RoamFree Ninja is a made-in-Croatia hotspot, from Saturday 19th – 26th August, we personally got to put it to the test sailing the Dalmatian Coast, here is how it fared.
Recently I wrote about how I gave my RoamFree Ninja to my husband who is a Captain at sea, they lost internet connection and needed a solution fast. He used it for around 10 days without much feedback and I was too busy to check-in, then I got an excited call saying that it worked on the island Sušac – one of Dalmatia’s stunning uninhabited islands. In years sailing, we had never been able to get service on Sušac before, so this was more than a little exciting.
However, as my husband is a man of few words, I didn't get much more of a description as to how it fared on a day-to-day basis. So, last week, when I was called into action to work as a hostess for a week on his yacht, I got to see first-hand just how RoamFree Ninja works.
Let me begin by saying, I won't write fluff and tell you all it worked 100% perfectly the entire week because this isn't true and so far, I haven't come across any system that does; but, it worked better than the router we had onboard.
Our itinerary for the week was: Split – Brač – Pakleni/Hvar – Vela Luka – Korčula town – Šćedro – Šolta – Split.
Day one of working on the yacht didn’t give me a chance to do any work (read about the experience here), but I was hoping I would have time on Sunday as I assumed the guests would go for a walk around Hvar – which didn’t happen. It didn’t matter anyway, we were anchored in a small bay of Sv. Klement in the Pakleni islands and had zero signal. Actually, that is a lie, service dropped in and out, it was strong enough for emails and messages to come through, but not to respond for some reason.
So far, I wasn’t impressed but it was short-lived.
For the rest of the week, it worked perfectly. It even worked in areas where my phone couldn’t catch a network for calls and messages; for example, just outside of Vela Luka I had no phone reception – which I discovered when I tried to send my husband a text to buy some supplies onshore. Yet, my Facebook and WhatsApp were working – ironically enough, my husband is old school and doesn’t have a smart phone, so Wi-Fi didn’t help in this instance.
We had 10 guests onboard and I assumed that not all would be able to connect at the same time, but that was never an issue. We had the Ninja sitting by the bridge and guests could connect outside, on the deck and in the downstairs salon.
I was able to stream live, post photos and videos and document my week without any drama.
I was even on location when a fire broke out just outside of Korčula town; I captured it on video and Total Croatia News was the first to report it. Thankfully, the fire was put out just as fast as it began (truly, Croatia’s firefighters are heroes).
All in all, RoamFree Ninja worked extremely well, far better than I imagined. What about a price comparison? It is more expensive than having a standard router onboard, but if you are only sailing in Croatia for a few weeks, it is by far the best option as normal systems require a minimum contractual commitment. RoamFree Ninja offers various rates for 3 – 14 days, 15 – 45 and 45+. It also has the obvious advantage over a router of being able to take it wherever you go, i.e. if you go ashore for the day or fancy getting off the boat to work you can take your Ninja with you (cheaper than data roaming).
For more information visit RoamFree Ninja here.
