was slow but working fine. I got into the list of wireless internet I had been using ever since I started the search for a boat.
It was a trip down memory lane and at that moment I realize how far I had come in a short period of time.The list started with “mobillander”, the café in Willemstad on Curacao where I only had a list of sailboats to buy and not even a ticket for Florida yet. It seemed ages ago but it was only 5 months, lots of things had happened.
“Miami Grill”, my office, restaurant and bar all combined in one. It was owned by a guy from Greece and his wife from Sweden and located in Hollywood, Florida opposite the motel I stayed at on US1.
“Three oaks Motel”, the motel I stayed at in Titusville for a month before we even found Solitude. The day we arrived in Titusville we tried a few hotels but liked this one the most. As soon as we had our backs inside, it started to rain and the rain got harder and harder. On TV we could see there was a tornado not far from Titusville but luckily it never hit this tiny little town in mid Florida.
I flipped through the list of internet connections again and found another landmark, “Westland Marine”. At this time I had moved onto Solitude and spend many hours on the internet at the navigation table. It took us around 1 month to get the boat ready to sail not because it was unseaworthy but mostly because the registration papers took forever to get through.
When you are on the internet every day you get used to it and you don’t understand why friends and family are not replying faster, you check sports, weather and news and are really up to date on the world situation. When ever friends were calling me on my phone and telling me about things in Copenhagen, I had already read it on some internet site. “FC Copenhagen won the weekend game 3-1, it was fantastic!”, all I could reply was, “I already know, I followed it live on the internet….”. Some disappointment was to be traced on the other end of the line… the world is getting smaller by the hour.
When we left Titusville to sail to Bahamas my glory internet days were over, I lost track of FC Copenhagen’s games and what was going on in the world, the phone didn’t get a signal either so I was totally cut of from the world and sitting in the Northwest Providence Channel with at least a week away from the world wide web, I should have appreciated it a little more back in Titusville. But the feeling got over me after a while, this was true travelling, an adventure, something you could tell people when you arrived somewhere without them going, “I already know, I followed it live on the internet…..”
It was so nice not to have the internet on that trip, you didn’t have to say that nothing was going on in the world, shutting down your computer but reopen it an hour later just to check if it could really be true that nothing was going on.
We were just sailing and the world could have exploded with out us knowing. When we finally arrived in Puerto Plata I didn’t even feel like going on the internet ‘cause the feeling of real travelling was still there. On day two the temptation was too big and I spend 3 hours updating my website with photos and another story and of cause confirming that the world was still standing.
On the trip down memory lane there were a bunch of “default” written and that was the Dominican Republic where internet is available but not spread out like British Virgin Islands. I remembered the guy who showed me the internet place, a local with better English than my Spanish. He was sitting right next to me all the time I was on the computer and not knowing what was going on when I quickly clicked my way around.
“Standalone” was when we got to Ponce in Puerto Rico, we moored up at the fuelstation and borrowed not stole water, electricity and internet. A few days after when we were at anchor we went back at night to the fuelstation to get on the internet.
“PonceWIFI”, I could sometimes get a connection in the bay in Ponce, Puerto Rico but it was much better when we dinghyed in to the wharf. Ponce had no spirit and all in all Puerto Rico was somewhat of a disappointment to me, I can’t wait to go back to see if it really was that bad.
In St. Croix I sat in Rum Runners bar with a beer and the laptop in front of me and got a hole through with “HotelCarravelle” it was really slow and I found another little café that had a faster connection. St. Croix was such a nice little island with lots of history and spirit.
British Virgin Islands, the Mekka for sailors, so they say, the world biggest charter boat place had internet connection everywhere I anchored. A day at anchor would start with coffee and internet, go for a swim, read a book, check the internet, eat lunch, walk on the island shooting photos, get back to the boat and upload the latest photos on the internet, eat dinner, drink a beer with internet, check the internet when the dishes were done, drink another beer with the internet and go to bed thinking about the internet.I was back to my addiction and loved every moment of it.
In Bonaire we moored up close to yet another wireless internet on land and the signal was good, my website could get an update and news could be checked once again.
You can tell how the weather is in Denmark on the internet, I don’t even have to lock on to a website for that. All I do is open my inbox in Outlook if there are a lot of e-mails the weather is not good and if less e-mails are in bold the weather is good.
In the winter people reply much faster than in the summertime. The greatest invention for years tells a lot about peoples habits.
I was still trying to get an internet connection here in Spanish Water on Curacao from Solitude but they cut me off and I was left to the true travelling.
