We all love heading out on the boat, loaded up with gold reels and fancy lures to chase elusive gamefish around the ocean. For days on end this can get a bit tiresome, especially if you haven’t even seen so much as a fin.
How good would it be to have Wi-Fi available for days like this and quiet nights in the bay?
Last week Dan from our team went out to chase Southern Bluefin tuna on the Ngatoro Knoll around 50nm offshore in the bay of plenty. Conditions were stunning, there was hardly a breathe out there. Chat on the radio was hopeful but there wasn’t much action at all despite the weather and enthusiasm from anglers.
With a bit of downtime (a lot) we rigged up the Poynting antenna and Celerway GO modem to see what this could do in a real world offshore setting, the results were fantastic. Being about to achieve a streamable data connection at over 30 nautical miles was impressive. Not only were we able to stream HD on several platforms, but we could download the latest weather, get the SST’s updated and send pictures of the sunset to our friends – just to let them know how good it was out there and to re-affirm our lack of tuna on the deck.
The install is simple, Global Marine provide the system in a ready-to-go state meaning that it’s truly plug and play. We were online within minutes, and far out of range of our cell phones.
Here we show at 31nm offshore, data to stream HD on YouTube, Netflix, probably even the All Blacks game online if it were desired. This also meant that tucked into a bay at Mayor Island in the Bay if Plenty we could happy be browsing social feeds, watching content and staying in touch with our friends and family.
Cell coverage seemed to become patchy at around 8nm offshore, and at 14nm was pretty much unusable. Although there seem to be random spots where a message or email might come through it was not consistent and certainly didn’t allow any streaming or media download.
At 31nm offshore I have a download speed of around 8mbps. I could happily stream in 1080p from several platforms and easily make calls, check emails and socials and stay on top of business while watching the lures.
Don’t get me wrong, one little tick out of those gold reels it’s all action. We all know what we’d rather be doing but it can be hard to find the time to completely step away for several days. With solutions from Global Marine you can be onboard, online, and hopefully on the fish!
We at least hope you have better luck out on the fish than we did!
If a solution like this will help you spend more time on the water get in touch with us at Global Marine.
