Electronics overload

Kindle Paperwhite (times 3)
Garmin GPS
Laptop
iPad
VHF with AIS and DSC
iPod
Chromebook
Bluetooth speaker
DSLR camera
EPIRB
NMEA WiFi

Seriously.

In real life, we are not complete Luddites, but all you have to do to know where we’re at is to take a look at our phone. It is not smart. It’s barely intelligible. We have a tracphone, to which you can anonymously add minutes like a criminal, and we share one phone for the whole family.

As we plan for the next two years, however, we are suddenly feeling a need to have 500 different ways to connect with each other, other sailors, the world we’re leaving in our wake and the rest of the anonymous interwebs. Our boat is being loaded down with more computing power than was installed on the Apollo spacecraft; the autohelm alone has more processing oomph than any computer we owned in the 1990’s, and the new camera is smarter than our desktop Mini over there.

How much is enough? At what point can we find balance between the mostly-unplugged life we’re anticipating afloat, and the ability to access weather info when we need it? How often do we really need to check in with our land-life family and friends? Do we need to pay the big bucks for the Iridium GO package, or can we hang with just a WiFi extender antenna?

Yeah, we don’t know. We want to have options, but we need to protect our budget. We need emergency contact ability, but I’m not sure we need eight different avenues to call the Coast Guard. We want to keep friends up to date, but wow, do we dislike Facebook. Mostly, we feel a pressing need to figure everything out right now, because we won’t be ordering an extra iPad in Cuba, or trying to pick up another digital camera in the San Blas islands. We are in the throes of Cyber Monday, and the pressure to purchase is intense.

But really, whatever we have when we leave will be sufficient. Humans adapt. If we don’t have all the toys (and we certainly won’t have ALL the toys), we’ll just use what we have. The best boat to cruise is the one that you own, and I figure that goes for the extra bits as well.