<p>So...not unlike last year, when I was new to KP and needed guidance through Indoc, my son left this morning for his ship....he's on a Matson ship, out of Hawaii, headed to Guam, Ningbo, Shanghai, LA and over again.</p>
<p>Question - is there Internet access aboard these vessels? I know Ragin told him that he expects an email every 30 days, but what about poor old dad? I need more than that...</p>
<p>If that's the case, then I'll need emails from your kids to get me through the next 4 months or so...</p>
<p>Yes, they have internet access but it is on a limited basis. The ships don't have the capacity for photos or large files, just simple messages. I get the sense that how much they use this access varies from ship to ship and, of course, midshipman to midshipman. We probably got five messages in ninety days.
On the other hand, that's probably the same message rate we got when he was at KP :).</p>
<p>The ships usually use "Blast messaging". They will send/receive email messages possibly one or two times a day and during the in between times the emails are qued for sending. Please for the safety of your child :) do not send forwards or any emails containing anything other than plain text. </p>
<p>Various ships have different policies. On my APL ship I had to give my emails on a disk to the radio officer (yep, still had one) and he would send them and then he would print out my emails and post them on my door. This leads to another word of caution: DO NOT send anything in any email that you would not want the Captain or other people on his ship to see. Email is usually not very personally secure on a lot of ships as they tend to share email addresses alot of times as well.</p>
<p>That has been my experience. Emails were sent to the ship's address and then we would write "engine cadet" in the subject line so it would get to him</p>
<p>That being said, some of the newer email systems are pretty cool. Basically each crew member gets his own account and it sends/receives every few hours or when the que gets big instead of just once or twice a day. No passing a disk off or anything, you just go on the computer, log on to your account, type your email and hit send, it'd be gone in a few hours. That was pretty nice, I emailed my parents whenever I wanted and usually got a decently fast response.</p>
<p>Our son just got back from his cruise. Although they could not email large files or photos, he sent (and received) almost daily emails. Because his cell phone did not work once they were on the open ocean, he used email much more than at KP. While procedures may vary from ship to ship, putting his name in the subject line got it routed to his account, even though there was only one email address for the crew.</p>
<p>In reference to KP2001's post about 'Blast messaging':<br>
Sometimes those queues fill up and the mail bounces back. This happened both while s was a cadet and again now that he is working on a ship. Just send it again (and again) until it doesn't bounce! It was frustrating for me at first until we figured it out. If I recall, when s was on a military sealift ship they had 'always on' internet access, not just e-mail, but that was not the case on any other ship.</p>
<p>my boyfriend just finished 4 months with matson (that same route), they can email though it is one email address for the whole ship, so you have to write his name in the subject part.</p>
<p>also- whenever mike got into any of the ports, his cell phone worked so they are able to call too. im sure you have to pay for long distance so texting might be cheaper. Mike and I did both :) a lot. Hehe.</p>