I once gave some thought to going cruising and inventing stuff for
cruisers as I went. After all, living the life in which things would
be used should be conducive to invention for it. Unfortunately, that
is not the way inspiration works for me. Furthermore, cruisers are
cheap so unless you can license an idea to a larger company to make and
have them make many of them, it isnt worth patenting.
At work, in addition to normal machine tools, we have a tiny Prazi
jewelers lathe with a microscope mounted on it for ultra fine work.
Prazi also sells a tiny milling machine. On a 42 boat (say a Morgan
Out island)you might have enough room to put these and then do very
strange machining jobs. I am not sure what these would be but maybe
making injectors for diesels in an emergency. Unfortunately, I do not
have enough attention for deatil to be a good machinist.
Programming might be an option but I really do not like computers.
However, there may be a way for someone to make money writing
specialized engineering or scientific programs. I know people who make
a good living writing x-ray analytical software. One of them just goes
to analytical instrument trade shows to show his stuff; last year was
Savannah, this year Hawaii, not a bad life. Early in my career, I
wrote Sag-Tension calculation programs for people who built power lines
(seriously arcane)and even sold a few copies but the computer stuff
just bored me.
Is it possible for financial planners to do their work by computer
using the Iridium network?
I am sure that some people manage to do work that they love and
cruise at the same time but for most of us it is more difficult. Most
people simply work because they have to and cruise when they can get
time off. Some of us do work that we love and are torn between
cruising and work. I think that for me, the part of the brain that
gets pleasure from the exploring part of cruising gets the same
pleasure from work so I cannot decide which is better.
Tonite, I went to teh local yacht club meeting to hear a talk by a
biologist who collects strange sea critters for shipment to labs around
the world. He doesnt cruise but is passionate about his work and it
shows in the way he talks. Other people I talked to there mostly
seemed to be putting their dreams on hold until they retired, kinda sad
but I dont have an answer for them.
For full time cruisers, I have to ask; are you passionate about it?
Do you ever think that you are wasting time that you could be using to
do something special? How do you justify your existence considering
that cruising is mostly about self gratification. My questions are not
directed at retirees who have made their contribution to society but to
younger cruisers. Is there some way in which you feel that your
lifestyle is of benefit to others? Are these questions the result of
to much tequila?

Larry W4CSC wrote:
"Glenn Ashmore" wrote in
news0E3e.98795$SF.16460@lakeread08:

you start to need some
productivity component and will find something to do like write
your
autobiography, compile a directory of Caribbean rums, build a
school in
Haiti or try to reform the government of the Grenadines. :-).



No, no, no....You boys got it all wrong. Productivity means cleaning
out
that biological disaster in the bilge, changing out those frayed
fanbelts
driving the alternators, getting the windlass to run again on
ELECTRIC
power, unstopping the hose running from the Y-valve to the through
hull
fittings on the holding tank outlet.....

If you really need to get inventive, draw a nice schematic linked to
a
bubble drawing of the electrical system you installed a year ago last
May
you never got around to doing....

The Rum Directory isn't a bad idea, though.