Email around the North Atlantic - written August 1999

Here in Falmouth the email facility at the library is much more conducive for repeated use than that in Horta. Also as you may read there were some other important matters requiring some attention in Horta.

It is sometimes said that you can now find internet cafes or cybercafes everywhere. In my experience in the last year this is not true. It is true however that in many places (towns or cities) you can find somewhere to get some kind of limited internet access. The sorts of places have varied and have included car hire shops, bars, supermarket offices, boatyard/marina offices, photocopy shops, pornography shops, churches, and sail lofts.

The email facility in Horta was none of the above. It was an information club for schoolchildren and teenagers to surf the net and practice keyboard skills normally by participating in chat groups. There were 4 computers in one room of which 2 were always reserved for members and if available up to 2 might be used by non-members/visitors like us from the large cruising yacht community mostly passing through Horta. The queueing system was rather hard to understand but did certainly involve checking in with the duty club coordinator (one of whom did speak good English and the other only spoke Portuguese. It did seem best to arrive at the entrance a little before it opened at 0900 or 1400 weekdays. This is once you have found it. (For future reference it's at No 28 upstairs in the High Street between the Bookshop and the Tool shop that has Power tools in the window - but it's no use asking anyone over the age of 18 as to where it is). Simeon and I ended up getting very determined to not let it conceal itself from us in our search. Finding a queue of schoolkids was a good hint as to where it might be. And then you have a chance to negotiate a position in the queue with the club coordinator. However if you do manage to succeed in all this to the point of sitting down in front of a computer it is not the end of your problems. It is of course a Portuguese keyboard and with modern software (Windows 98 I think) in Portuguese. A familiarity with that same software in the english language is of course a help (So what do you think "Bloca de Notas" is?). But I found that the greatest difficulty was the concentration required to block out the distraction of the TERRIBLE MUSIC. This was the sort of music that you might expect to find in a video games arcade. I did however succeed in transfering all of my incoming email on to my floppy disc in about 40 minutes and then with the room getting rather full of the queue building up I decided to give up my place and return to the boat where I could perhaps read the email and compose replies in the relative peace and quiet aboard using the Ramprasad laptop. You may be able to imagine that the well-ordered peace and quiet in Falmouth Library is a pleasant contrast to the Information club in Horta.

Postscript :- a subsequent visit to Horta in May/June 2001 revealed the presence of a much improved regular internet service business in the "High Street" in Horta. Generally by this time internet services around the North Atlantic circuit area were much improved.

Autumn 2005 - As time has progressed more and more people have got their own computers and these have become better and faster and communication between them has improved too. You might imagine that the computer facilities available for travellers would have generally improved too. This may be true in some places but not in all. Internet or Cybercafe businesses have sprung up in a large number of places but not all have remained in business and some that have have specialised in the sort of market that they cater to in a manner that is not always sympathetic to the needs of foreign travellers. For example many such businesses in Spain cater to the serious gamer to such an extent that the non-gaming visitor not only feels well out of place perhaps in a place decorated to resemble a dungeon, but also will find it often very hard to concentrate on coping with the abnormal surroundings when serious gamers are pursuing their interest noisily nearby. Sometimes even the staff in such places find it difficult to understand your needs if you are not a typical customer. However in Portugal Internet access is often provided by the town or city as a public service along the lines of a public library - and these places generally provide a much better venu for the travelling visitor.

In Britain now there is development of Wi-Fi hotspots in a number of places. These provide Internet access for people with suitably equipped laptops in certain locations without having to "plug-in". In the parts of Spain which I have visited (Galicia and the Canaries) there were none of these evident. In Continental Portugal there was reputed to be one in the town of Sines South of Lisbon but I understand that it worked only very slowly. However some parts of Madeira seem to be very well equipped. I visited the island of Porto Santo (some 25 miles NE of Madeira Grande) where there was not only a regular cafe/bar with 4 computers with good Internet access at reasonable cost but also the small town ran a free Internet classroom with about 12 computers open during office hours and a 24hour Wi-Fi hotspot with free access in a pleasant pedestrianised central part of the town. Use of this was clearly very popular amongst local youth and others after office hours. However not all towns in Madeira were so well provided for. I visited Machico on Madeira Grande  (which is certainly quite a lot larger that the town on Porto Santo) and the only Internet access that I could find there had a small number of old computers many of which were not Internet connected and no evidence of Wi-Fi. Clearly the future will see substantial improvements in some respects and places but limited improvements elsewhere.

Jan 2006 - Wi-Fi is up and running in Antigua although it is not always easy to use. Free Wi-Fi does exist in a number of Bars and Restaurants in the English and Falmouth Harbour area. In Jolly (or not so Jolly) Harbour it also exists but the "Pay as you Go" Wi-Fi provided by Maricoms seems to work much better and quicker - and you can plug into Mains power in the Sports Bar. One of the things that computers need is electric power and on days when it is not so windy I would be discharging my boat's service battery to power the laptop - and so it's good to be able to plug into power ashore for any decent Wi-Fi session. The other bar/restaurant where the free service is available (CHL) is no longer permitting customers to plug into their mains. Maricoms also provides Wi-Fi in a number of number of different yachty locations in the Caribbean and so I may find that I can make use of them again.