-Mail. Not an easy one. Our wonderful niece Moonie agreed to let us forward our mail to her. We have signed up for USPS Informed Delivery so we know what is coming and can have her open the letter if need be. We just had her ship all of what she had to Annapolis since we were in a marina for a week. We never received that much mail to begin with. There exist mail services that do the exact same thing, so if Moonie becomes sick of playing postmistress we can opt for one of those.
-Internet. So far not an issue to date. We’ve mostly been in range of a Verizon cell signal so can use our phones as a hot spot or utilize our Verizon MiFi. Does become a challenge when going offshore and one needs to look up weather. Our charting systems, AquaMap and Navionics store their info on our devices. Will need something different when in the Bahamas. Options exist.
-Safety. D & I ALWAYS wear life jackets while in the cockpit and on deck. It was our decision that’s just how it was going to be. I’d say 75%+ of other boaters do not. Their choice. When doing long passages or overnites and doing watches we: a) wear our tethers and clip in to the cockpit b)have the jacklines deployed (webbing straps run down each side of the deck) to which one attaches themselves when going up on deck c) have a rule that NO ONE goes up on deck unless another person is present d) have our liferaft on deck e)have on our person strobe lights, PLB’s(personal locator beacons, Rita Ann I believe you’d get a call on that) headlamps and leatherman type tools; obviously some more applicable for night travel.
-Personal hygeine. Really?!? When one anchors for extended periods, it can get dicey. We have a shower in the boat which we do use but needs to be dried out after use (lazy). We have a shower off the back of the boat but flashing the next anchored boats is just not cool (shower in swimsuits). Both of those options require hot water produced by either the engine or the generator. We also have a 5 gallon solar shower ‘bag’ that heats via the sun which we hang off the back of the boat to use. We used all of the above and designed a ‘shower curtain’ for the back of the boat which helps. Still one does not shower every day (or more). I swore we could’ve started some dreadlocks there for awhile.