SailMail is a terrific option for Iridium GO, handsets, or other satellite systems. Low-speed internet is still low speed, with most of the same issues that we addressed 24 years ago with the launch of Sailmail for the 1998 Pacific Cup. It was free back then, we’re making an offer now that is almost free.

Sailmail offers integrated email and weather from our Saildocs server, compression and secure connections, as well as position reporting to friends and family. Sailmail is a certified app for the iridium GO, and our Airmail software can automatically connect hourly or whatever and collect weather while you sail the boat. For both the GO and Iridium handsets, we protect your airtime against software updates mid-ocean. For incoming mail, we filter large attachments, malicious emails, and spam.

A great side benefit of being a SailMail member is access to our GFS global weather archives, going back to 2004. Just browse past weather or challenge your favorite routing software, we’ve got the data.

We are offering PacCup racers special membership pricing for this year’s race. Join now for only $59 and use SailMail through August 31, 2022. This will get you to Kaneohe (and hopefully back!).

To take advantage of this offer please click here (sailmail.square.site)

And if you are also using HF radio then click here for full membership:

Sail fast, sail smart, and above all, be safe.

Sailmail Internet / Satellite gateway settings were updated in June 2020, click here for info. If you need help with Airmail 3.5 then this page is for you, for Airmail 3.4 either update to ver 3.5 (strongly recommended for satellite use) or see this page.

This only applies to satellite or Internet connections using Airmail’s internet/satellite (Telnet) access window. Radio connections, webmail, and pop/smtp email are not affected.

If you have internet access then the best option is to update your Airmail ver 3.5 version, downloads since May 22, 2020 include the new gateway addresses. If you downloaded before then, then do it again– same software, new internet gateway settings.

If that is not possible then the rest of this is for you. It is organized from simplest to more complicated, keep going until success is achieved.

Airmail 3.5 will auto-update its internet settings from a special “update” message which was sent to all members, so if you received an update message into Airmail and clicked “Yes” to confirm the update, then you are finished. Skip down to “Checking” below.

If you can connect to Sailmail from Airmail via radio or Airmail’s internet window (not webmail or some other email), but have NOT seen an “update” message, then:

1. Create a new, blank message to: satgates@saildocs.com and post that via Sailmail.
2. Connect to Sailmail and send the message, wait a moment, connect again for the reply.
3. Open that message, and click “Yes” to accept the update.
4. Skip down to “Checking” below.

If you cannot connect to Sailmail via Airmail’s internet window, then try each server listed in the selection box at the top, next to the green “Connect” button. One of the backups should connect, then proceed as above.

If you CANNOT connect via radio or any of the servers from Airmail’s internet window, but you DO have internet access to Airmail, then use Airmai’s Mail Client window to send your update message to satgates@saildocs.com. For details on using Airmail’s Mail Client, click here.

If STILL no luck, and you don’t have internet access to update Sailmail (never mind that you are somehow reading this), then do this:

1. Click Airmail’s “Window” menu, then “Files”, then “INI files”, and select “System.SAILMAIL.ini”. This opens the Sailmail settings file.
2. This is a settings file, with various sections each marked with a square-bracket heading. Scroll down and find the “[Internet Gateway]” heading.
3. Below that heading, and before the next square-bracket heading, is a section of server settings. Delete those, and replace the [Internet Gateway] section with the following:

... some other section data...
[Internet Gateway]
Server1=SMSG1,18.208.67.17,50
Server2=SMSG2,44.232.19.175,50
Backup1=WQAB964,174.67.172.21,50
... the next section heading ...

Click “File” Menu, Save (or Ctrl + S keys), then close and re-open the internet window and check as follows:

To check settings:

The new gateways are designated Server1 (SMSG1) and Server2 (SMSG2), and the backup is Backup1 (WQAB964, our San Diego station). To check, open Airmail’s Internet window and select each server “Server1”, “Server2”, and “Backup1” in turn and confirm that each connects. “Server1” should identify itself as “SMSG1” in the log text, check that for each.

Sailmail Internet / Satellite gateway settings were updated in June 2020, click here for info. If you need help with Airmail 3.4 then this page is for you, for Airmail 3.5 click here.

Note that this only applies to satellite or Internet connections using Airmail’s internet/satellite (Telnet) access window. Radio connections, webmail, and pop/smtp email are not affected.

If you have internet access then the best option is to update to Airmail ver 3.5. Airmail 3.5 downloads since May 22, 2020 include the new gateway addresses. If you downloaded previous to that, then do it again– same software, new internet gateway settings. (NOTE: The older Airmail 3.4 download is NOT updated– use ver 3.5).

An important note for sat-phone users: Airmail 3.5 includes a “dedicated route” feature for connecting via satellite, which limits access to Sailmail servers when the connection is open. This means much faster connections because other programs will be blocked from using your satellite connection for automatic updates. This is a huge advantage in terms of airtime usage. This is not available for Airmail 3.4, so if at all possible update to Airmail 3.5.

If updating is not possible, or if you prefer to stick with ver 3.4, then the rest of this is for you:

The default configuration for Airmail 3.4 uses domain names for the server (for example pop3.sailmail.com), which do not need updating. Open Airmail’s Internet Access window (yellow “lightning-bolt” button), and check the server selections– default is WRD719 and WHV382. Select WRD719 and click “settings”, if the server is “pop3.sailmail.com” then you are all set.

If you see a numeric IP address for “Remote host”, then you can either update the settings as detailed below or delete the current settings and re-open the Internet Access window– which will restore the default settings.

To manually update settings: Open Airmail’s Internet window (yellow “lightning bolt” button) and at the top, will be a selection-box for the available servers. Click the “Delete” button to delete each current setting.

Now click the “New” button, this opens a “Telnet settings” box. Make entries as follows (without the quotes):

1. The first box is “Remote Callsign”, enter “SMSG1”
2. The second box is “Remote-Host” enter “18.208.67.17”
3. Next is “Port”, enter “50”
4. Leave “Timeout (sec)” empty
5. The “Local Callsign” will show your Sailmail callsign in a gray box– from the Options window.
6. The “Password” box will show your Sailmail password– also from the Options window.

Click OK, and then click “New” again, and repeat those steps for the second server:
For Remote Callsign enter “SMSG2”, for Remote-Host enter “44.232.19.175”, for Port enter “50”.

Click OK, and then click “New” again, and repeat for the backup server:
For Remote Callsign enter “WQAB964”, for Remote-Host enter “174.67.172.21”, for Port enter “50”.

Click OK, and you’re done. If you have internet connected to the boat computer (marina wifi, cell-phone hotspot, or via the Iridium) then check each of the selections. Click the green “connect” button, it should connect to the server and check mail without any error.

Also please open Airmail’s Options window (Tools menu), Settings tab, and verify that your Sailmail password is correctly entered in the “System Password” box.

Then select each server in turn (SMSG1, SNSG2, and the backup WQAB964, click the green “Connect” button and verify that is connects without error. This can be via local internet, or your satphone or GO terminal– any internet connection.

If you have any questions, please send a new message to: support@sailmail.com

Good Sailing, and be safe!

“ShadowMail” is a Saildocs service which provides a method of monitoring a separate email account, and for downloading or forwarding messages as needed. This is available only to Sailmail members, and without charge.

The purpose of Shadowmail is to act as a bridge between your Sailmail address and whatever other email address you might use for regular email. The great advantage of Sailmail of course is that it works pretty much anywhere, but connection speeds are slow whether via radio or satellite. This means that you need to keep your Sailmail address private, and limited to friends and associates who understand not to send jokes, spam, etc.

We strongly recommend maintaining some sort of regular land-based email address for routine mail, on-line ordering, etc. This can be a regular personal or company email account, or a Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail address for “public” use. These folks will keep your low-priority mail forever (Hotmail and Yahoo may require a small annual payment for this) until you can check mail from an internet-cafe. The problem of course is that folks sometimes send important messages to your regular address, and you have no way of knowing. Enter the Shadow…

Once you set it up, the Shadowmail server checks your regular email account a few times a day and sends you a summary of whatever new messages have arrived. Airmail decodes those “new mail” messages to maintain a “shadow” folder for each regular email account, showing the contents of that mailbox as a separate Airmail folder. For example, assume that you set up Shadowmail to monitor your Hotmail account. Then in addition to the usual “Inbox” and “Outbox” folders in Airmail, you would also have a “Hotmail” folder with a gray icon instead of yellow, indicating a “shadow” folder. When you open that folder you see a list of messages which are currently pending in your Hotmail account, showing from- and to-addresses, subject and date.

If you want to download one of those messages via Sailmail then right-click on that message and select “retrieve”. If you want to forward it to someone else (without downloading it) then right-click on it and select “Forward”. If you want to delete it without ever reading it, then right-click and select “Delete”. If you go to the local cyber-cafe and read and delete some of the Hotmail messages, then they will be removed from Airmail’s shadow-folder on the next update. The Hotmail shadow-folder will always match the contents of the Hotmail “inbox”.

To use Shadowmail a current version of Airmail is required, and you must be a Sailmail member. Shadowmail can be used via a radio connection, or via internet or satphone using Airmail’s Internet window. The first step is to read this document carefully and make sure that you understand the limitations. By using Shadowmail you are agreeing to the conditions contained here, and to the Saildocs terms and conditions (terms@saildocs.com).

To set up Shadowmail to monitor an email account, first enable Shadowmail and open the “Shadowmail Settings” window. Start by opening Airmail’s Options window (from the Tools menu), and then click on the “Modules” tab. Check the box to the left of “Shadowmail” (if not already checked) and click the “Setup” button to open the settings window.

Initially this “Shadowmail Setup” window is empty, click “New” to create a new account and give it a name. Then enter the server-address (the internet address of the “POP3” server), the login name and the password for the email account that you want to “shadow”. (This is NOT your Sailmail login, you need to get the server, login-name and password from the outfit that handles the email account that you want to monitor). Make sure “Account Active” is checked, and then click OK. Airmail will send a settings-message to the server and it will start monitoring your account. Mail is checked every 6 hours and you will get a message from the server (“shadow-reply@saildocs.com”) whenever new mail is received into that account.

Shadowmail can check any POP3 mail account, such as a business or regular Internet account. The Internet provider will supply the server address, login name and password. Keeping your mailbox tidy will make it easier to keep track of things. A good technique is to wait until you have Internet access at a marina and then retrieve everything you want to save to Airmail and delete it from the server. Alternately you can forward messages from the Shadow folder to another account, such as Hotmail or Gmail for safekeeping.

Here’s how some accounts are handled. For any of these you will need internet access to get things set up.

Microsoft Hotmail / Outlook / Live / Office365: POP3 access is provided to all Microsoft email accounts, but the “Premium” (paid) service may be required. Use the server-name “outlook.office365.com” (hotmail.com, pop3.live.com, pop-mail.outlook.com also work). Use your complete email-address as the login name, and you can use your normal password. However the first time that Shadowmail connects it will be blocked. To allow the connection go to your Microsoft mail settings and select “Security” (may be under “Premium”), and view “Recent Activity”. If Shadowmail was blocked then you see an entry there, check the time-stamp and click “That was me”.

If you have Microsoft’s “Two-step Verification” enabled then you will need to use an “App Password”, also under the Security tab. Use that in place of your normal password in Shadowmail settings.

Yahoo: Free Yahoo accounts also support POP3 access, and requires an “App Password”.  You may also want the paid service which provides additional storage and avoids deactivation. Use the server-name “pop.mail.yahoo.com”, the login name is your Yahoo email address, and for password you need an “App Password” (search Yahoo help for “Generate app password). Note that 2-step verification is NOT required for an app password. Again, keep your inbox tidy by moving messages that you want to keep into other folders, and deleting the others.

Google Gmail: Shadowmail can also check Gmail accounts, but Gmail is a little “quirky”.  Open Gmail settings (gear-icon, then “See all settings”), click on “Forwarding and POP/IMAP”, and select “Enable “POP for all mail”. Selecting “all mail” and using the “recent:” prefix (below) selects all messages received within 30 days. You will also need an “App Password” for Shadowmail, which requires 2-step verification. Those are found on your Gmail “Security” page, under “Signing in”.

In Shadowmail settings the server name is “pop.gmail.com”, login name is “recent:” followed by your complete GMail email-address (i.e. “recent:username@gmail.com”), and for password enter the App Password that you created for Shadowmail. For more details send a (blank) email to shadow-gmail@saildocs.com or see the web page at https://sailmail.com/shadowmail-checking-gmail-accounts/

AOL: AOL has added POP3 access and Shadowmail can check AOL accounts. The server is “pop.aol.com”, the login-name is your AOL “screen name”, and the password is your AOL login password. The server may occasionally return a “timeout” error, double-check the server-name and don’t worry, Shadowmail will keep trying.

For any email account: if you get back an error-message then double-check the POP3 server-address. Make sure the login name is correct, sometimes it is just your email name, or it may be the complete email address, or perhaps something completely different. Check the support information for the folks who provide the account, they will need to supply that info.

For accounts that have both a free and paid version, check what features are included. generally paid accounts offer more storage, don’t de-activate if the account is not used, and in some cases POP3 access requires a paid account.

Also remember that Shadowmail has to check everything in your Inbox folder whenever it checks mail. So it is important to keep things tidy by moving messages that you want to save into “archive” folders and deleting the rest. Create new folders for specific topics (or by year, for example) and move messages that you want to save into those folders for safekeeping after you have reviewed them.

You can also set up Shadowmail rules that will forward specific messages to your Sailmail address whenever they are received. For example, you can set up Shadowmail to forward anything with “urgent” in the Subject-line, and then give your business-associates your Hotmail address and tell them to include that word in the message-subject if they need an immediate reply. They don’t have your Sailmail address, but you can still be in touch- and in control. These “rules” are part of Airmail’s Shadowmail settings window, and can include two different checks, for example sender contains “mom” and size less-than 2000.

Replies that you send for messages which were retrieved by Shadowmail will of course be sent via Sailmail’s servers, and would normally come from your Sailmail address and with the how-to-reply footer added to the bottom. However if you are replying to a message which was retrieved via Shadowmail, then Airmail should substitute that reply address. Check this, however, and if you don’t see the “From” box in the message header then select the Message Menu, “Show From-Box”. A new box appears, enter the address that you want your email to be sent from.

Also, to suppress the Sailmail footer, add a line at the bottom of your message which says “short-footer” (without quotes) for a one-line footer “radio email processed by SailMail” and web-address) or “no-footer” for no footer at all. This should be on the last line, by itself, without quotes.

Some caveats and limitations: Shadowmail normally only sends a notice for new messages, not the entire mailbox. But when the account is first set up then the whole mailbox is indexed, and this can be large. If you have a lot of pending messages then try to do this via internet, not radio. Also, remember that the Shadowmail server must download the index for the entire mailbox whenever checking mail, this gets time-consuming if there are a lot of pending messages. The current limit is 1,000 pending messages, this may be adjusted up or down if needed. It is convenient to use the web-based mailboxes (Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, etc.) as message-archives, but move messages to other folders and don’t keep them in the “inbox”. You won’t be able to use Shadowmail if there are too many messages in the inbox.

Also be careful and selective about setting up an automatic retrieval, and never set up Shadowmail to retrieve everything. Remember that the headers are always sent, and you can retrieve any message- the only reason for automatic retrieval is for messages that you are sure you want, so be selective.

Saildocs is a service of the Sailmail Association. For more information about Saildocs, send a (blank) email to: info@saildocs.com (or see the website at www.saildocs.com/info).

Please send questions about Shadowmail or Saildocs to: support@sailmail.com

Good sailing, Jim

(updated 2021-07-15)

This note is for Maxsea users, regarding grib-display problems with certain versions of Maxsea.

Background: Grib (GRIdded-Binary) files are packed-binary data files which contain weather-forecast data. The grib format is an international standard which is supported by a variety of systems and software. Data in a grib file is stored as a “grid” or array of numbers in a packed-binary format. The grib format allows data to be organized either by increasing latitude with a positive latitude-increment (delta-lat parameter), or by decreasing latitude with a negative delta-lat. NOAA’s GFS model, Saildocs and Raytech use the positive convention; Maxsea and OCENS/GlobalMarineNet use the negative convention. Any grib viewer must support both conventions, and most do.

However there is a problem with certain versions of Maxsea which fail to correctly display positive-convention grib-files for southern latitudes. The data image gets inverted north-to-south (not east-west). The effected releases include Maxsea version-10 PRIOR to 10.3.5 (which was the final Ver-10 release). Version 10.3.5 is OK, and Ver-9 and -11 also appear to be OK. Others are untested, if you have an earlier/later version please check it (see below) and send me a note if you see the problem.

To temporarily accommodate users of Maxsea versions with this problem, Saildocs can also supply negative-convention grib files. In the grib-request message change the delta-lat parameter to a negative number, =
for example:
send grib:30S,40S,168E,180E|-2,2|24,48,72
In this example the “-2” specifies a negative-convention file which will avoid the Maxsea problem. (Complete details on the request-format is available be sending a blank email to: gribinfo@saildocs.com).

The simplest way to check whether your Maxsea program has this display problem is to request two small grib-files from Saildocs for the southern hemisphere, one normal file and one negative-convention. Use =
Airmail’s grib-request window and then modify the request message, or simply send the following two lines to: query@saildocs.com

send grib:30S,40S,168E,180E|2,2|24,48,72
send grib:30S,40S,168E,180E|-2,2|24,48,72

This will request two files, identical except for positive/negative data convention. The grib-viewer must display them identically. When you get these files, open each with Maxsea and check the weather over North Island, New Zealand. If the two files display differently then your Maxsea version is not correctly displaying the positive-convention grib file. A short-term fix is to edit each grib-request before sending to specify a negative latitude increment following the example above. Feel free to contact me with any questions at support@saildocs.com.

The longer-term fix is to update your Maxsea version. Furuno now handles distribution and support for Maxsea. They have acknowledged the problem and have made ver 10.3.5 update discs available without charge for users of prior ver-10 releases which are effected. This update only applies to ver-10 users prior to 10.3.5 and won’t work without a version-10 dongle. Contact Furuno for a copy of the 10.3.5 CD.

Jim Corenman
support@saildocs.com