What does it take to be a programmer out at sea? | Hacker News Reader

What does it take to be a programmer out at sea?

mattmcdole.com

47 pointsSimucal29 comments

Boat, schmoat. Call me when I can be a hacker in my flying, Mario 3-esque airship. I'll be in my room under the green pipe.

Seriously, this is a pretty awesome article. It looks like the main problem is Internet access, for which there are few solutions, all laughably expensive. The site linked in the article is clearly targeted at people who own yachts.

I live on a boat, and I can tell you that it realy isn't a problem. It was five years ago, but not now. Almost all marinas have wireless, and you can get 3G phone cards that will give you decent transmission a few miles off shore. If you're further out than that you're probably not programming anyway. Not unless the weather is really calm and you're at anchor.

This is in Europe, but I expect it is the same in the US.

What are the rules about anchoring off the coast? Can you just drop anchor wherever you want, as long as it's not in a shipping lane or something? I'm dreaming of living on a boat, but apparently harbours charge quite a lot if you're just visiting for a few days. It sounds romantic to just sail to a quiet spot and stay at sea or in a natural harbour until supplies run out. Strangely enough I haven't found a good information source for this kind of idea, possibly because I'm a noob and it's a crazy one :)

A lot of people who do this type of thing blog about it. There might be a better one now, but I used to use this repo of links to peruse: http://cruisenews.net/ One of my favorite links from there was http://www.katiekat.net/ by an engineer who detailed how he hacked his cat for cruising. I also like the way he renders his experiences.

A cat = a sailing boat. At first I thought he hacked his cat (pet). After all, I wouldn't see it as a given that a cat would feel at home on a relatively small sailing boat? But there is the concept of a "ship's cat", so maybe not impossible to have pets.

Probably started when old cargo ships were swarmed with rats eating the supplies and spreading diseases.

I have read about several people sailing around the world though that have kept cats aboard in more recent times. Robin Lee Graham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Lee_Graham) had several during his voyages, his book Dove is excellent by the way for anyone interested in sailing and exploration.

A catamaran - a multi-hull sailing boat.

If you're sticking to rivers and lakes it not only solves the problem of internet access, but solves the increased corrosion from the salty air.

It might decrease your power production (if you're using one of the green alternatives other than solar). However, if you're running a diesel engine for your prop, you can probably charge your battery bank with it too.

You are living the dream!

There was another post a while back about living a free life where I also mentioned living on a boat, and I got asked loads of questiong, both the objective part about the life and the hands-on part about how to buy a suitable boat, internet, anchoring, electricity, etc. etc.

I, half-jokingly, wrote that maybe I should write an e-book about it, and got pretty good feedback. So I'm actually gathering material and have written up a table of contents. I don't know whether I'll finish it yet, but I might :-)

Here's the link for anyone interested: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565186

Id be interested in the ebook too if you ever get around to writing it.

Hey thanks for the link :-)

'Out at sea' past a 50 mile line, communication is very slow and very expensive. Some exceptions, there is free email with a ham license, non-commercial and certainly no images, A single sideband HF transceiver and modem is 1-2k$, think 9600 baud in optimum conditions. Within a mile of the shore of any industrialized nation, standard wifi is supposed to be pretty available. The boat in the picture is not getting too far offshore with one neophyte and one cat.

Well, I can say one thing: SSH over satellite internet is... an interesting experience, to say the least. A 2 second delay is really annoying.

This is too funny: just half hour ago I finished A Mile Down: The true story of a disastrous career at sea

Hope he ends up better than David Vann did :-) I would put the laptop in a Pelican or a NEMA4-rated case to limit corrosion and extend keyboard/monitor/mouse cables through the case. Seal the cable exits with gland seals and filter the incoming air.

No matter what, you'll be dealing with a lot of salt air corrosion in a small boat on the ocean. I was trained as a Merchant Marine officer and know what a never-ending battle it is, even on large carriers.

Personally, I'd leave the computer in a sealed case and only use it in harbor. Too many other important tasks will take up your time when at sea.

A gps that twitters your location to friends and family would be cool.

The SPOT gps has satellite coverage over the majority of the world and can email your friends and family google maps links periodically. There's another bolt on service somewhere that twitters it too, I think based on having the service as one of the email recipients.

http://www.findmespot.eu/en/explorespot/index.php?cid=112

Twitter is for pussies. APRS is much cooler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Position_Reporting_Sy...

It's stunning that packet losses are so high at sea that they need to exponentially distribute it for transmission to be successful.

Oh man, oh man, this is exactly what I want to do when I grow up. I keep hoping satellite access will get cheap(er). In the Caribbean, apparently, it's not so horrible.

Curious that this was deleted on SO, but rose to #1 here...

Not really. It was the original (joke) question that SO deleted, presumably on the basis that it went against their guidelines, but the submission here is not that question. It's an interesting response from some guy who chose to treat the question as serious and put some effort into identifying the logistics of programming full-time aboard a yacht.

SO is for programming questions. They try to keep "administration" questions (which this, oddly, sort of is) to a minimum.

What's SO?

SO == StackOverflow

Lifejacket

+1 for life jacket. We lose too many good people at sea who would have been safe if they were wearing one. They are very comfortable and convenient to wear now, so there's no reason to not wear it.

But then, part of my mission as a volunteer is to rant about this... http://www.usps.org/localusps/marblehead/

Plus one for the cat, if they make such a thing...

People sometimes hang a thick rope, a bit like a cat's scratching pole, off the side of the boat, so the cat can get back on if it falls in the water. Some people even put some catnip on it to make the cat used to climbing up and down it.

Only useful when in harbour, of course...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com