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Saturday, September 30, 2017

Near and Medium Term Plans



It's been about a week, and I'm far from better. However, I am on the mend. Sadly, my lovely wife just came down with whatever it is I've got. She's been working herself pretty hard lately and it caught up to her.

I hope to get to my water well project in a few days. Amazon has some pretty inexpensive endoscopes so I went ahead and ordered a 10 meter one. That should allow me to find the problem. The buried line can be checked from both ends. There will only be about 6 feet that I won't be able to see. If the problem doesn't show up in the scope, it's in the 6 foot section I can't reach. Between the scope and a drum auger, any blockage should be able to be cleared up. The problem could be a leak, but the scope should find that. If the scope saves me from digging up 66 feet of line, that's a good thing.

Hopefully I can sort out the water situation soon. The temporary surface line is working out, but eventually freezing temps will arrive.

With luck, the weather will hold long enough to get some projects done on the van and sailboat. We've pushed out travel plans off until after New Years. That will give more time for places like the Florida Keys to recover. They are a tourist area and if I can spend some time and money down there that will help out a bit.

Some people have suggested that I film my trips and put up a You Tube channel. There are people making a good income from posting sailing adventures. However, there's only a few making real money at it. After doing some research I figured out a ballpark estimate of what the top 10 sailing vlogs make. The top end is somewhere around $300,000. That includes money from You Tube, Patreon, endorsements, sponsorship and other things. By the time you get to number 10 on the list, the income has already dropped to about $30,000. While that's nothing to sneeze at, your budget gets blown if you need a new sail or major engine repair.

Make no mistake about it, filming sailing in paradise is a job. There's an investment in cameras, audio gear, computers for editing, software and other odds and ends. Putting out a weekly video takes a lot of time and effort. Then you have to search around to find a high speed connection to upload the video. Instead of seeing the sights, you are spending 12 hours at a wifi hotspot trying upload on a dodgy signal.

You also need to look good on camera. Being young, fit, and having bikini clad young ladies on the boat is a huge plus. It's not absolute necessary, but sex sells.

Being lazy, I'm going to continue operate on a shoestring budget on old and small boats. I will post photos and do my best to keep the blog up to date. Text and a few photos are not nearly as data intensive as video.

That being said, I did buy a well rated cheap knockoff of a gopro camera. There may be the occasional video clip included. The learning curve is steep as I've never done much filming of any sort before.

So if all goes well, the fall projects will wrap up in the next couple weeks. Then we'll do the final prep for winter and spring travel.

-Sixbears

6 comments:

  1. Uploading on the road can be a real pain, frustration can set in and nearly want to make you give up. vlogs must be even more frustrating. I try and reduce my photos to 300 to 400kb instead of 1.5mb. That helps considerably! I don't do vlogs, but I'm thinking of it!

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    1. I'm shopping around for a new hotspot to replace the AT&T one that was lost in the shipwreck. Hotspots seem to have more punch than tethering off a cell phone. Not a bad solution for the US, but once out of the country, it's whole different story.

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  2. I like your pictures. When on this last trip I let my sister take all the pictures so I could enjoy the scenery without worrying about whether or not I got a good shot. When you're too busy focusing, etc. you can't really take in and enjoy what you're trying to focus on.

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    1. Thanks Momlady. I'd take more if I wasn't too busy enjoying the view. Filming for a vlog would take a lot of the joy out of travel.

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  3. I generally prefer the written word anyway, but then I'm strange. Hope you and the missus get well quickly.

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    1. Thanks Gorges. I actually felt good enough to drive to the mom and pop store in town for eggs and a loaf of bread. Then I was done in. However, that's an improvement.

      I read so fast that video seems like a slow way to get information. However, better to look at pretty things than read about them. :)

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