Floating office due to COVID-19

[b_arrington]

I have been working from the boat since mid March. Overall it is really good for me. See below some plusses and minuses.

PRO's

• I also like the routine of getting up and going to the "office" which is all of 2 miles. I ride my bike somedays.
• Also get's me out of the noisy house with two teenagers taking Zoom Classes and my wife has frequent conference calls and so do I...
• Gives me easy access to slip in boat projects in my downtime.

CONS

• Missing the Multiple monitors
  
• The WiFi in my marina is not always constant but I added a Groove Wifi Extender which dramatically improved the connection.
• There are days where I am on "back to back" on work calls ... and I don't move as much as I need to...
• Video Conference Calls are tricky as I don't prefer to publicize that I am working from the boat.

For the last “con”, most vid con programs seem to let you blur your background or pick a digital background that will hide your location. Bothe Teams and Zoom has this.

 

[b_arrington]

I’ve also been working remotely since March, slung with my wife. She gets one side of the kitchen table and I get the end.

I haven’t done a remote work session from the boat yet. I think if I took off while she was working at home and left her to monitor the kids studies / activities, and keep up with household stuff, there would be a royal rumble.

However, I’m taking some graduate classes over the summer and had to do some studying in the boat during weekends. I tethered my laptop for my phone fir internet and stayed in the salon. Worked well enough that I could work from there.

 

[boatman37]

I have been working from home for almost 5 years now. I have 7 monitors...yep, 7. 2 23" and my laptop screen for my work laptop and 4 23" monitors for my personal trading computer. I could get away with work on a single laptop but not sure I could daytrade with a single monitor. But then again I could skip a day of trading here and there if I wanted to work from the boat

 

[Blueone]

Dudes are slackers. Weekends start at Noon on Thursday.

No shit what is this 2pm thing ?.... What are you drinking at lunch?...water ?

 

[rtp]

I regularly put in 60-80 hour weeks. My home office setup is a 38" UW-QHD 3840x1600 res widescreen (think of as around 2x side by sides) + laptop screen adjusted to sit cleanly next to it.

I also regularly worked remote when not traveling or having critical-but-infrequent in-office activities, as my reports as well as those I regularly work with are scattered across the globe, so in general - I was already working 90% remote.

For the background - if it's a problem, Teams, Zoom and others let you choose your own background or blur, and there are ways to add your own background image as well. One person I know was clever and took a picture of their actual office and used that.

I've added an iPad Pro to the mix as I prefer to use my MacBook pro 16" over the Dell surface book clone from the office, with the side effect of letting me extend the desktop to the iPad Pro as a second screen. I'm still sorting what to do for an additional screen - I'm on a 1998 Sundancer 270, so not exactly having the room and options as some of you guys with bigger boats, and in my case, no from factory tv mount option. I'm going to try to work out a lever mount from near the themostat that might allow me to use it as an additional display, or rotate it to the v-berth for use as a tv.

For those of you with existing TVs, it might be worth considering if they can do AirPlay (Apple) or screencast of various kinds such as with a Google Chromecast dongle, to let you wirelessly project a screen to your tv.

For the most part, it's incredibly hot and humid in the SE US, so I'm in the cabin with the AC on, but it's still a nice break, and occasionally if/when I actually get a lunch break not stomped on by meetings, I'll get in a bit of fiddling time in the slip.

The downside is more about my schedule than anything else, as sometimes I don't have a window to leave the marina until I get a break in meetings, etc...but the wife will bring out dinner and we'll eat on the boat.

 

[bobeast]

I've been working from a "home office" for years. I typically work from the boat one or two days per week. As long as you have the discipline not to spend all your hours fishing, you can find it to be very productive, particularly if there is a lot going on at home. (kids, spouse, etc.).

I have a 23" acer monitor with an articulating clamp mounted to the galley table, and use that as the second screen for my laptop. When not "at work" I can simply swivel it out of the way, up against the cabinets. For meetings, I don't use any kind of fake background. As long as I'm getting the job done, my company really doesn't care where I am, and my teammates get a kick out of the boat motif.

 

[Steve S]

I've been working from a "home office" for years. I typically work from the boat one or two days per week. As long as you have the discipline not to spend all your hours fishing, you can find it to be very productive, particularly if there is a lot going on at home. (kids, spouse, etc.).

I have a 23" acer monitor with an articulating clamp mounted to the galley table, and use that as the second screen for my laptop. When not "at work" I can simply swivel it out of the way, up against the cabinets. For meetings, I don't use any kind of fake background. As long as I'm getting the job done, my company really doesn't care where I am, and my teammates get a kick out of the boat motif.

I have used this background from one of my previous hobbies...