Uh-oh, you’ve triggered one of my favourite topics: cost-conscious cruising. Get ready, because I do enjoy dispelling myths about sailing. :)

People think sailing is expensive, but it is absolutely within reach for the middle class, as long as you are willing to put in the work to do your own maintenance and repair. Look at your average small-city marina and you’ll see that most of the sailboats are 30 to 40 year old fiberglass production boats. They basically last forever if you take care of them and at that age their cost depreciation curve has plateaued. So, the cost of entry is reasonable and relatively risk-free.

If you have any interest in sailing, I recommend checking out your local marina to see if they have a weekly keelboat race. Many sailors love to race and they always need crew. This is the best way to learn to sail for free. If you don’t like the pressure of racing, you can sign up for a learn-to-sail course for a couple hundred dollars.

If you enjoy that experience and want to cruise, I suggest reading a few practical books about cost-conscious cruising. Don’t watch the hot young video bloggers sailing million-dollar catamarans for YouTube and Instagram. Much like Linux vs Windows or open-source vs closed-source, sailing is as much about philosophy as it is about execution. You can spend big bucks on the latest and greatest, or you can buy old hardware and revive it with some learning and elbow grease.

The most common question in cruising is, how much does it cost? And the answer is, strangely, it costs as much or as little as you want to spend. You can spend millions or thousands of dollars, depending on your skills, your willingness to learn, and what you are willing to live with. I know a couple that lived for a year sailing the US East Coast in a 22-foot sailboat that they got for free. That’s an extremely small cruising boat, by the way, with just a bucket for a head.

Think of sailboat cruising like living in an RV: you can live in an old 1965 VW camper van or a tent trailer or fancy stainless steel Airstream or a huge diesel Winnebago. It’s up to you, but there are trade-offs. You can probably buy a broke-down old camper van on the cheap right now, if you are willing to learn to fix it up and then live in a very small space. Or you can work and scrimp for half a lifetime to afford that huge Winnebago. Most of us would pick something in the middle, making trade-offs between comfort, time, and cost.

A good book to start thinking about the philosophy of cost-conscious sailing is “Get Real, Get Gone” by Rick Page. Their philosophy is that small and simple is better than big and fancy for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is affordability and the ability to get started sooner than later. But be careful. If you read it, you may ditch your life ashore and end up a sea gypsy floating around the Caribbean in a small boat learning to fix diesel engines!

Also, by the way, there are plenty of smart, nerdy, do-it-yourself sailors. There is significant overlap in attitudes and mindset between the do-it-yourself sailor and the self-hosting computer nerd.

But truly, I hope I have convinced you that sailing is not only for the rich. It is for the adventurous. As a matter of fact, I’m heading out today for a week of wilderness sailing on board my very affordable sailboat. Maybe I’ll see you out there one day!

There is a certain satisfying symmetry to sailing the high seas while sailing the high seas.

English is most similar to Frisian, apparently.

https://knoji.com/article/frisian-the-language-thats-like-english/

Frisian: Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.

English: Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Fries.

I like the idea of using an industrial pc. Small sailboats experience a lot of vibration and sometimes violent bouncing, slamming, and heeling. Most things on a sailboat have been tossed around and flung onto the floor at some point, so it will have to be bolted down.

I don’t know, maybe something like this?

KINGDEL Desktop Computer, Fanless PC, Intel i7 8th Gen CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD, HD Port, VGA, 2xCOM RS232, W-11 Pro https://a.co/d/0eODy8RH

I was looking at something like this mini-router with OpenWRT:

GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX) Pocket-sized Wi-Fi 6 Gigabit Travel Router, Extender/Repeater for Hotel&Public Network, VPN Client&Server, OpenWrt, Adguard Home, USB 3.0, Network Storage, TF card slot https://a.co/d/0iP7qaKj

For a signal booster: weBoost Drive Reach Overland - Cell Phone Signal Booster for Off Road Vehicles | Boosts 5G & 4G LTE for All U.S. Carriers - Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile & More | Made in The U.S. | FCC Approved https://a.co/d/00PNi0AE

Yeah, good point. Now that you mention it, there is no real reason to run the server 24/7 on the boat. Also, HDDs would not be happy with the amount of bouncing that small sailboats undergo while at sea.

Yes, I think you’re right that distro doesn’t matter. As I’ve been reading through the responses, I realize that the two main issues are storage (don’t want to use HDDs on a bounching boat, but SSDs are expensive per TB) and power (limited battery and variable voltage). As you say, corrosion may also been an issue that I hadn’t considered. I’ll probably have to check in with the sailing forums to see if people have trouble with their laptops corroding at sea. This server isn’t likely to get splashed directly, but it will be exposed to a lot of humidity and variable temperatures.

Hmmm, looking at the cost of large SSDs, I think you’re right that I should downgrade my storage requirements. Or perhaps I could use a large HDD that is turned off while underway for “long-term” storage and a smaller SSD for media that I want immediately available. That would avoid the problem of spinning a HDD while bouncing around in high wind and waves.

And, yes, we do have books, lol. But we also enjoy movies. :)

I live on Lake Superior, but this server planning is for a year-long voyage from Lake Superior to New York to the Bahamas and back. So, I do need to take salt and humidity into account.

This is a good idea. A modern laptop is already power efficient and has its own battery, which I guess would act like a UPS and protect the motherboard from big swings in voltage from the main battery bank.

I think you’ve hit on the key difference between home and boat use: the variable voltage. My battery varies between about 13.3V and about 11.2V depending on its charge state. I’ll look into these.

There is a pervasive idea on the internet that the popular vote is the “real” vote, compared to constituency-based voting. I don’t find that to be a helpful attitude, especially when applied selectively. We live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. The House of Commons is a constituent assembly, which is a valid and reasonable form of democratic representation. The election system could be changed to better reflect the popular vote, but the popular vote is not automatically more valid than the constituency-based system. There are pros and cons to both, with constiuency-based voting typically giving somewhat more weight to under-populated areas.

The fact is that the UK voted for Brexit, directly and indirectly, multiple times and in multiple ways using its long-established voting system. There is no way to escape responsibility. Indeed, being a democracy, the citizens of the UK are ALSO responsible for their own voting system.

David Cameron may have gambled on the referendum but he still only had one vote in it. The citizens of the UK as a whole own the results. Also, as I recall, there were two elections after the referendum in which UK citizens doubled-down on Brexit by returning the Conservatives to government with landslide victories.

Also, anti-EU sentiment is one thing and may be common in various EU countries from time to time. However, voting for separation is quite another.

In any case, with such sustained support for the Tories post-referendum, it’s hard to lay the blame for Brexit at anyone’s feet except the UK citizenry itself.

I just started playing Caves of Qud. It has two modes: rogue mode with perma-death and rpg mode where it saves at a checkpoint you can set. Having both options is nice.

I like this style of game, so I’ll definitely be trying Moonring, too.

Fair enough. I chose to read it as Nordic rather than Scandinavian given the extent of the map.

Finland. Because they were total bad asses in the Winter War. Finnish ski troopers versus thousands of Soviet tanks in -40 weather? Fuck yeah.

Also, the Finnish sauna is the best sauna.

Yes, you are right. I had never put it together that Dutch and Deutch are so close, but it’s obvious now that you pointed it out. Thanks for the info.

Dutch is the English name for the dominant language of the Netherlands, and in English we often name people after their language. The Netherlands is also called Holland in English, even though Holland is just the most economically-dominant sub-region of the Netherlands, and the location of its main trading ports, rather than the whole country. Which makes sense if you are an English sailor who only knows the Netherlands through its trading ports and has little need to go inland.

I want to do the same, but I’m on the fence between Nobara and Bazzite.

The act of transmitting a digital file does not directly cause harm to anyone, but by creating a demand for it, you are in turn driving an industry that violates the rights of people in order to keep supplying it.

We already know that people are killed in order to feed the black market for transplantable organs, so why would we allow an industry with all of the same risks to exist purely for the sake of art?

I think you may be making a logical error here. Wanting or needing a transplant, or buying sneakers, or any other consumer product for which there is a legitimate and legal supply chain, does not make you responsible for any parallel illegal/unethical/immoral supply chain. There are black market supply chains for everything from food and basic necessities to luxury goods. There is no fool-proof way to ensure that ANY product you purchase didn’t derive at least partially from an immoral supply chain. It is impossible to track all products that closely. The fault is not with the consumer but rather with the immoral supply chain participants. Don’t take away the agency of those who participate in such things.