“Stay in Touch!” It’s a common enough term, but one that is important to many people when they head offshore.
As I write this, two days ago Hurricane Irma roared through Florida. Yesterday, September 11th, marked the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. That day, 16 years ago, Rich Wilson and I were preparing to embark on the New York to Melbourne, Australia speed record. Instead, we devoted our time to working in a hastily cobbled together triage center at the Chelsea Piers Sports Center. Whether we’re talking about two days or 16 years ago, on shore or at sea, friends and family have needed to be notified and informed about our whereabouts and situation. With or without phone communications we’re now able to accomplish that in a quick, easy and cost effective manner.
The state of global communications and positioning has changed greatly over the past decade or two. Asset tracking by satellite is growing, whether it’s called M2M (machine to machine) or something else. There are basically 4 different satellite systems that we’ll currently discuss. Iridium, Globalstar, INMARSAT and Orbcomm. Read more.
