Reading on the Water
By Richard Jordan
On February 20th, 2011, I purchased an iPad at the Best Buy south of Oakland Park Boulevard on the west side of Federal Highway. Sure I kind of knew that the iPad 2 was coming out, but I had to embark the next day on a delivery of a Lagoon 440 catamaran from Fort Lauderdale to Annapolis and could not stand the idea of being off radar. As techy as I am, I have never upgraded to a Blackberry or iPhone. I still cling to a Samsung smartphone without a dataplan. I felt like I had too many leads going on; plus I am an internet addict. Even with the iPad 2 out now, I would go back in time and buy one all the same. The decision was fantastic, and I was totally in touch with clients. You would be amazed at how constantly we picked up a 3G or E signal cruising 10 to 30 nautical miles off the Atlantic seaboard.
In addition to my need to stay in contact via email, I was motivated by the discussion about eBooks, Amazon's Kindle, and self-publishing here at Write on the Water to experience the revolution first hand. I am an enthusiastic believer that in 20 years most books will be delivered and read electronically. The new generation is coming, and they do not care about the nostalgia titillated by the tactility of flipping through a newspaper or book. Why order the print version if the electronic version is delivered faster for less expense? My experiences offshore with an iPad gelled up my conviction like pectin in blueberry coulis.
A simple vignette says it all. A day and a half out from Fort Lauderdale on my midnight to 3am watch, we motored along at 7.3 knots bearing 06 degrees in dense fog and no apparent wind 10 nautical miles off Cape Canaveral. I sat in the luxury of my vessel's interior helm station shopping in the iBooks virtual bookstore between scans of the .5 nm visible horizon and 4 nm range radar display. I settled on downloading a free selection of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, opened up a short story titled, "The Engineer with the Missing Thumb," and marveled at Sherlock's cocaine addiction. I could just as easily been lying at home in bed late at night. Any book I ever wanted to read was a few touches of my soft padded paws away. When I was relieved at 3am, I crashed into my portside quarter berth and slipped off to sleep, eagerly awaiting my next turn at the helm.
Count me in to this eBook thing. My next steps are to buy all the books of my close personal friends here that write on Write on the Water and to, even if it is not very good, publish my own book to experience the full cycle.
iPad or Kindle: Which one should I choose? The author's humble opinion… The biggest reason that it has taken me so long to get an iPad or Kindle is my uncertainty over which to choose. Until my delivery, I did not have a good motivation for a mobile machine so was thinking of purchasing a Kindle because of the device's lower expense and wider selection of books. I was totally pleased with my discovery of the Kindle application for iPad which may be an obvious feature to others. So in effect, I not only purchased an iPad, but wrapped inside that iPad is Amazon's Kindle. For me the other built-in iPad features such as email and internet browsing as well as the plethora of applications such as the useful Navionics application (which we as a paid professional delivery crew used to navigate through inland channels like the Chesapeake; forget your chartplotter) justify the almost three times higher price ($189 to $629). My opinion: get an iPad 2 if you are debating which reading device to choose. And get the 3G version too – you will enjoy it offshore even if you have Wi-Fi everywhere else. The charge for 250MB of monthly 3G data is $14.99 on the iPad while the Kindle includes free 3G service. You sign up for the iPad's 3G service through AT&T and can cancel anytime.
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