2022-05-25 Internet Woes

Early Hours

I ran out of data before an important conference call, what a way to start the day!

2 alarms were set for 01:45 and both went off at the same time. I turned on the inverted for 220V power and fired up the kettle while measuring out and grinding my coffee. By 01:55 I’d made my coffee, got the boat lighting set up and the webcam arranged and had even washed my face to be presentable. I booted the PC and, to my vast disappointment, couldn’t connect to the internet.  After a bit of looking around I discovered that I’d run out data on my pre-paid SIM card for internet access. This came as a surprise as I’d just purchased an extra 7Gb and I had no idea what had drained my balance.

The connection still worked at 8kbps  (that’s bits-per-second) which meant even loading Google’s homepage took several minutes!  I tried to do an online purchase of minutes/data on the SIM provider’s website, but just the first page took 15 minutes to load and the conference call was scheduled for just an hour.

Then I got to the payment page, but that kept on timing out. At 03:30 I gave up and tried to get back to sleep.

Morning

I went ashore at 07:00 when the Seabreeze Café opened and connected to the internet there. Despite there being only one other customer the connection remained quite slow, which leads me assume that they intentionally throttle access speed there – but I can’t complain as it’s free Wi-Fi.

I managed to send out my e-mail excuses to the participants of the conference call I’d missed earlier on and also added another 7Gb of data to the plan on the boat. After a bit of searching around the logs, it seems that I was somewhat naïve in leaving my MiFi connection open. While there were no boats around, evidently they were close enough to detect the open signal and used the fast internet access on my boat for their own purposes until it ran out.  I can’t complain about that, but now have a secure MiFi connection with a long password to prevent this from happening again.

While drinking my coffee the small operation that cleans hulls opened up and I found out that removing the shrimp and barnacles would cost $4 a foot if the hull were in good condition, otherwise $5. I accepted the offer and went off to the ATM in English Harbour. I’d already mentally applied the higher rate and when the diver came up from his cleaning the layer of gunk on his wetsuit said it all; but now I’ll have a fast hull for the 200NM back to St. Lucia.

Noon

I decided that it was time to clear out of Antigua and head south in preparation of my trip from St. Lucia to Norfolk.  So after my work day was over I showered, shaved and put on my formal wear (a clean polo shirt) and headed ashore.

Although it was around 14:00 I half expected the Customs and Immigration offices to be closed despite the website saying otherwise. But they were open and there was nobody else in the office so my paperwork only took about 10 minutes and payment of $100XCD in fees to clear out.  It is evident that the sailing season is over as there was only one yacht at the docks in English Harbour!