What better way to maximise your investment than to live and work aboard your boat. Colin Jones explains . . .

Working while cruising is now so simple that I am surprised more people don’t do it. After all, there is no better way to maximise your marine investment than by spending not just your free time on board but also your working day - and it has never been easier to make that happen. Boats and modern communications can give you the freedom to enjoy the fun of driving the boat, visiting some great places and earning a bob or two as you go. I know because, as a marine journalist, I have been doing just that for 20 years.

In that time, working away from home has undergone many changes. Doing it from the boat is no longer that much different from flexi-time or home office work. A number of our acquaintances who would like to live, work and play in places like Dartmouth, but cannot afford the piratical property prices in such areas, put their boats there and use them as often as possible - not just as a boat but as a sort of floating caravan. It becomes a base from which they can carry out a local job. Others use the boat as a ‘studio’, where they do the occasional work stint but the most advanced owners are able to use the boat as a completely self-sustaining (even profit making) live-in house and office.

Requirements
If you wish to be a full-timer, the first requirement is to be certain that you have enough assured work to generate a regular income. Many work-aboards have a long term plan, moving and moulding what they do for a living into their new life of freedom. This takes time, but watching its evolution is very satisfying. As a freelance writing team, it took me and my wife about 12 years to acquire a portfolio of clients for whom we work every month, so we know that as long as we write, we will eat. It means hard research and preparation when we are ashore or holed up for a spell, but we can be ‘off the leash’ for seven months at a stretch without any great concern.

We know a wholesale pharmacist, some accountants, graphic designers, editors, consultant solicitors and proof readers, all of whom are able to make this kind of lifestyle work. But reliable communications are an absolutely essential part of this and the internet is obviously a major component. Success here is partly dependent on location, because relying on harbour masters’ offices, internet cafes and public libraries is not enough for serious work. You must have reliable WiFi direct to your floating desk. Unfortunately, boats and marinas have a deservedly dodgy reputation for this, but things are getting better in terms of all the major respects, including range, reliability and cost.

This last is a bone of contention with those of us who work as we cruise. Some places offer free WiFi access, while others see it as an additional source of income. There are no obvious rules. In the Lozere region of France, every hotel, camp site and restaurant offers free access via the department’s Lozere Radio. You ask for a code card, which is assigned to your location and, when you have exhausted your allotted five hours, you simply ask for another. Elsewhere on the huge Lac d’Annecy, our chosen base port offers WiFi in paid chunks. An hour costs €2 and a week costs just €18. By way of contrast, the UK does not yet seem to understand that the Internet is essential for ordinary living, so it should be available to all at very low cost.

At Cap d’Agde (pictured), we took out a week’s WiFi subscription from a private contractor, who assured us that his system gave complete marina coverage. We were only about 20 metres from the network antenna, but it was shielded from us by the harbour office roof. We got no signal until we either walked the notebook onto a different pontoon, or took it further away in the dinghy. Neither option was conducive to serious work but these are unusual circumstances. When it is properly set up and working well, on board internet access is a marvellous addition to the boat’s domestic, social and working life.

Essential gear
Equipment is a matter of choice and cheques - and with computers, as with everything else, the more you pay, the more you get. Equally true is that a dedicated marine, permanent installation is the best solution for an all-round computer set up, including navigation. Digital Yacht are to the forefront of serious and affordable gear, designed to withstand the bumps and to be protected from the marine environment. In most cases, it will be a three-part arrangement of cube, keyboard and a display, which might also be used as a chartplotter and television viewer. Fortunately, most of us who work-as-you-go, do not need this amount of muscle.

Our main item of equipment will probably be a notebook PC of specification good enough to handle several tasks simultaneously and with a processor fast enough for rapid handling of data. In our case, much of our work involves sending high-resolution photographs, which can either take an age to upload, or the system announces that ‘Your files are too large for upload’. For this, a good notebook PC is required. But this machine does not need to be marinised because most of us protect our computers with great diligence. On passage, ours are put in good quality, well padded cases and stowed in a part of the boat where they cannot take a fall or be damaged by the boat bucking and slamming in a seaway.

Feeding your computer
Computers, like workers, need feeding. How best to provide constant, smooth sine wave electric current to a hard working computer has always been the most frequently asked question, even from those of us who have been doing it for several years. There are several ways of doing this. Probably the least satisfactory is relying on a notebook’s rechargeable battery, with its tendency to run out, just when you need it most, even if you have a reliable means of recharging it. There are various forms of recharging from the ship’s 12v battery system, but we have never found one which works fast and well.

We have had many years of use out of a good (Victron) 150w inverter, which was specifically purchased for running our early work computers. As far as it goes, this was fine, until we bought more powerful machines, when the Victron’s 2A output was not enough. Also bear in mind that voltage inverters are notorious battery voltage gobblers, so prolonged use pulls down the charge level, which then needs to be restored. When using an inverter, you will still require the PC’s mains lead, which connects via its power pack. The machine I wrote this on confirms exactly that (Input: 100-240v ~ 1.7A  50-60 Hz; Output: 18.5v – 3.5A). That is a very inefficient way of providing a stable current from an inverter.

Generate your own
Over the years, we have used a number of portable generators. The early ones were fine for battery charging (if a bit slow) but their output was not really smooth enough for the computers of the time. Our present Honda EU10i, however, is an amazing piece of equipment, with a full kilowatt of output as smooth as silk. As gennies go, this one is comparatively quiet but, in the cockpit locker, it is still distracting. Out of season, we move it 20 metres down the pontoon but in season, the noise means our neighbours are not all that sympathetic to our need to work from the boat.

In the last analysis, all the methods of electrical supply described above are suitable for short-term work. However, the lifestyle dictates that, when the weather is fine, you cruise and play. When it rains, you get your head down for some serious, money-earning effort. At such times, that can involve a couple of greedy computers running for several hours at a stretch - and for that, reliable shore power remains far and away the best option.