bergie

The apps are getting better. Columba is quite promising, as is https://github.com/thatSFguy/reticulum-mobile-app

And of course the chat aspect is only one of the things you can do with Reticulum. I'm hosting my "own GitHub" vai rngit for instance.

We have a Meshtastic repeater (CLIENT_BASE) in our sailboat mast. We've gotten ~12NM range with that

I don't know how well it aligns with the syllabus (never been that interested in non-mandatory certs), but the book Coastal Turmoil is quite good. We had a nice full summer's cruise through Norway, Shetland, Hebrides, and the Irish Sea with that

The cost development of solar is just incredible. We almost doubled the solar capacity on our boat this summer for just couple hundred euros.

For the past year, all of our electricity has come from renewable sources (mostly solar, though we also have small wind and hydro generators on the boat that do contribute when conditions are right). And this includes things like satellite internet, refrigeration, and making all our domestic fresh water through desalination.

Yup, I think if you get some regatta people interested, it'll just happen.

Sweden did, once, though admittedly with quite long versions of butter knives

2016 Brexit referendum was quite a turning point.

There's a whole set of articles analysing this one: https://acoup.blog/category/collections/legion-and-phalanx/

The actual Atlantic crossing was 14 days

It's possible to crew for others. When we sailed across the Atlantic ten years ago (on a sail training ship), one of the people on board was for the first time on a sailboat.

There's plenty of ways to visit countries that won't involve flying. Some of those quite CO2 neutral.

We were there a couple of weeks ago. Seems different neighbourhoods had different flags. We elected not to fly a courtesy flag on our boat as all the alternatives were partisan one way or another.