Years ago, I and my friends sailed a lot of offshore miles without any long-range communications. Old AM radios had a range of up to 200 miles but when VHF came in, broadcast distances were reduced to line of sight, not enough to call for help if you are hundreds of miles offshore. But HAM and SSB radios were popular and getting more reliably “marinized” until they became the high seas communications tool of choice. But sat phones are changing that. In fact, there are now quite a few sailors heading offshore with only satellite communications and no SSB. With a sat phone you can have voice, text and email connection anywhere in the world. Or, with an inexpensive Iridium Go and a laptop you can have email everywhere.
So, are SSBs irrelevant? I would say not quite but almost. The two qualities I like about SSB radios are the ability to chat with friends in the radio nets all about the world and the very in inexpensive email services provided by SailMail and Winlink. Yet, the downside of SSBs is the dearth of shore stations for ship-to-shore communications and general unreliability of propagation for making long distance contact.
We had SSBs on our last two boats but when going to sea we would rent a satphone, plus we signed up with Iridium GO for email. In fact, over the last four long offshore passages on our last boat we used the SSB as a receiver to listen to weather guru Chris Parker and that was all. We were glad to have the radio, but I doubt I will put one on my next offshore cruising boat. What do you think?
