Blue Seas
Active member
Anybody actually achieved it? For a real physical business? Anybody got close?
True, Paperless, Onboard digital office?
- Thread starter Blue Seas
- Start date
jfm
Well-known member
Yup, easy. Computer, big monitor, kettle. and most importantly, priority Starlink.
If you don’t need to be 100% paperless you can easily add a WiFi laser printer scanner - xerox c235 seems to be the smallest “big features” printer and works well.
If you don’t need to be 100% paperless you can easily add a WiFi laser printer scanner - xerox c235 seems to be the smallest “big features” printer and works well.
LittleSister
Well-known member
Dogone
Active member
Easy peasy.
I work every day and mostly live on-board. All paper documents are actually pdfs from source, if not are scanned at my office or by others - lawyers, accountants, government etc. No paper files are kept at all. It’s liberating to have a room full of papers from 10 years of file archives on a small external drive.
I’ve got a mega fast external drive and can plug it into any of my multiple desktop PCs located in different places and so all work off the same single source of data. Or you can use Office360 if you must.
I have a printer/scanner on-board, but I haven’t used it in years. There are phone / IPad apps that will scan, do OCR and will allow you to edit as pdfs if you have to and that’s rare. You can sign with a finger or use Docusign or give authority to lawyers or others, so it’s almost never necessary to ink a document. Twice a year maybe. Banks and brokers are the worst for this.
Starlink is very nice, but frankly a data-SIM works OK. Big, high res and multiple screens do help too I agree.
I work every day and mostly live on-board. All paper documents are actually pdfs from source, if not are scanned at my office or by others - lawyers, accountants, government etc. No paper files are kept at all. It’s liberating to have a room full of papers from 10 years of file archives on a small external drive.
I’ve got a mega fast external drive and can plug it into any of my multiple desktop PCs located in different places and so all work off the same single source of data. Or you can use Office360 if you must.
I have a printer/scanner on-board, but I haven’t used it in years. There are phone / IPad apps that will scan, do OCR and will allow you to edit as pdfs if you have to and that’s rare. You can sign with a finger or use Docusign or give authority to lawyers or others, so it’s almost never necessary to ink a document. Twice a year maybe. Banks and brokers are the worst for this.
Starlink is very nice, but frankly a data-SIM works OK. Big, high res and multiple screens do help too I agree.
Last edited:
Hurricane
Well-known member
Business???
Whats that - I've been retired now for 23 years.
I recommend it.
But you need to find something to do - boating???
Whats that - I've been retired now for 23 years.
I recommend it.
But you need to find something to do - boating???
BruceK
Well-known member
Yes. Especially since covid where most businesses were forced into adopting cloud services (o365 / Google / Amazon etc) I went from doing 30k business miles a year to liveaboard and under 1k miles a year. Everything went cloud based including clients. Being a digital nomad has never been easier. Even signed documents are now catered for via docusign etc. The days of LANenvironments is dead except for exceptional circumstances. It simply doesnt make sense anymore.
Hurricane
Well-known member
Back to the retired thing and electronics etc.
I flit between the boat and home but, as an enthusiast, I access my boat systems from home and home systems from the boat.
Mostly using a home made VPN.
I set my computers up so that they can be started remotely and then access them using Remote Desktop software.
Also my home landline telephone system is accessible throughout the house and from the boat.
And more recently, I've installed a Home Assistant server so gradually other devices are becoming integrated throughout my system.
I flit between the boat and home but, as an enthusiast, I access my boat systems from home and home systems from the boat.
Mostly using a home made VPN.
I set my computers up so that they can be started remotely and then access them using Remote Desktop software.
Also my home landline telephone system is accessible throughout the house and from the boat.
And more recently, I've installed a Home Assistant server so gradually other devices are becoming integrated throughout my system.
prinex
Active member
I work in IT and 95% remote (I go maybe 10 days a year in the office in Switzerland).
My setup on the Azimut 55 is: Starlink mobile roaming (covers 12 miles from shore), 24v to 220v 40 Euro Inverter from Amazon to power the Starlink and the laptop without having the genset on all the time. I usually work on the flybridge.
We use MS Teams to communicate, it has an option to remove background not-speech noises, it works even if people (my son) jumps from the flybridge into the water.
Now the VPN thing: Starlink reports your IP from various locations depending from the satellite - sometime Rome, sometime France etc. Your company may ask you why your IP is changing, answer is "I have starlink".
If you want to be extra-sure you always are reported from the same location, I have a VPN router at home and another one on the boat. This way my company always see the traffic coming out of my home in Switzerland and no questions asked.
My setup on the Azimut 55 is: Starlink mobile roaming (covers 12 miles from shore), 24v to 220v 40 Euro Inverter from Amazon to power the Starlink and the laptop without having the genset on all the time. I usually work on the flybridge.
We use MS Teams to communicate, it has an option to remove background not-speech noises, it works even if people (my son) jumps from the flybridge into the water.
Now the VPN thing: Starlink reports your IP from various locations depending from the satellite - sometime Rome, sometime France etc. Your company may ask you why your IP is changing, answer is "I have starlink".
If you want to be extra-sure you always are reported from the same location, I have a VPN router at home and another one on the boat. This way my company always see the traffic coming out of my home in Switzerland and no questions asked.
Simon 420
Member
I have spent the last 2 summers (4 1/2 months last year and 3 1/2 months this year) working remotely on the boat on a part time basis - usually 3-4 hours per day. As a lawyer I occasionally need to use hard documents so rely on office staff to deal with that side of things which works well.
For connectivity we have a 4g/5g aerial running into a router using ee data sim which I can access from the laptop wirelessly or by plugging in. Usually works OK and I have achieved some remarkable download speeds at times. But on other occasions it has been a challenge, especially this year in the QE2 marina in Jersey. ( we were moored up against the wall which I don't think helped getting the phone signal). My firm's systems won't let me log in if I use marina wifi, but I usually get better speed on the data sim anyway. I do a download speed check when starting up each day from which i can assess what sort of day I'm going to have!! Will be looking into starlink for next year as a backup
I do miss being able to shut myself away if I need to concentrate on something, so in order to cope with comings and goings of wife and dog, I tend to start early whilst crew are still slumbering. That means that I am usually done by later morning and the rest of the day is then mine. I have also suffered with neck and back stiffness as a result of sitting on cabin sofa and using dining table -not ideal ergonomics. We have a Princess 420 and I sometimes think it would be nice to have a larger boat with a 3rd cabin which I could convert to office space, but that would bring with it a host of extra costs etc, so I put up with suffering! We use the second cabin for storage of food shoes and general "stuff" that we need for extended periods away, so that's not an option
As a way of life I think it works, although it can be tiring when having to fit work around the demands of sightseeing, planning trips/navigation and general boat management. After 3 months I think I need a break and it's nice to get home. Being paperless is something we have worked hard to achieve in the office anyway, but I do have a printer for those occasions when it impossible to avoid.
For connectivity we have a 4g/5g aerial running into a router using ee data sim which I can access from the laptop wirelessly or by plugging in. Usually works OK and I have achieved some remarkable download speeds at times. But on other occasions it has been a challenge, especially this year in the QE2 marina in Jersey. ( we were moored up against the wall which I don't think helped getting the phone signal). My firm's systems won't let me log in if I use marina wifi, but I usually get better speed on the data sim anyway. I do a download speed check when starting up each day from which i can assess what sort of day I'm going to have!! Will be looking into starlink for next year as a backup
I do miss being able to shut myself away if I need to concentrate on something, so in order to cope with comings and goings of wife and dog, I tend to start early whilst crew are still slumbering. That means that I am usually done by later morning and the rest of the day is then mine. I have also suffered with neck and back stiffness as a result of sitting on cabin sofa and using dining table -not ideal ergonomics. We have a Princess 420 and I sometimes think it would be nice to have a larger boat with a 3rd cabin which I could convert to office space, but that would bring with it a host of extra costs etc, so I put up with suffering! We use the second cabin for storage of food shoes and general "stuff" that we need for extended periods away, so that's not an option
As a way of life I think it works, although it can be tiring when having to fit work around the demands of sightseeing, planning trips/navigation and general boat management. After 3 months I think I need a break and it's nice to get home. Being paperless is something we have worked hard to achieve in the office anyway, but I do have a printer for those occasions when it impossible to avoid.
