I’m laying in my rack as I write this, after a long, exhausting day.  I got lucky with my rack assignment, and am at the end of one of the upper holds, in an area with a lot of space in the aisle (a very rare commodity on board), and I’m on the bottom.  As a result, I’ll have plenty of space to get dressed in the morning, nobody will be walking through my area to get to their rack, and it should be a little quieter.  Sea Term is off to a good start for me so far!

This morning I got checked in and on board by about 0930, and was working by 0945.  I’m one of 3 cadets handling IT work on board the ship, and there’s a lot to get done this year, particularly this week while we can still get equipment from shore and have Internet access.  I worked about 12 hours today, and I’m sure tomorrow will be more of the same.  I can’t really complain much though, since the other two IT cadets are rates, and have been doing that for the past 5 days.

Being a sophomore this year, arrival day went much more smoothly than last year.  In fact, I got to watch the freshman as they came onto campus this morning and a few hours later started boarding the Kennedy.  Most of them carry a definite sense of excitement, as well as a little bit of nervousness which is pretty evident just looking at them.  Even though they did Mini Cruise as part of Orientation, that was only 3 days and was in calm waters near shore.  Living almost literally on top of each other for nearly two months, out at sea, visiting new places, and learning things very different from anything they’ve likely done before can be daunting, yet thrilling, so mixed emotions are evident, and expected.

Tomorrow will begin the on-load process, which will continue through the end of the week.  During the entire day there will be people on the pier and on the ship carrying all manner of food, equipment, office supplies, and other miscellaneous items ad nauseum.  Let me put in perspective the amount of food that will be brought aboard: during the next three days, palettes stacked as high as a person will be loaded onto the ship, for eight or nine hours each day, with a palette being hoisted aboard about once every 10 minutes.  All of this loading is done almost entirely by the cadets, including managing the process.  I will try to get some pictures and perhaps video of this to post this week.

It’s time for me to sign off for the night, so I can get some sleep for another busy day tomorrow!

We’re now officially less than 12 hours away from the start of Sea Term 2009.  At this time tomorrow morning, the freshmen will be checking in and starting their first briefing of Sea Term in Admirals Hall.  A few hours after that, the ship will be alive with cadets moving in and starting the immense on-load process that will last all week.  I’ll be posting photos and videos of this process throughout the coming week, so stay tuned!

I’m writing this during a quick break I’m taking from packing my bags.  I’ll be leaving my house early in the morning (0630) to drive from Annapolis, MD up to Buzzards Bay, picking my car up in Connecticut.  I’ll stay with my grandfather tomorrow night, and then Monday morning I will join the 500 other cadets in checking in and moving on to the ship, to begin Sea Term 2009.

I’ve decided to post a few last-minute thoughts regarding packing and arrival.  First off, if anybody doesn’t know yet, cadets arrive in boiler suits on Monday morning.  Since we’ll be starting work almost immediately upon moving on to the ship, we need to be dressed for the job.  Second, try to keep packing down to fitting in one bag, such as your sea bag.  It makes it much easier to carry everything and move in if you only have one bag (plus a backpack or other small “carry on”).  Last year I had two duffel bags, and it made it very interesting trying to fit through some of the narrow doors on the ship.

My mom informed me that there has been much discussion regarding cell phones in port.  As I discussed in an earlier post, cell phones are only a logical option in Tampa, since it’s within the continental U.S.  In our other ports, roaming and international charges will apply, so I would highly suggest not using cell phones at all in these ports.  Instead, buy an international phone card before leaving, or find out about the cost of phone cards locally in the ports.  I would also suggest using Skype as it’s free computer-to-computer, and only 2 cents a minute to call from computer to U.S. phone number, no matter where the computer is in the world.  Cell phones are definitely the worst option, even if you have an international plan since those plans are almost sure to be more expensive than the other options I’ve mentioned.

I’ll be posting again tomorrow evening once I’m off the road, so if anybody has any last-minute “what should I bring?” questions they’d like to ask me, feel free to contact me or leave a Skribit suggestion.

I’ve been hearing concerns about how to sign up for SeaWave, mainly regarding credit cards.  In order to sign up for SeaWave, you do need a credit card so that usage can be billed.  This information is necessary during registration to complete the process.  If your cadet will be using the credit card of a parent and needs the information for the card, it will need to be provided to them so they can sign up.

During the first week of Sea Term (starting on Monday, 05 January and lasting that full week) we will be at the pier in Buzzards Bay, and will have Internet connectivity provided from a shore wire.  You could e-mail the credit card information to your cadet’s regular e-mail address, so that it cannot be misplaced and they’ll have it readily available to them when they sign up.  This is how I did it last year, and it worked quite well.  I would not recommend writing it down on a piece of paper for them, as the chances of it falling into the wrong hands are much higher.

I have heard that SeaWave claims you can provide the name, address and phone number of the person holding the credit card, but omit the actual credit card information, and the credit card holder will be contacted by SeaWave directly for this information.  I cannot attest to this from experience, but what I can say is that my experience with SeaWave tells me that making it as simple and uncomplicated as possible is the best option.  I would suggest having the credit card information at the time of sign up rather than relying on SeaWave to call the card holder, in case they dismiss the sign up request as an incomplete submission and don’t follow through, resulting in no SeaWave service.

Hopefully everyone is getting excited for Sea Term, since it’s only 2 days away!

I received an e-mail from Skid Schermerhorn with a map of the route for this year’s voyage:

Hopefully this provides a better sense of both the areas we’ll be transiting, as well as the distance we’ll be covering in just 6 or 7 weeks.  I’m also interested to see how closely our actual path follows the projected path on this map (thanks to the SPOT).

Thanks, Skid, for providing me with this!

I received a Skribit suggestion that I talk about cadets bringing laptops on cruise.  Not only can cadets bring their laptops, but I would highly encourage it.

In the evenings on cruise we have plenty of down time, and having a laptop provides plenty of entertainment opportunities.  Almost everyone brings DVDs as well as movies stored on their computers directly, so having a computer on board allows you to watch all the movies available (Note: Chartwells also rents movies to cadets very cheaply and they have a large selection).

The ship has a wireless network that covers most areas, which allows access to a number of things, some of which will be new this year.  First off, the SeaWave e-mail system I discussed in my last post is accessible over the wireless.  There is also a movie server that allows you to stream movies over the network to your laptop, and has a fairly large selection.  This year, we’re adding a shipboard portal which will contain the Plan of the Day, general announcements, and other useful information that can be decided on later.  Having a laptop will make getting to this information much easier.

There is a computer lab on board, but there are only 14 or 15 computers to serve over 500 people.  Plus, this year more than ever before, it’s going to be used heavily for classes at sea.  Therefore, it’s almost a necessity to have a computer as part of your personal equipment.

One of the biggest issues on cruise last year was communications.  While we’re at sea, we have very limited contact with the rest of the world.  We have an e-mail system that connects a few times a day to send and receive e-mails held in the queue, called SeaWave.  And that’s it.  No Internet, no phone.  Just a delayed e-mail system.

It may sound like a problem, but in reality it’s all we really need.  Most of the time, we’re too busy to need much more than that.  However, you may remember that we had some problems with SeaWave last year.  This year, we have two new SeaWave units on board the ship, which should prevent us from having the same problems we did last year.

One of the issues that most people seem to be concerned with, and that the school stresses to freshmen, is the cost of SeaWave.  It’s important to make sure that only text is sent and received over the system, and not pictures or other attachments.  SeaWave charges the user based on the number of seconds a message takes to be sent or received, not just on the size of the message.  This is an important distinction, because in rare instances of poor satellite reception a simple two or three sentence text-only e-mail can end up costing a lot.  I say this not to scare people away from SeaWave or make people worried about their bill.  However, if your son or daughter’s account suddenly has a $3 or $4 e-mail, don’t just assume that they were sending a picture of their time in St. Thomas, it may be a fluke.  As I said though, this is very rare and only happened to a few people last year while we were down around the Equator, so it shouldn’t be much of a concern this time.

In general, SeaWave is very affordable.  I did a lot more e-mailing than most people last year due to my blog, and my bill was still less than $30 for the whole cruise.  This included my blog posts, e-mails with friends and family, as well as e-mailing done with people contacting me through my blog.  A typical full page printed e-mail usually cost me about 10 cents.  A paragraph or two is about 4 or 5 cents.

Of course, there’s no requirement to use SeaWave.  There are plenty of opportunities to make contact with home when we get into port.  This is especially true this year, since one of our ports is in the U.S. so cell phones will work without paying roaming or international charges.  In other ports, phone cards are available.  I would recommend, however, that you pick up an AT&T or similar international calling card before cruise.  Phone cards in port, especially in more touristy ports, tend to be expensive (Costa Rica’s phone cards cost $7 for 12 minutes of talk time, 2 of which were charged simply for connecting the call).

Another option to consider is Skype.  This is free software that allows you to make calls over the Internet.  The calls are completely free from anywhere in the world if you call computer-to-computer, and only cost 2 cents a minute to call from the computer to a U.S. phone number.  Since the laptops purchased through the school store all have microphones built in (and most other laptops on the market do as well), this would be a very feasible option.  My family and I stayed in contact this way last year, and we were able to talk for hours completely free once I got on WiFi.

There are plenty of accessible and affordable ways to stay in touch during cruise.  If you know of any other methods I didn’t cover, or would like to know more about something I discussed, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Well, we’re almost halfway through finals week, and only a few weeks away from Sea Term 2009.  In keeping with last year, I’ll be blogging during the voyage about the trip, keeping friends & family of Sea Term cadets up-to-date.  This year, however, I have the benefit of knowledge and experience from last year’s Sea Term to share with people prior to departure.  So, I’ll be starting my Sea Term coverage this week and posting throughout the holiday break with tips, information and updates about Sea Term that could be useful.

If you have any questions or suggestions of things you’d like me to address about Sea Term, please leave an entry in the Skribit box on the right side of the page.  Thanks!

This week marks the beginning of the end for fall semester.  Today is the first day of final exams, bringing mixed emotions to campus.  Certainly everyone’s excited that in a mere 5 days we’ll be leaving to go home for the holidays with school totally out of mind (for those of us not going on Sea Term that’s even easier).  Morning formation is the shortened formation every morning this week to allow for more studying time.  However, obviously there is some anxiousness as cadets are taking tests that can decide singlehandedly what grade they get in a class, or in some cases whether they pass or fail.

For those of us going on Sea Term, we’re also starting to give serious thought to this journey.  I’m sure the freshmen are especially preoccupied by this, as I was last year.

Good luck to everyone on finals, and especially to those cadets whose finals will be deciding their ability to go on Sea Term!

I’ve received a number of e-mails and a Skribit suggestion in response to my SPOT review asking how much it costs.  I decided I’d just make another post to address this, rather than answer all the individual requests.  Here’s how the pricing breaks down:

Basic Service: $99.99/year
This provides check-in (send “I’m OK” messages to people you pre-select along with your location), help requests (non emergency) and 911 requests.  You get unlimited usage of these services for this fee.  In order to use SPOT at all, you have to at least purchase Basic Service.

Tracking: $49.99/year
This is an additional feature on top of Basic Service.  This allows you to keep a “breadcrumb trail” as I discussed in my review.  In Tracking mode, the device will send a position update to the SPOT system every 10 minutes, which you can go back later and look at in your account control panel.  This also provides public Shared pages, which allow you to share your tracking with other people on publicly viewable pages.  Each page has a 500 views-per-day limit as of this writing, but don’t worry: you can create multiple public pages, and even password protect a page if you want.  I make use of this by having a general public page at spot.cconover.com, but I also have a password-protected page for my family so that they’ll always have a page they can see, without having to worry about exceeding the view count.

Search & Rescue: $7.95/year up front, $150/year each subsequent year
The pricing on this one may seem a little confusing.  Basically, you have the option to purchase this service when you first activate your SPOT.  If you do this, then you’ll only pay $7.95 for this for the first year.  Every year after that, it will be $150 per year.  So what does this buy you?  SPOT has partnered with GEOS, who provide private search & rescue services worldwide.  For this yearly fee, you’ll receive up to $100,000 of search & rescue services when you hit that 911 button.  This will cover not only the cost of the private SAR services from GEOS, but fees incurred from any public/official SAR agency for which you may be responsible.  It’s also nice if you spend a lot of time in places where public SAR agencies may be poor or non-existant.  I would think that this wouldn’t be as important for mariners who transit the waters of developed nations where public SAR services are very good, such as the Coast Guard.  However, in areas that don’t have such organizations, this may prove to be vital.

SPOT has a page on their web site that covers pricing if you want to see it there.

What services would/do you use if you got/have a SPOT?