CURRENT LOCATION: Anchored in Ensenada Honda
18 18.318' N, 065 18.008' W

I was hoping that cruising would cure my addiction to television. It has not. We lived with only the occasional 'movie night' for our first four months of cruising (when we were constantly on the move). However, since settling into Culebra, we are back in the habit.

Before we left, we lived for five months in a marina without a television set, but still we occasionally watched TV. Now, swinging at anchor, we do not even have the ability to power a television, yet we watch. "So how do you watch TV?" you might ask. The answer: the internet.

More and more, you can find television shows on the internet. When we were in a marina, the connection speed was (just barely) fast enough to watch the video online. Occasionally, the video would pause and hiccup, but generally we could get through the shows we wanted to watch.

Our internet connection here is so slow that there is no way to watch online. We could let the shows buffer into the browser, but then there is the issue of the browser potentially crashing before you get to watch. Fortunately, I have found several tools which help with the process of downloading FLV files for offline viewing. The best I have discovered so far is Orbit downloader. Anytime you are watching an flash video on your web browser, this software will sniff out the FLV file and allow you to download to a location and name of your choosing. It even has scheduling features and an automatic computer shutdown, so that downloading can occur while we are off the boat having fun.

Watching the FLV files that have been downloaded requires another piece of software. We have been happy with the very simple Any FLV Player, but other options exist. The only piece of the internet TV puzzle remaining then is the location for the shows. There is no easy answer for this one. It is like hunting for needles in haystacks. Many of the major television networks put full episodes of their shows on their websites, and that worked fine while we were in the continental US. However, from here in Puerto Rico we get a message that indicates that viewing is not allowed outside the United States. Therefore, we have had to be a bit more creative.

YouTube will often have full shows (broken down into 10-minute postings) which have been uploaded by individuals. Unfortunately, the copyright police often force them to take the shows down soon after they have uploaded them. We have found many shows on the Chinese equivalents of YouTube-type sites. Not bad if you can tolerate the hanzi characters (both subtitles and advertisements) littering the screen. Alternatively, Megavideo is turning out to be a good site to download television shows and we have just discovered Hulu. I am certain that there are many other that I have yet to find, and that more options will become available as more people migrate to the internet to get their TV fix.

It takes a while for us to download a show, due to our slow connection speed (a 1-hour show will take nearly 2 hours for us to download). But, we simply turn our internet bandwidth over to downloading whenever we are not using it. During daylight hours there is plenty of power to keep at least one computer running all day, plus our powered external WiFi receiver.

One advantage to internet TV is that all of the shows we have watched for the last year has been absolutely commercial-free. We also have the advantage of setting our own TV programming schedule. For example, we had never watched the show 'House' until we got here to Culebra. Now we watch one episode a night and have made it through seasons 1 & 2 over the past two months.

TV is reserved as our after-dark entertainment, a little time to unwind after our hectic days (just kidding). Our daylight entertainment is found in books and in nature. On one of Sheryl's early morning trips to the beach, she came across these interesting snail shells, blowing some sort of semi-solid bubbles:



Interestingly, they stained her hand purple...(we hope they are not toxic):



Friday has brought the veggie guy to the island, and we are once again set with bananas, onions, and a couple of zucchini for the week. It is a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, so I suppose that I should get off the computer and out there to enjoy the sunshine. Have a good weekend, dear Reader.