If you’re cruising for a few weeks or longer, how do you deal with your mail? Aboard our boat we’ve discovered a service called USPS “Informed Delivery” that lets us check mail daily right from the comfort of our cockpit.

Basically, this free electronic service gives you the ability to digitally preview your letters and manage packages. Subscribers can automatically get a daily e-mail with pictures of the envelopes delivered that day, or they can use a “dashboard” to look at a summary of what has been delivered. (The dashboard displays letter images for a week and package information displays for 15 days.)

From the dashboard, you can reschedule delivery or change the delivery address of a package. You can even start or stop delivery of mail, set up passport appointments, fill out customs forms, track packages and send your carrier a message about the delivery of a package. For more information, visit informeddelivery.usps.com.

Aboard our boat, when we are cruising for a month or two we also have a neighbor drop our mail through a mail slot at the house. If we see something that needs to be looked at while we are gone, we have that same neighbor go in the house, open the envelope and send us a picture of the contents. thebookofsail.com

December 2018