Living Aboard and Telecommuting

[Ruf361]

its not as if there is a huge profitable world that revolves around cruisers and liveaboards ability to work from their boat in what ever exotic location they happen to be fixing their boat at.

just like any business, if there is a need for it, it will exist. i think you would be much better off looking for a job in consulting, on a subject you are an expert on, instead of looking for random jobs that allow you to work from home.

for example, companies pay people to install, train, implement, customize, and configure software. Many of the consultants that this type of work, work remotely.

So if you are good with computers, or a specific software or industry, you can start there.

It is more about what YOU can offer and less about who is offering positions working from home. I think you will find way more scams, ebay sellers, Don Lupre's, pyramids etc if you just blindly look for telecommuting.

A few people on here work from home in a field they already worked in... that would be my first place to look. unfortunately if you grew up as a diesel mechanic, there is little opportunity for you to work over the phone.

[svsanuk]

Ruf - I can't tell if that was meant for me, but, I already have a job. I'm not retired, not unemployed, just telecommuting and cruisin from place to place. I was just commenting about the lack of community between the liveaboard proffesionals. I know there are many of us out there. I see them pop up here and there on these forums. But when I look for sites dedicated to the lifestyle - they aren't to be found

[Ruf361]

it wasnt meant for anyone in particular, just pointing out that looking for for a site or information dedicated to the lifestyle is going to be hard since most telecomuting jobs are born out of an already existing job. I used to work from the house doing software consulting. I switched jobs for more money, and have been recently looking for a job that would let me work remotely again. I have realized that there isnt a pool of jobs dedicated to this specifically. the consulting field is relatively remote work friendly, so are certain govt jobs as mentioned before. I think it is a dead end road to look for "work from anywhere jobs" and would be easier to look for jobs in your field that can be done remotely. Thats why i think you are coming up short in your search. If you ask 20 liveaboards who work from their boat what they do, i feel you will get 20 different answers with no connection other than the work does not need to be done in person.

I want to be able to make US wages and live in Central America, Thailand, South America. Consulting seems to be my only route to do this at the moment, unless i had the capital to start a new business and employ locals. I know more than a few people write articles for travel magazines. I think this is just supplemental income and could not be counted on as primary.

[svsanuk]

ruf, each of those 20 respondents will face the same daily trials as the other. (where do i get connectivity?, how do i send a fax?, where will i pick up my mail?, etc.) each will have interesting solutions that work for them. wouldn't it be nice for these 20 people to share ideas, solutions, amongst each other?

most every profession has some kind of association. so, where is the "association of liveaboard professionals"?

[Ruf361]

I see where you are going, I guess i looked at your post as some sort of community that would share jobs etc or had listings. I didnt view it as information center. Well, I am buy no means a cruiser, but I think this board would be the best place to start. I am sure someone can point you in the right direction.

And if it doesnt exist, make one, get it listed on google, get people so sign up, then sell add space, now you work from home!

[sailorgal]

I don't know if this will help, but a quick Google search using keywords like "nomad jobs" and 'location independent careers" came up with a few website:

Telecommuting Jobs Abroad, Global Travel for Backpackers, Technomads and Flashpackers
Work While Traveling the World | The Nu Nomad
Make Money Online with the Working Nomad - Live and work anywhere

Digital Nomad Lifestyle – Can you work & travel?

64 Ways Location Independent People Earn a Living

I have no idea if any of these are legitimate, but couldn't hurt to take a look.

I earn a small income living on my boat and I'm location independent as long as I can get an internet connection at least occasionally. I do online transcription as an independent contractor. I won't get rich doing this, but it supplements the cruising kitty and I can work as much or as little as I like.

[svsanuk]

ruf - "now you work form home" (no - from the boat!!!)

yes, could just be a forum section to start.. doesn't need to be anything special to being with. anybody interested in perusing an "association of liveaboard professionals" further??

[Ruf361]

my boat is home

if there was a big need for it, you could do something like the following.
put together a "work from boat" package
which would include possibly some of the following
wifi booster
lap top
sat phone
sail mail type function
an informative web site
online banking

of course these are all circumstantial
but with that information you can contact suppliers of said items and find out the cost of them if you buy in bulk

so for wifi booster set up they cost x, but you can buy them at x-y because you buy in bulk, then sell to cruisers at a cheaper rate than they would be able to buy them for.

So you could sell "work from your boat kits". You supply everythign but the job.

You contact the owner of these forums to be a sponsor, to put your banner on the side and get some more traffic.

Or a crusier could go look on ebay and craigs list and find it cheaper anyway.

Business ideas are simple, what is a service or product that makes someones life easier, that you can provide cheaper than the benefit of them doing it themselves. Not find something you can sell or service and not have to be on site.

When you find the golden combo let me know, i hate this cubicle i am stuck in.

When i was in St. Thomas for my buddy's wedding we took a sunset sail on a monohull. I cant remember the name. 2 american guys and i think a girl. We hopped on the boat, motored out to an awesome cover, watch the sun go down. they had an ice chest full of beer and maid appetizer foods for us to eat that were actually really good. bacon wrapped shrimp etc. easy stuff to make. I am pretty sure it was an expensive tourist priced cruise.

But they seem to be living the life. I am suprised more cruisers dont try and do things like that. Make a website with your boat, offer short cruises out of what ever marina or port you happen to be in.

[CindyRomania83]

I've looked at links and read about these things but so many sites want you to PAY just to be listed and then they will "find you a job". I can't help but be scared of scams. Does anybody know a site that WORKS. I mean, the site name that I can sign up with? I don't trust sending my hard earned money to some site that says they will help me and I do not feel like registering on a bunch of sites for nothing. Many sites get you to register and put all your info in and then...at the end they ask for payment details. Then you get about 5 emails a day from them telling you to complete registration - most annoying.
So, if anyone here has a name of a company or a website that is REAL and doesn't ask me for me to pay them to give me job, can you please let me know either here or send me a message?
Thank you
Cindy

[rebel heart]

I've been in software for a long time and consider myself one of the most probable people to work via my laptop wherever. I frequently am out of the office working remotely from the boat, hotels, coffee shops, or wherever. But in order to do this, I basically need:

- crystal clear and reliable phone connections for conference calls that might go on for two hours plus, maybe a couple in a day.
- high speed broadband access in the ~ 500Kb/s range or better.
- to be on the same time zone (or to adjust my life so that I am on the company's time zone) for as long as I work on the project
- extremely good relations with the people on the team so that the inherent absurdity of working from a cruising yacht doesn't rear its head.

It takes a lot of work to set up the appropriate work environment on the boat, both in logistics and relationships (I have a wife and baby daughter), and meanwhile there are plenty of people a block away from your client who are more than happy to show up wearing a suit everyday and do your job for less money.

Honestly you need to be better and/or cheaper than what the company can find down the block, unless you are personally buddy-buddy with someone who will keep work coming your way, but even that has its limits when someone audits the contractors and sees that one of them is on a yacht drinking margaritas.

A friend of mine is down in La Paz right now working for the same company that I work for on his Mariner 40. He's making decent money down there and doing good work, so it's all above board. But it also restricts him to marinas that have dedicated broadband and I think he had to buy a Mexican cell phone so he could reliably be on calls.

In short, it's hard enough to set up a home office and work remotely on land in the United States, it's even harder to do so on a boat in the United States, and it's even harder to do so while moving around.

The only reason that I can think of it for it is because you can make astronomically more money much faster than working a local job. As an IT contractor (depending on a big spectrum of variables), you can be making anywhere in the $50-$150 an hour range (no withholdings). So if you can really bust ass and work four 30 hour work weeks, that's $9000 (or call it $5K figuring taxes), as where you might only have a few hundred bucks from the same amount of work busting your ass as a local bartender or waiter.

However, keeping yourself chained to the boat from 8-5 M-F for three weeks is hardly the point of sailing (for me anyway), and even worse if you have to shift time zones and be up from 3am - noon five days a week.

And if you decide to bounce from a local job painting boats, it was expected and you'll get a handshake and a welcome back. If you screw up on a project that pays real money for a company back home, consider yourself completely cut off from that in the future, so there's a lot more pressure to keep going.

In short, you're not going to open your laptop in the cockpit, knockout a few web page updates for a couple of hours and get a check in the mail. There are people who get into some lucky situations but banking on luck is a bad long term strategy.

[svsanuk]

The company I work for will hire "telecommute" web engineers - and although I don't make a fuss about it, they do I know I am a cruiser. What rebel heart said before applies.. you are literally chained to your cockpit (or the lounge if your at the marina) all week. But its better than my alternative - NOT CRUISING. They are currently looking for backend (PERL/MODPERL), frontend (HTML/Javascript), and Drupal engineers. Anyone interested could contact me offline - svsanuk a t g m ail+com

[Shrew]

I've telecommuted (Work from Home (WFH)) for several years. I work out of the house and could easily work from the boat.

I use VOIP software and a USB headset. In my case, the VOIP system is tied to the coprorate phone system, so when someone dials my extension, my phone rings like any internal call. 99.9% of the people I work with have no idea that I WFH. Our company also relies very heavily on IM. So between IM and my VOIP line it's transparent to both customers and internal employees.

The challenge is, jobs rarely offer or advertise WFH status. Rather it comes out of necessity. Other WFH folks that I know (including those who work for other companies) don't get hired with this status. Rather, some change usually dictates the need for a WFH status. In my case I was working in the office until the company got sold. They closed my office. I would have had to move to keep my job. The company that acquired us agreed to keep me on and let me WFH. the exact same thing happened to my brother in law.

I am tied to a constant powersupply and high speed network connection. This would severly limit my ability to cruise. Even if I could relocate, I would only be able to do so on weekends and then sit in a marina for the week while I worked. So I would essentially require transient status everywhere I went, which would be quite costly.

I've been pushing the wife to sell the house and become live aboards. The challenge for us is, if we become live aboards we'll need to relocate to a warmer climate (One that doesn't get 70-100 inches of snow every winter with temps below freezing for months on end in the winter), which will then require that she gets a new job. If the job she gets is not WFH, then we are shackled to wherever she is working.

So For me, i would need to live permanently in a single marina. Best Case scenario would be to take some vacation to relocate to a marina for 1/2 the year up north and 1/2 the year down south IF my wife could also find a similar job (but again that would only be an option for me if the wife could also WFH as mentioned).

Telecommuting is also a huge challenge and requires adjusting your mindset. It requires a good deal of discipline. Everyone that I know that has this type of job seems to agree. You need a dedicated work space with privacy. I find that I'm most successful if I don't dual purpose the space. My office is my office and only used for that purpose. I have a seperate desk and computer for personal use in a completely different room. When I'm in my office I'm 'AT WORK'. I had to explain to my wife that if I'm in the office you need to pretend that I'm 50 miles away. 'No, I can't help you do <blah>...I'm not technically here I'm at work. Unless the house is on fire or you need me to call an ambulance it will need to wait until afer 5pm.'

I worked with a guy who eventually lost his job because he was never 'available'. He couldn't keep from the distractions of his household and personal life.

[CindyRomania83]

I'm not exactly qualified in anything so I couldn't try my hand at things like web design and such. I read about transcription on other posts. In other words, receiving audio files and typing them. I'm looking for a SERIOUS company as I have looked around and a lot of them look bogus to me.
Thanks
Cindy

[Shrew]

BTW- I work in the software industry as a support escalation engineer. I typically support the support engineers and take some critical customer escalations, but mostly work on writing, reviewing and publishing tech docs, creating and presenting internal product and application training, work with development on bugs.

My Brother-in-Law does Technical Presales support for another software company.

In case your wondering.

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by Ruf361

It is more about what YOU can offer and less about who is offering positions working from home.

That is the key. Most WFH jobs are created to retain a particular skillset. In my case, I was 1 of 13 people in the world that understood and could support this particular software application. Of the 13, only 4 of us were backline esclation engineers. I was in a very rare situation.

To me looking for a job with WFH satus is like looking for a job that offers a company car. Unless your working for yourself as a consultant you kinda have to 'fall into it' so to speak.