The actual Atlantic crossing was 14 days

It’s possible to crew for others. When we sailed across the Atlantic ten years ago (on a sail training ship), one of the people on board was for the first time on a sailboat.

There’s plenty of ways to visit countries that won’t involve flying. Some of those quite CO2 neutral.

Get a pressure cooker, and cooking any dried beans becomes quick and easy.

For chickpeas, we often do curries. This one is great, too: https://www.budgetbytes.com/sriracha-hummus/

We were there a couple of weeks ago. Seems different neighbourhoods had different flags. We elected not to fly a courtesy flag on our boat as all the alternatives were partisan one way or another.

The tablet does have an LTE modem, but in this case it’s getting internet from the boat (Teltonika RUTX11 modem)

I have a Raspberry Pi running Signal K on the computer. This transmits all boat sensor data (depth, wind, GPS, AIS targets, etc) to the tablet. On tablet I can then run a chartplotter app, for example Navionics, SeaPilot, OpenCPN, or my current option, Orca CoPilot.

Nexus 7 (FHD, the better model) was the best tablet I’ve had. I used it even as a phone replacement for a couple of years.

Now I’m using a Galaxy Tab Active 3 as a chartplotter on the boat. Also quite nice, but would be too slow for a “main device”. Not to mention camera quality.

If a bottle of wine and some cheese takes your hike from a 3-star experience to a 5-star experience, you need it.

Boxed wine, mind you. It is still !ultralight after all 😅

Isn’t the whole point of ultralight to shave all the extra weight off your kit so that you can pack some luxuries with you (in your case cast iron pan, in mine, some wine and cheese)

I’ve been to both Petsamo and Karelia, and trust me, we don’t want them back. To clean them up and bring them into modern standards of infrastructure would be ridiculously expensive. Not to mention the Russian population that has integrated in them over the last 80 years.

The previous year’s flagship is one option. Samsung’s S22 and S22+ both fit in this range, and even the S22 Ultra is not too far off. And those still have a few OS updates left. Pixel 6 Pro seems to sell for the same price as 7a in Germany.

This has been my strategy for the last two phones (Note 8 and Note 10) and it has worked great. Following this thread with interest as this is the year I’m due to upgrade.

I’ve been very happy with our Spinlocks. Comfortable for keeping them on the whole day. We crossed the Atlantic on a boat that had them, and later bought the same for our own boat.

I recently read the Bobiverse books, and those were quite fun.

Daniel Suarez is another good one (start with Daemon), as is Ian McDonald (Dervish House, the Luna series).

This was my primary device for a couple of years. I didn’t have a phone at all. I could do everything I needed to do. Camera quality was of course terrible, but I had one of those Sony “lens cameras” paired with it, and that worked great.

I even sailed across the Atlantic with the Nexus 7 as my only media device (I packed a Kindle but it died a week in).

That is why I’m considering a foldable now. If only they weren’t so fragile…

I find around the 8” mark to be the perfect tablet size. However, not a lot of good options out there, especially for more high end hardware. If money is not an issue, a foldable might do it?

Seconding this recommendation. We’re using one as a chartplotter on our sailboat, and it works great.

I’ve been using the Signal K anchor alarm for a couple of years now. Very reliable so far. But of course only as good as the GPS source of your system.