And then I gave this talk wearing a wizard hat, it was made from a Doritos bag. I had gotten into node.js very early on and then I managed to get invited to speak at a conference. So the current boat I’ve had like four years now, previous to that I spent a couple years just traveling constantly. So how long you been doing this? And what did you do before you were living on a sailboat? I believe you were working a regular job.ĭominic: I haven’t worked a regular job for a long time. Sebastien: It’s quite literally remote work. So one solar panel that’s enough to run it most of the time and I’m like doing remote work. So now there’s pretty widespread 3G internet and solar panels are much cheaper. It was like even a small distance was a big adventure and the weather in New Zealand has been described as quite moody so you can still have terrifying adventures, you know, it’s sort of relative to the scale of the boat and stuff like this, the new boat is a bit better and I’m in a part of the country that has much more milder weather and it’s like all that other things have changed since then. just like a coastal area around New Zealand, but this was the sort of boat I could afford when I was 21. Sebastien: So are you sort of in New Zealand territory or New Zealand waters? Or are you out internationally?ĭominic: Yeah I’m not even really sailing that far. You have to understand how everything works, what the risks are, take actions and decisions and stuff and be confident about what decisions you make. I’m sure that this sort of was essential in like leading me down the path where I created Scuttlebutt so things like living on a sailboat you have a lot of autonomy and you also find yourself in a lot of like near death experiences, so you have to be like, you know, you have to understand, it’s very much like a hacker mindset. When I first decided to live on a boat I hadn’t even seen a sailboat up close. Actually just for context, you were introduced to us by another New Zealander and friend of the podcast and lover of boats and things that float, and so yeah, tell us a bit about your background and how you how you got this far.ĭominic: Right, well I ended up on a boat because I just decided I didn’t want to pay rent it just started to seem like paying rent was like a massive scam and I realized one day I could live on a boat and instead of paying rent I could buy a boat and then after a few years I paid for the boat and then turns out I like sailing as well. So why don’t you tell us a bit about your background and how you got to live on a sailboat. I don’t know if you even want to call it a social network, but it’s a way to talk to people who matter to you and others and Dominic is usually based in New Zealand or at least on the coast of New Zealand as he lives on a sailboat, we’ll get a bit into that in the episode but for the moment, he’s in Berlin. Sebastien Couture: Hi, so we’re here with Dominic Tarr, Dominic started Secure Scuttlebutt, which is a very unique type of social network.

Scuttlebutt corner