Must have been a strange sailboat to have an engine room :-)

Sailing the world certainly isn’t a passive activity, especially if you’re sailing around the world. Ocean sailing involves all sorts of skills (and nerves) as you need to nurse a boat around while using your ingenuity to solve the challenges of things breaking that you can’t replace for weeks. You need to prepare all the food (victualling), learn how to sew sails and teach yourself to sleep immediately while tied to a bed healed over sideways because you’re being knocked about in a storm beating into the waves...because you’ll need to be back up top for your shift in 3 hours time.

Whatever floats your boat, though :-)

I understand that sailing on the ocean is no small feat, but my problem with it is it doesn't actually accomplish anything. I want to do things that matter.

This may be jarring to learn but we all enter the world naked, terrified, and alone, and fairly shortly thereafter leave the world the same way.

An individual might find meaning from travel, or meditation, or religious adherence, another from creating a family, another by being the greatest bullfighter to ever live, or creating an electronic simulation of violent war, but in none of these examples should anyone be incredibly confident that they have become an authority on which things matter more than others.

In the end all we have is our story. Make it a good one.

More things matter than one might initially expect.

We all have a causal wake behind us.

Spoiler alert: nothing can matter to you once you die. (And everyone dies.)

That’s like saying nothing can matter beyond the spatial extent of your body. Just another dimension.

> nothing can matter beyond the spatial extent of your body

Insofar as the spatial extent of a body is extended by its brain's perception and knowledge ...

... the quoted words form a true statement.

> Must have been a strange sailboat to have an engine room :-)

He wasn't talking about a sailboat, but anyway any sailboat built for ocean passages will have a diesel auxillary.

A cruise ship is basically a floating hotel. Depending on the severity of the storm, the crew probably did not want to be dealing with a significant number of sea-sick guests.

It used to be possible to take a berth on a cargo ship to/from Liverpool from/to Halifax. The modern equivalent is a ride on a container ship [1]. They will still avoid really bad storms but you are more likely to see some seas around autumn.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/news/french-freig...

I did a short container trip and it was great. We did get to see the engine too! As with any ship: Bring lots of books.

Thanks for commenting. I was looking at one of the European multi-port trips myself.

I did a feeder-ship from Rotterdam. While it was interesting to see the logistics and tight schedules, next time I would skip a run and stay at the destination for more than the day it took them to exchange containers.

I am the opposite. I love to cruise, my wife and I have been on 23, many for long duration.

I like to write and getting coffee at 5am, taking a walk around the ship (outside weather permitting), and then a couple of hours working on a book project in the ship library is a great way to start the day and sets me up for exploring a new port later in the day or reading a good book and enjoying the ocean if it is a sea day. Then at night a fine dinner and a good show. A nice life, and it doesn’t have to be all idle time.

If you enjoy it, that's fine for you.

Another aspect I didn't enjoy was being a "guest", which means being treated like a retarded person. It's not the crew's fault, they have to do that because they get a lot of guests that sue when the guests do something stupid. But I don't really care for it.

> very predictably at about 10 days I'm itching to go home and get back to work.

You don't have to be idle while you're traveling. I always spend a few hours "working" when I travel. I find it too tiring to be out all day anyway.

I've tried. It doesn't work too well. I'm too used to my big monitor at home, and my build/test farm.

The monitor, okay, but can’t you access your build/test farm remotely?

I could, but that means setting up my home LAN for remote access, which comes with all sorts of constantly changing security issues I don't want to spend time on.

Internet is typically spotty, slow, and expensive on cruises. May be an opportunity for improvement.

Sightseeing is nice, but what gets me excited is learning new skills while traveling. Culinary classes, language lessons, local skilled crafts/activities. I never get bored learning new things.