A) Nothing, just totally naked
B) What you’re wearing and anything you carry with you (even if you’re not carrying it right now) like a bag
C) What you’re wearing, what you carry with you, and the contents of your home (it will be teleported within a few hundred metres on the surface in an accessible location, but obviously won’t be connected to any services like electricity or water)
A) I’m very resourceful and have formal wilderness training, but naked and completely foreign environs… Probably not going to do so well, especially if the weather is harsh.
B) Pretty well. My backpack is my bag of tricks and my daily loadout includes my multitool, an IFAK, some clothing layers, and two water bottles. But it’s still going to be a challenge because of completely foreign environs.
C) Perfectly awesome, living my best life. My home is my sailboat with solar, 40000Wh battery storage, water makers, extensive first aid, dried food and spices, and more books, movies, and video games than I could possibly finish in my remaining years.
You win.
If something you can’t fix breaks ?
Sure, I’m not going to be replacing any modern consumables or modern tech. And the LiFePO4 cells are ultimately going to wear out. The solar cells will lose generation capacity. But I’ll probably be long dead before that capacity becomes a concern. Hopefully the hardcopy books don’t get wet, because that’s where I keep the stuff I don’t keep in my head.
That said, there’s very little I can’t fix on my boat. I did all of the work in my complete refit. If you know any open ocean sailors or sailboat delivery captains, we are a ridiculously resourceful bunch. Prepared AF. Kinda like the Eagle Scouts of the sea. Also, our gear is robust, resilient, and fault tolerant.
We sit around and practice this shit. There’s not much else to do out in the ocean. :D “Oh, your refrigerator compressor died.” I’ve got a brand new, spare compressor and a second refrigerator; move the most critical foods accordingly. “The second fridge died.” Immediately switch to non-refrigeration food preservation techniques. “You’re running critically low on salt.” Use the brine rejection from the watermaker. And so on. Because of all the interlocking dependencies on sailboats, we have failover modes all the way down to tarring the hull and weaving hemp lines. Okay, not that far, but you get the idea.
This lifestyle looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing !
Are there any ressources on the internet to look a bit more into it ?
Depends on which context in which you’re interested. Internet? Hm… For the refit part and thinking through/designing for all of these factors, maybe The Duracell Project (https://www.youtube.com/@TheDuracellProject/videos). Most of the people I know actually doing this stuff are… actually doing it. There’s not a lot of time and bandwidth to create an accessible internet resource. And the seriously salty folk, most of them barely have email. Among my sailing peers, I’m the most technologically capable, and that’s not saying much. :D We tend to eschew the high tech that invariably will let us down when we most need it. Much of seafaring knowledge and skills are born from hard experience and sitting around getting drunk with old salts, which is its own kind of hard experience. :D
You start small, push the limits, break shit, find fixes in order get back to port, and find what works for you with what you have at hand. Anything you couldn’t fix, you go to your marina neighbors or the internet to find jury-rigs for that specific failure mode. In your day-to-day life, learning some basic knots, how to make whoopie slings and soft shackles with Dyneema, wilderness first aid, wilderness first responder training, even basic disaster preparedness all help change your perspective on how you approach your day. For example, drilling for natural disaster response, at least for me, shifts my mindset into a “what could go wrong,” “what are the failure modes of [this critical component]” way of thinking. These are aspects you can explore without a boat or having wilderness nearby.
I haven’t watched a lot of her stuff, but Wind Hippie Sailing (https://www.youtube.com/@WindHippieSailing/videos) is a seriously badass solo dirtbagger (not a pejorative; it’s technical term cribbed from rock climbing). Solo sailors are a breed apart and a few steps above the rest of us salty dogs who have crew.
Downloaded to my Kiwix app or installed on phone/tablet and mirrored across a bunch of backup devices:
Now if you’re okay with books, lots of great resources there.
Let me know if you any additional questions. Happy to share.
Edit to add: Practical Sailor (https://www.practical-sailor.com/), a great internet resource . JFC, how did I forget that?!
Thank you for the long and detailed answer ! I’ll sure go check those out
Take this Lemmy Silver 🥈
Instant death