Jay,

We have been cruising full time for 8 years. I have an Icom M802 with a modem that I installed. I installed it specifically for ocean crossings. It is more of a back-up than primary communication. I use it if we are around people we know - the most use was the Pacific Puddle Jump where about 1/3 of boats had an SSB. I imagine the Atlantic is the same - we haven't gone there yet. You need to arrange times and channels ahead of departure. For the most part, we just left ours on. The power drain on receiving is minimal. Transmitting is a whole other story - an SSB will really suck power.

If you have one aboard and get interference to other electrical devises, you need to invest in ferrites. I have tons of ferrites on equipment on our boat. The only thing that now interferes with the SSB is the solar panel controller. I can't seem to stop this. So, if I have trouble hearing, I can just switch it off and have a nice clear signal. Also, with ferrites, I do not have any issue with the SSB interfering with other onboard electronics. I will warn you, installation is not easy. It took me about a year to get the thing fine-tuned and ferrites placed properly. You also need to do this when well away from any city noise interference. You can't do it when in a marina.

I am not a big participant of nets. I find most of them worthless. The one in French Poly is the worst - it consists of about 20 minutes of vessels giving their positions from all over the South Pacific and a weather forecast. This happens two times a day. However, the net in the San Blas in Panama was awesome - it is only on SSB due to the large area - people there talk quite a bit and arranged activities over SSB.

One plus is if you use a weather router person. In the Bahamas/Caribbean, there is Chis Parker - The Pacific has Net Bob. I find it easier to chat rather than text or email on the few occasions we use a weather person. 

If you have a M802 or 803, you can open it to HAM channels. Even if you don't have a HAM license, you can listen. There is almost always someone on 14300. If you have an issue, they will help you even if you don't have a HAM license.

The SSB has DSC calling. The only reason I activated this is so, I can activate the auto SOS function if needed, and it will transmit our position since the GPS is connected. Other than this, I don't use DSC and probably never will. On the VHF, I deliberately choose not to put in the MMSI number, so the DSC function doesn't work. We have 3 EPIRBS and two satellite communication devices, so I guess the SSB SOS feature is overkill.

Is it worth it? Not really. Knowing what I know now, I'd probably not go to the expense of installing it. And, it is very expensive to purchase and install. I think in our case, I would say we got our monies worth, but again, we’ve been out here for 8 years. For the first couple of years, we rarely turned it on.

If you are looking for an SSB to increase your social life over nets, it won't. The very best way to do this is hop in a dinghy while in an anchorage and drive around visiting other boats. We do this at just about every anchorage (yes, we are those annoying people who come knock on your boat to say hi). We've met many people this way who have turned into lifelong friends. LOL - we've also met people we hope to avoid.

Hope this helps

We had the factory ICOM 710 SSB and had someone install a Dragon Pactor4 modem and we paid an annual subscription to SailMail.  We spent a year of our eight in the eastern coast of the US (Miami-Canada) and the rest in Europe (Norway-Israel).  Stayed as far from marinas as possible, remaining at anchor for periods as long as four uninterrupted months in between dockings.

We used the audio portion of the Icom exactly once —for testing— and promptly got told off by regular land-based amateurs (my fault).  Did send/receive a number of e-mails on the Pactor, which are probably the most expensive e-mails I have ever sent or received, when you divide 7 years of SailMail subscriptions and the cost of a Pactor 4 between a few dozen actual e-mails.  SailMail stations proved to be generally very reliable when we needed them, provided we used the daylight/nightime optimization tables to reach good stations.  We did test the SSB/Pactor every single time before any offshore passage.

Now, why is that we hardly used the SSB/Pactor?  It's because we had an Iridium GO!, which we activated one month at a time about once a year, on average.  It was used whenever engaging on offshore passages longer than about 36 hrs... Captain's orders! (my wife was the captain).  But these were few!  In Europe, we always had local SIM cards and had cellular coverage most of the time.

Were we isolated?  Not by any means.  At anchor, we made many friends, and we often keep in touch via e-mail... which was easy to do via cellular or Iridium communications.  We participated of a VHF "net" only once: at George Town, in the Bahamas.  Though the people were lovely and provided oodles of interesting information, after a week and a half we had had enough!  On the other hand, for other sailors the nets are one of the best things about sailing.  Depends on your personality, I guess.

Worthy of note: the Iridium native e-mail is a drag and it gets interrupted whenever you turn off your monthly subscription.  The comprehensive SailMail system, although designed for SSB use, was also an efficacious way to send/receive e-mails via Iridium and to keep an offshore e-mail address to continue e-mail conversations while in cellular range.  So be careful about depending solely on the Iridium e-mail address.

If we had cruised the Chilean fjords, our take might be different.  Anyway, that's our experience.