We’ve met folk of all nationalities who work from their boats to contribute to their individual ship’s biscuit fund. We indeed still do bits and pieces for Unique Solutions, our UK business.

There are people who are striving to fund their travels through video blogging. A tiny tiny handful of crews are pretty successful ($10,000 an episode I’ve read) at this but we’re talking an incredibly small proportion. And it seems to me, the more successful your vlog, there’s more work required to ‘feed the beast’ and keep it going. And going and going every week with something new and interesting to say.

Our staring position was always to do less not more.

My new German friend Olaf works remotely as a software engineer. He and his wife have been boat-based for 8 years. I hadn’t seen him all day so I asked him if he’d been ‘tippy tappying’ away on his computer. His response to this was to laugh like a drain in uncontrollable glee.

I’m not sure if tippy tappying translates into something different in German. Doesn’t matter, seeing him laugh like that made my day.

I mentioned this conversation to a friend in the UK. The response….They will have a word for it. It will have at least 8 syllables and 32 letters.  That’s why all German books are in Landscape.Tippenzietappenschudenfreitche. That made me laugh too.

We are in Jamaica, planning to depart for Panama on Wednesday. The winds and the seas in the western Caribbean can be a bit ‘dizzy rascal’ so we’re waiting for a smoother, mellower ‘rat pack’ forecast.

In the meantime, Dave has made some modifications to the steering / autopilot system. I’ve replaced the fraying stitching on the head sail. Jerk chicken has featured in our diet. It’s about a year since we last had some and my lips protested and demanded cold liquid prompto. It’s got a lip swelling kick. But worth persisting as it is pretty darned tasty too.