My First Time: Out of Bounds

by Jeff Johnson

A trip around the world and a Web site to share it with people around the world.

A whopping 50 baud!

Forget ISDN, cable modems, and the like. That's the rate of speed at which the sailboat "Out of Bounds" keeps site visitors updated during its voyage around the world. Whether it's across the Indian Ocean, or most recently the Atlantic Ocean, this e-mail connection via a high-frequency radio has allowed updates to the Web site even though the yacht is thousands of miles offshore. Then, using NetObjects Fusion, a simple cut and paste procedure puts the information into our Web site to keep everyone up to date.

• August 1996: We want to get on the Web, but it's too hard. We hire someone to do it for us.
• November 1996: The site is up. Boy, was that expensive! Our first days at sea are bumpy, and so's the site.
• May 1997: The trip and site are going well, but updating the site is prohibitively expensive.
• December 1997: The South Pacific, $20 an hour for an Internet connection; then we arrive in Australia.
• It's back to NYC, and time to figure out how to build a Web site myself. I create more than 60 pages in one weekend, with no HTML experience.
• May 1998: I upgrade to NetObjects Fusion 3 and we're Cool Site of the Day!
• March 1999: We're up to 175 pages. $1 per kilobyte (that's "1K") to e-mail updates from the ship. We're "Best of the Web" and "Site of the Year." Using NetObjects Fusion 4, updating the site is much faster.

The idea of creating a Web site to track the progress of three friends sailing around the world originated in August of 1996. It was just three months before we were to cast off the dock lines and head out on the adventure of a lifetime. During a chance meeting with an old college friend who happened to be in the new media (aka Web) business, an idea was hatched to try to start a commercially viable Web site that tracked the circumnavigation. Sponsors, advertising, and e-commerce were to pay for the design and updating of the site. If we only knew then what we know now…

August 1996

This Web thing sounded interesting. But, we were Web neophytes. HTML, Java, and CGI scripts were something we just couldn't fathom.
There was no time for the three of us--(left to right) Alex Ercklentz, Bill Van Wyck, and me--to learn all that needed to be learned to produce our own Web site. We enlisted the aid of a professional Web design studio.

November 1996

The first incarnation of "Out of Bounds" hit the Internet this month. After spending $18,000 to have the site designed, the marketing firm we hired to procure the sponsorships and advertising got to work. The Web site had 35 pages and a "new" technology, QuickTime VR. We were hoping advertising and sponsorships would subsidize not only the costs of producing the site but also help contribute to our expenses as we sail.

Perhaps foreshadowing the events that would come to pass in our Web site endeavor, the first days at sea were rather bumpy. We left Newport, Rhode Island, on a crisp, cold morning and immediately found ourselves in a force-eight gale. Observations… Ramon noodles taste better going down than when exiting your body at warp speed.

The next day at sea dawned with a bit more promise. We had been tested the night before, but, oh, how little we knew. That second evening, as the winds reached a peak in the pitch darkness of an alarming 70 knots (near hurricane force) and the seas crested nearly as high as a three-story building, the sensations we experienced would most aptly resemble that of the spin cycle of a washing machine. Crawling forward on the deck to secure wildly flapping sails, we were tossed two feet or more in the air and slammed back down with amazing violence. Welcome to open ocean sailing.

Of course, as anyone that tries something for the first time and sticks with it can attest to, things get better. In retrospect, getting mauled those first two days made all the subsequent sailing in 30 to 45 knot winds seem like a pleasant day's sail. Ninety-six hours and 650 miles later, we caught sight of Bermuda rising slowly from the milky horizon in the light of a new day. Bruised but ecstatic, we had come through our own personal baptism by fire.

May 1997

While we had started to gain more experience with open ocean sailing, things were not going all that well in the Web trenches. The marketing firm that was to have procured the necessary sponsorship dollars went out of business. A major dilemma, more so from 2,000 miles away. The Out of Bounds Web site had started to draw a following after being mentioned on Yahoo's What's New Web page. But, with updates to the site costing us $1,000 per update, we couldn't imagine how we'd be able to continue the site and have enough left to meet our sailing expenses without sponsorship money. A decision was made to discontinue updates to the site while leaving the existing site on-line. We decided to keep those interested in tracking our progress updated via an e-mail mailing list.

December 1997

After transiting the Panama Canal in March 1997, we island-hopped across the South Pacific. We spent time in the Galapagos Islands, Marquesas, Tuamotus, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands. All places that we couldn't have pointed out on a map just one year earlier. At the end of October 1997, we arrived in Queensland, Australia

Two clown fish swim amidst the tentacles of an anemone in the Solomon Islands.

There were rare instances when we were able to connect to our stateside server via a local ISP using our laptop (Tahiti, Tonga, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands). If you thought $19.95 a month was pricey for access to the Internet, how's this for perspective: Our connection fees were, on average, $20 an hour in most places. We grew to hate spammers who loved to clog our e-mail accounts with junk mail. Do we really need to know of an exciting new business opportunity in the middle of the South Pacific? I think not.

On the other hand, we loved receiving the hundreds of e-mail messages from people that happened upon our Web site. They would wonder if everything was all right, had we sunk, where were we now, why hadn't the site been updated? The Web site that was designed by the professional design firm still existed on-line, but it had not been updated since May 1997. Visitors loved the site, but hated that there were no current experiences relayed.

Leaving the yacht in Australia during Christmas, the three of us went home to see our families. Only two returned to the boat after the holidays, Bill and Alex. Unfortunately, my finances just didn't allow me to continue on with the circumnavigation. But I had managed to sail halfway around the world and the memories and experiences deserved to be shared. I set about learning how to write this mystical HTML that makes up Web sites.

March 1998

After deciding not to return to the yacht, I found a job, moved to New York City, and began to think about updating the original Out of Bounds Web site. I tried to digest a number of "how-to" books on HTML and almost threw in the towel. Then, I stumbled across NetObjects Fusion 2.0.2 Personal Edition. Wait a minute, this can't be so easy. Drag and drop? Writes the HTML code for you? I threw caution to the wind and delved into the program.

After a weekend marathon computer session with NetObjects, I had 60 rough, but completed pages. Most important, the content was fresh, with all of the crew's current experiences. I took the big plunge--I erased the professionally designed, $18,000 Out of Bounds site and uploaded the NOF site. Talk about the hardest mouse "click" to hit in my life! Would it work? I sat back and waited to see the results.

It didn't take long. Throughout the next few days, we received more than 200 e-mails thanking us for updating the site. Our Web site visitors were dying to know what had happened all of those long months when there were no updates from the boat. With my newfound ability to update the site in a quick and easy manner, the Web site was reborn. I also felt, vicariously at least, as if I was still part of the crew through designing and updating the Web site.

May 1998

Upgrading to the NetObjects 3.0 version, I started to experiment with different design styles and graphics. I decided to add a bit of HTML code for a Web counter to track the visitors to the Out of Bounds site. I added the code and uploaded the site. The next morning, while checking the site from work, I noticed something peculiar. The new counter I had added seemed to be counting too fast. It was registering close to 250 visitors an hour. What had I managed to screw up now? Well, the answer was nothing was wrong. My foray into adding HTML code was fine. It turned out that the site I designed using NOF was named Cool Site of the Day on May 1, 1998. There were more than 3,500 visitors that day.

March 1999

Communicating with the yacht and updating the site takes about 30 minutes a night using the new 4.0 version of NOF. The update to the site involves Alex (picured here) composing a daily journal aboard the yacht using a laptop computer hooked into the high frequency radio. When he's finished, he tunes the radio for the best transmission (called a "propagation window") and transmits at the snails pace of 50 baud. I receive the update in the form of an e-mail from the company that sold us the equipment to encode and decode the transmissions. The cost for these transmissions is relatively high at close to $1 for every kilobyte transmitted.

By cutting from the e-mail and pasting into a NOF text box, I am able to update the site with the latest information. In the rare instance that the crew is able to find an Internet connection on land, I also receive JPG files via e-mail. In addition, when friends and family visit the boat, they usually have a handful of computer disks to deliver to me when they return.

The Out of Bounds Web site has now grown to more than 175 pages and includes video, RealAudio, and loads of images from the journey. We've been averaging 6,000 visitors a month and the site has received numerous kudos, including Microsoft's Best of the Web and Wild Wild Web's Site of the Year. We've been written about in the largest French newspaper, Le Monde, along with various other newspapers as far away as Israel and India.

On March 17, 1999 after 776 days and 29,386 miles, Out of Bounds dropped anchor in Grenada. Having first arrived in Grenada on January 30, 1997 from Rhode Island, and then heading west across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, the journey around the world was officially complete. The circle had been closed. The passage back to Newport, Rhode Island where the voyage began in 1996 will bring the journey to its final end towards the beginning of June 1999.

While at times things got rough and everyone blew through more money than a Vegas gambler with a drinking habit (certainly more than anyone originally imagined), there are no regrets about draining the savings accounts to complete the voyage. The journey was, after all, about fulfilling a dream.

Sunset viewed from the deck of the boat in the
Chagos Archipelago, Indian Ocean

Sharing the experiences of sailing around the world through our web site is our way of saying it's all about chasing your dreams. It's also made us somewhat of experts when it comes to finding an Internet connection in far-flung places. Don't even get me started on the logistics of finding an Internet connection in Tonga…

About the author

Jeff Johnson's trip aboard "Out of Bounds" from Newport, Rhode Island, to Brisbane, Australia, lasted 14 months. He currently works in New York City in investment banking. In addition to designing the Out of Bounds site, he also does free-lance Web design through his company, Out of Bounds Design. You can visit their web site at http://www.outofbounds.com and Jeff can be reached via e-mail at: jeff@outofbounds.com.