Rattlesnake Island Internet Access
 

My wife and I purchased a place on Rattlesnake last Sept and only have been able to use it a few long weekends prior to closing it for the winter. This summer we plan to live there virtually full time...and I'm wondering how other Rattlesnakers access the internet [and how reliably]? We're located on the northeast side so I assume satellite is not an option. I have a Verizon iPad....will this work [is Verizon service available on RSI]?

We are on the broads side of rattlesnake and we have Verizon the service is great. I am using the service right now.

Welcome to the island :)

Thanks, Nauti Crew....that is great news to hear!!! With a newspaper a boat trip away, I was afraid that we'd have to go all summer long without visibility into the real world!

Welcome to the island!

We are on the broads side too and I have a verizon hotspot, works well as long as your not trying to overload it. We used it last year to work from there and we had 3 people on it during the day w/o issue.

I would rather have full broadband but using a laptop on the island doesn't seem to be my 1st focus when I get there.

Rattlesnake Island
 

Congratulations on your piece of island heaven rgilfert! We are Broads side too.

Paul used to use Verizon cellular internet with very good success. Now he is using his Verizon phone as a hotspot. I heard no complaints over the weekend. ;)

Omg
 

Are all of you (i.e. Nauti Crew, Webbsatwinni & Rattlesnake Gal) really out there right now? I'm soooo envious!!! Ice just got out a couple of days ago! I guess that I have a lot to learn about being an islander. Like a veg...I didn't ask for my boat to go in until May 1...what a dope! I'm going to have to move the launch date up! Thanks for all your responses...sounds like Verizon is the right solution. Hope to meet all of you sometime! Thanks again!

We were out Sat & Sun and even with the colder temps and the sun am rain, it was great.

Welcome to the Island! We are on the other side from you. On our side, Verizon is VERY VERY slow, but we are using a different cell site than you will be using.

Which place did you get? There are several for sale on that side.

Again, welcome!

Regards,

Steve

IslandRadio: Thanks for your "welcome" and info. We bought Frank and Gwen Guillanello's place (113 or 958.....I don't understand why there are two numbers). Based upon what others have written it sounds as if Verizon is a good option for our side of the island.

Webbsatwinni: nice photo....I can't wait to see that view for myself again! I gotta ask you this...the right answer will allow me to sleep much sounder for the next month or so. All of the big pine trees between my house and the lake lean towards the dock and ever since the huge ice storm last Oct I've awakened in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying that one of them might have uprooted and smushed my dock. Given that you were up there over the weekend...and live so close...you probably would have noticed if a tree had fallen? Can you put my mind at ease?? Thanks!!

Well now that you mentioned it.................

Kidding, all looked well and I did not see any fallen trees and all of the docks looked OK. We typically go up in the winter but didn't even try this year so I was ready to see it myself.

Excellent! Frank did a nice job with his place - I always liked the interior decor. The view's real good, too :)

The two numbers associated with Rattlesnake Island properties are the lot number and the house number. 958 is the house number, and 113 is the lot number. Due to public safety and E911 requirements, every property must have an official house number, but the lot numbers go back a long way, so you will often see both.

The Assessor's records and other official Town documents will all reference your house number.

For instance, we are 250 Rattlesnake Island, also called lot 73 ;)

As you might suspect, 2012 is an unusual year. For your future planning, if you are as crazy as we are, over the last 100 years the ice usually goes out about April 21. The bell curve of dates is remarkably small. I think it is something like 80% of the years are within a week of the 21rst. We have actually been out a day or two before official ice out in the past, driving the boat around the giant floating ice. When it gets to that point, it is all gone a day or two later.

We are also careful to ask the Marina in the fall to plan where they store our boat to be first in the water in the spring. I think my wife RG would need shock therapy if I could not get her out to the island because the boat was stuck behind a bunch of other boats. (Actually, come to think of it, she would probably think, it must be time for a new boat that could be in the water sooner):D

Just don't fall in this time of year. The water is not very forgiving.

R Guy Is Cool
 

We so appreciate His stead fastness to RG, and her desire to flood Winnipesaukee.com with her devotion. Hey, it hardly gets any better than that!!!! :D
We look forward to S'more!!

Terry
________________________________

I have few more questions for the Rattlesnake islanders:
1) This one is probably impossible to answer...but...I'm trying to get a feel for how often and for how long the power typically goes out on the island? Does it tend to be worse during the spring & fall versus the summer? I guess a good barometer for me would be...how often do you end up throwing food out that was in the freezer or have to have a cocktail without ice cubes?
2) This is obviously dependent on the answer to #1...but...do any of you have small generators on the island or just don't bother with it?
3) For early spring and fall when it is cold, how do you heat (wood, pellets, propane)? There is a very old wood stove in our place that I've been thinking about replacing. I was thinking of getting a pellet stove but that means that I'm dependent on having electricity. I was thinking pellets only for the simplicity of carrying them up from the boat and for storage. At my age....I doubt that I could wrestle large propane tanks up the hill. Any input?
4) Lastly....do you have an island phone or simply rely on your cell phone?

Sorry for all the questions but I'd appreciate your thoughts.

Questions and Answers
 

I throw out food about every 5 years or so. During the season on the island the power goes out a couple of times, usually during a thunderstorm. If it goes out later in the day we won't see the power company until morning. They don't want to drive at night. The power guys are particularly nice to Rattlesnake Island due to the greatbefforts of one of our islanders who will transport them when their boat is unavailable ot yhe ice is thin.

Some people have generators. We justbkeep a couple of jumper batteries charged. That way we can keep a cell phone running and a laptop or iPad.

We have become wood gatherers. You can buy people to do the propane ratherbthan heft it yourself. You can also install an oil heater such as a Monitor or Toyotomi. It uses kerosene which can be hauled in five gallon containers... More expensive would be delivery by barge.

IG

For us, at our place on Rattlesnake - just once did we have to clean out the refrigerator due to a prolonged power outage. That was during the hurricane that blasted Vermont last year. The power was out on the Island for somewhere around 5 days. Someone else could probably give you an exact count. The typical summer outages have not lasted more than a couple of hours, but we do get those prolonged outages if trees come down on the wires.

I don't at the moment, but neighbors do. I would get one and plan on getting on this summer.

We use wood for serious heating, but also use electric heat sometimes. I think your place is insulated, so it should heat reasonably. No propane at our place, but you could use it. The easiest way is probably to keep the tanks near to the water, and run a line up to the building. Check with your insurance carrier before proceeding ;)

Some of our neighbors have wired phones. We don't at this time.

Hey, that's how you find out :) This is a good group. I've asked a lot of questions, and almost always get the answer.

Keeping food ok during power outages...
 

I have a couple tricks I've used... One is, when we aren't there, I load up the fridge with all the extra gallons of water I have on hand, to increase the thermal mass. That water needs to absorb a lot of BTU's to allow the fridge to warm up.... And in the freezer I keep 2 liter bottles filled up and frozen for the same reason. (as many as I can.)

In addition, I keep a little (cheap) digital theremometer with a min / max temp in the freezer. That way I know if it actually defrotsted and re-froze.

Since the freezer is very cold, it can really go a long time with nobody opening it. On the 3-5day outage last year, the center of it (where the thermometer was) got up to +9F if I remember correctly.. I tossed the stuff at the perimeter. It appeared most melted on the door. The ice cubes in the middle still had their bubbles and hadn't dripped out of their non-level tray.

I did try the milk in the water packed fridge, and it was still ok.

The food safety folks would say I'm in great error... I know becayse I read all sorts of gloom about how I should throw out all my food... If I get a 2nd thermomter with min/max for the fridge, I'll be more confident still. (I did pitch more than I hoped to, because I didn't have that 2nd thermometer and couldn't verify the fridge.)

This hasn't happened often -- such an extended outage.

One more thing, In the past I've found that NHEC is great, and their automated phone service actually calls you back when they think your power is on... to confirm. Very slick.

Welcome to the Island ! :) We're psyched the ice is out and the weekend trips are back!

In the 5-6 year it has only been a few times and only lost food once, the kids like the adventure when its out and from CT we use snake eyes as the sign of power or no power (Thanks IG!)

We haven't seen the need, we didn't at home in CT either and bought one for the Oct storm and have used it 3 times so go figure.

We have electric base board and a pellet stove. When it's real cold we use both, and if just a chilly morning just the base board and the cost hasn't been that bad. Pellets are easy to bring over, stack well and last year over year.

Cell phone although we looked into a land line and they couldn't figure out the number so we gave up.

We are not on Rattlesnake but a power outage on any island poses the same problem with refrigeration.

Typically when there is a power outage on any of the islands someone on the forum posts it quickly. Depending on how far away you reside dictates how you deal with it.

For us, we live 45 minutes to the dock so we can react quickly. Last year we had an extended outage on Mark due to some trees coming down on the island. I bought a 2000 watt suitcase generator and an extended run accessory tank. With a few extension cords I can cycle through my fridges to keep things cold. We have 2 full size fridges, a free standing commercial ice machine, a mini chest freezer, a kegerator and a mini beverage center fridge ( I think we party too much). The generator alone can run 6-8 hours at load with just the on board tank and can run multiple units. With the accessory tank setup (bought it on eBay, basically an outboard motor tank with a special line and cap) it will run for days. It is a pretty slick setup, especially for those on Rattlesnake that have broads side stairways to deal with. As long as the doors are kept closed a day or two is no big deal for a decent fridge or freezer.

I looked into doing a whole house system but you need a 100 gallon tank or bigger, they don't recommend using 100lb bottles. I didn't want to be held hostage by the barge for deliveries.

If anyone wants it, I have a hughesnet dish and modem for satellite internet that we no longer need. You are welcome to come remove the dish and it away for reuse. It worked well for us for 3-4 seasons, but since dsl is available we went that route. Cell coverage is not great for us so we never went that way.

Hey RG, now that Paul has it on his mind, you might as well go for one like ARM AND A LEG!!!

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo...hp?photo=18460

Power outages
 

When we were building our place on Rattlesnake back in '06-07, we had the same question about outages, and whether it would be worth it or not to have a generator. I emailed NHEC, and they had an engineer do some research and he gave me a very comprehensive answer on total time w/o power, average, which part of the island, etc. Unfortunately, I can't find it now, but suffice it to say it wasn't a big enough problem for us to think we needed the generator. If you want that info, email customer service at NHEC and I'm sure they'll provide it to you.

Welcome to the island!

We have a wood stove style propane heater. We use it year round to heat the camp.
We have a 5000 watt propane generator,that we got last year after the extended power outage.
We are wired for phone service, but only use the cell phones.

Hope that helps.