Code on the Water
by Tom Tripp
Here on Write on the Water, regular readers have met many folks who live aboard while managing their productive passion. In my own writing business I've been lucky enough to meet many of these people. I'd like to introduce a truly unique couple, who managed to develop and run an entire boating website mostly while living aboard their 53' DeFever trawler.
aCappella, a 53' RPH DeFever Trawler Owned by Jeff and Karen Siegel
Jeffrey and Karen Siegel are the owners of ActiveCaptain, a web-based interactive cruising guide – a label which utterly fails to describe the plethora of useful cruising information available on the website. While home base is a residence ashore in Castine, Maine, Jeff and Karen spend most of the year aboard aCappella, traveling up and down the East Coast, enjoying a nomadic existence while managing a business that requires them to write computer code, manage a sophisticated website, relationships with vendors, business partners and literally thousands of users and participants. They do all of this from their boat, principally via Internet connections in marinas and anchorages between Castine and Key West.
The Siegels are experts in electronic communication and have authored several freelance articles on choosing smartphones and other devices for use aboard the boat. Some of this has been driven by the requirement to enable mobile device use of the ActiveCaptain resources.
A note here for the cruisers among us — ActiveCaptain collects local knowledge from its (free registration) users, who also provide up-to-date info on fuel prices and marina experiences. The database is also being incorporated in the latest versions of navigation software from most major vendors, updated in real time whenever the nav software connects to the Internet. A recent enhancement allows users to store and share saved GPS routes.
They also blog about their domestic bliss aboard aCappella here. It's an entertaining blog written often from the perspective of the two canine travelers aboard, Dylan and Dyna. The Siegels share their own cruising stories on the blog, with good tips for tackling provisioning, storage and replenishment challenges.
There are a lot of ways to work and live on the water and while Karen and Jeff Siegel spend more time than most of the rest of us writing in the language of zeros and ones, they too write on the water.
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