From: Phyl & Fred Denton <denton@flash.net>

To: crews list***

Date: Tuesday, 16 October, 2001 11:51

Subject: 4 October Gouvia Marina on Corfu, Greece

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen:

In May of 2000, we went sailing in Scotland. It was nine wonderful days in the Hebrides aboard the charter boat Aislig Beagh. Last week, the skipper owner of Aislig Bheag, Jim, and his wife Jean let us return the favor. We sailed from Corfu calling on Lakka on Paxos, Lefkas Town and Nidri on Lefkas and Parga on the mainland.

Attached is a picture of Perception at anchor in Paliokastrita.

When we get to Texas, the land of cheap phone calls and unlimited Internet access, the web page can get updated with lots of pictures. "What do you call a home page that isn't current? A cob web." The denton home page is a cob web where the spider died. Actually, I am just disconnected.

Letters to the Bridge

Julia S. wrote," How do you do email? Satellite or in ports?"

It is nice that you asked how we support our email habit.

We elected to take the low tech approach. Local mobile phone using prepaid vouchers. It is a bit complicated as we arrive at a new country. But the cost exposure is controlled.

A key concern is to connect to the ISP on a local call. Using a US based account makes every call an international call. In the Azores, one of my ship mates called the bar that was less than a mile away from the boat via England. The second issue with a US account is the % of roaming is restricted by contract.

Email, internet, is a secondary, asynchronous communication tool that will usually work in primary locations. On some islands, some remote mainland locations, and at some times the phone service is either non-functional or does not support data transfer.

In many ship to shore situations, mobile phone has replaced VHF.

In Croatia, the national phone company provided a prepaid service that included ISP and mobile connection for $0.10 per minute. From the attention we received and the original registration problems, we guess that we were the first non-Croat speakers to sign up and use the service.

In Greece, the ISP and the phone connection are sold separately. The ISP was $65 for the minimum 3 month subscription and about $0.30 per minute. It is not cheap. Email is not bad, if you plan the connections and do most of the work off-line. Surfing the net is ridiculous. So, they invented Internet Cafes.

The Schedule ** So many islands and ports, so little time.

The plan for ordered withdrawal is taking shape. She comes out of the water on the 14th of November and we fly from Corfu on the 20th. We fly back the 15th of March. Between then and now, the task list is reasonable, but significant.

If there is part of the Mediterranean you would like to sail or a time that you can do it, let us know.

Keep a Tight Luff,
Phyl & Fred

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