1. Can someone sit at a computer and just "look around" periodically?
Yes — and your design makes this unusually easy. At 0.5–1 knot you are functionally near-stationary, so you pose almost no collision risk to anyone. The realistic hazards are:
- Being run down by a fast vessel that doesn't see you (the dominant risk, mostly at night).
- Drifting/settling into traffic — shipping lanes, TSS schemes, approach corridors to ports.
- Gear/weather surprises — a mixer failing, a cable chafing, a squall line.
The legal standard is COLREGS Rule 5: every vessel must maintain a proper look-out “by sight and hearing as well as by all available means appropriate in the prevailing circumstances.” It is an outcome-based rule — it cares whether a competent watch was actually kept, not whether someone stood in a cockpit. Sitting at an inside workstation with alarms, cameras, and periodic visual scans is a legitimate watch arrangement for a vessel with your risk profile, and slow passagemakers have operated this way for decades.
A workable routine
- Radar with a guard zone alarm and AIS with CPA/TCPA alarms, both audible inside the living area.
- A camera or two on deck (a thermal/imaging camera with motion detection is excellent at night).
- VHF kept on Channel 16 with DSC alerts enabled.
- A deliberate eyes-on-the-horizon scan every 10–15 minutes in daylight/light traffic; more often at night or near lanes.
- A simple written watch/log routine. If there is ever an incident, documentation of a consistent, sensible watch system is worth a great deal.
2. AI "night watch" (radar + AIS + vision): safe and legal in 2–3 years?
Technically: everything you described already works today — as an alarm generator. Modern radar/plotter combos track targets, AIS gives CPA/TCPA, and machine-vision cameras can classify targets and trigger alerts. What AI cannot yet do reliably is the full seamanship loop: assess risk, decide on action, maneuver, and communicate. You don't need it to — at 1 knot your "action" is almost always "wake a human."
Legally:
- No regulation currently prohibits AI-assisted look-out. Rule 5 says "all available means," and courts have increasingly accepted electronics as part of a proper watch — but case law consistently expects a human in the loop.
- The IMO is finalizing a MASS Code (Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships) — a voluntary code expected around 2025–2026, with mandatory rules later in the decade. This will gradually create explicit legal space for reduced or remote manning.
- Your governing law is your flag state's. Enforcement attention on a slow private platform is minimal; the practical gatekeepers are insurance and liability, not patrols.
3. A month of food: how much does it weigh and cost?
| Scenario | Weight / month (family of 4) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| All-in provisioning (typical offshore cruiser planning figure) | 400–550 lb (180–250 kg) |
~1.5–2 kg per person per day including packaging, fresh food, and some waste. |
| Your case: fish protein + made water supplied | 200–250 lb (90–115 kg) |
Dry and semi-dry goods only: ~1.5–2 lb per person per day. This is the number that matters for your storage math. |
Cost: USDA reference food plans for a family of four (two adults, two young children) run roughly $1,000–$1,600/month (2024–25 figures, depending on plan tier). Buying staples in bulk (25–50 lb bags of rice, flour, beans, oats) and leaning on your own fish, bread, and sprouts realistically puts you at $700–$1,200/month — plus whatever shipping to the seastead costs, which may exceed the food itself.
4. Is there real science on getting tired of repetitive food?
Yes — quite a lot of it. The key findings:
- Sensory-specific satiety (Rolls et al., 1981 onward): within a meal, the food you're eating becomes progressively less pleasant than other foods. This drives the "last bites are a chore" effect and is why variety at a single meal increases total intake.
- The monotony effect: across days and weeks, repeated exposure reduces liking and reduced intake follows. Military ration research (US Army Natick labs) shows soldiers eating the same MRE menus for weeks eat measurably less and waste more; variety restores intake. NASA documents the same "menu fatigue" in astronauts.
- Not all foods fatigue equally. Bland staples — rice, bread, potatoes, oats — resist monotony remarkably well (people worldwide eat them daily for life). Protein dishes fatigue fastest; strongly flavored, complex foods bore sooner than simple ones. Condiments and sauces are powerful anti-fatigue tools precisely because they vary the flavor of an identical base.
- Anticipation matters. Knowing you can never have anything else makes a food tiresome faster than the same food eaten by choice. A visible stash of alternatives protects morale even if rarely opened.
5. What long-term cruising families actually learn about food
Families who live aboard for years converge on a consistent playbook:
- Stock familiar favorites. Comfort foods have outsized morale value at sea. Don't fill the locker with "efficient" food nobody loves.
- Rotate a 2–4 week menu cycle loosely, not rigidly. Enough structure to guarantee variety, enough slack to cook what you feel like.
- Schedule non-fish protein nights — beans, eggs, cheese, lentils, canned chicken — 2–3 times a week even when fish is abundant. This is the single best anti-burnout measure.
- Bread maker and sprouter: absolutely. Fresh-smelling bread and live greens are the two highest morale-per-cubic-inch items aboard. Yogurt from powdered milk is a close third.
- Eggs keep far longer than people think — months if unwashed (or oiled/coated) and stored cool. Hard cheeses (waxed or vacuum-packed) keep for months too.
- Cabbage, carrots, onions, citrus, and hard squash last weeks; plan fresh produce for the first 2–3 weeks after resupply, then canned/frozen/sprouted.
- The spice and sauce locker is morale-critical. Hot sauce, soy sauce, curry paste, salsa, vinegar, good coffee. Cheap insurance against boredom.
- Maintain a sealed "bad week" stash of treats — chocolate, cookies, chips — that is off-limits except when it's really needed.
- Kids: involve them in fishing and cooking; mild white fish as fish cakes, tacos, or chowder goes over far better than "a fillet"; hide vegetables in sauces.
- One-pot meals win. Simple galley, easy cleanup, fewer dishes broken in swell.
6. So how bad is eating fish every day, really?
Honest answer: quite sustainable, with two caveats.
- Nutritionally, daily fish is excellent — complete protein, omega-3s, vitamin D, B12, iodine, selenium. Eating small fish whole (softened bones) even solves your calcium problem. The gaps you must actively manage are vitamin C, fiber, and dietary variety — which sprouts, canned tomatoes/fruit, legumes, and a multivitamin cover.
- Psychologically, expect fish burnout cycles even with good technique — usually around weeks 3–6 and again around month 4–5. Families who thrive treat fish as one protein among several rather than the default. Your egg-and-cheeseburger observation is telling: those foods pair novelty (fat, browning, umami) with ritual. Recreate that with fish — blackened fish sandwiches, fish burgers, smoked fish — and rotate in bean/egg/cheese dinners.
Your fish-sandwich-with-coleslaw instinct is exactly right: a format change (sandwich, patty, taco, curry, chowder, ceviche) resets fatigue far better than a different seasoning on the same fillet-and-rice plate. A bread maker multiplies your fish formats enormously.
7. The 2,500 lb pantry: how many months for a family of 4?
Assumptions: unlimited fish (varied juveniles in the freezer) + unlimited made water. Consumption of everything else: ~6–8 lb/day for two adults and two young children (~1.5–2 lb/person/day).
| Category | Weight (lb) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Grains: rice, flour, pasta, oats, cornmeal | 800 | Bulk backbone; buy in 25–50 lb bags, repack in Mylar with oxygen absorbers. |
| Legumes: beans, lentils, split peas, chickpeas | 300 | Your main non-fish protein nights. |
| Oils & fats: olive, coconut oil, ghee | 160 | Calorie-dense; coconut oil keeps best in tropics. |
| Dairy & eggs: milk powder, hard cheese, egg powder | 240 | Cheeseburger capability is a morale asset. |
| Canned fruit, vegetables, tomatoes | 480 | Vitamin C insurance + meal variety. |
| Sugar, honey, jam | 130 | Baking, preserving, morale. |
| Salt, spices, condiments, sauces | 90 | The anti-fatigue arsenal. Do not economize here. |
| Coffee, tea, cocoa | 45 | Non-negotiable. |
| Snacks & treats | 130 | Includes the sealed "bad week" reserve. |
| Baking & misc: yeast, baking powder, vinegar | 85 | Feeds the bread maker. |
| Sprouting seeds (alfalfa, broccoli, mung, radish) | 25 | ~1 lb seed → several lb of fresh greens; your vitamin-C garden. |
| Multivitamins & supplements (incl. vitamin D) | 15 | Cheap insurance for growing kids. |
| Total | 2,500 |
Show the duration math
This inventory represents roughly 3.5–3.8 million kcal. A family of two adults and two young children needs ~7,500–8,500 kcal/day, partly offset by fish. On paper that's 13–15 months; after realistic losses (appetite creep as kids grow, spoilage, weevils, variety-driven waste) plan on 10–12 months of comfortable eating, stretching toward 14 months with disciplined rationing.
Storage practices that make or break the plan
- Repack grains/legumes into Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers inside buckets — kills weevil eggs and blocks humidity.
- Store in the coolest, driest space available; rotate FIFO; inspect quarterly.
- Keep a running "eat me first" shelf of opened items.
- Children's portions grow — recalculate yearly.
8. Mercury: your instinct is correct
Methylmercury biomagnifies: it builds up with both age and trophic level. So small + young + short-lived + open-ocean is the winning formula — which is exactly what a mid-ocean FAD produces. Typical values (approximate, FDA/industry data):
| Fish | Typical Hg (ppm) | Guidance for daily-ish eating |
|---|---|---|
| Flying fish, small mackerel/scad, baitfish-class | <0.05 | Eat freely. |
| Skipjack tuna (the "light" canned tuna) | ~0.1 | Frequent OK. |
| Juvenile mahi-mahi (<15–20 lb) | ~0.1–0.2 | Your flagship FAD fish — fast-growing, short-lived, low accumulation. Good default. |
| Juvenile yellowfin / small tuna | 0.1–0.25 | Rotate; cap size. |
| Wahoo | ~0.2–0.4 | Occasional, not staple. |
| Large tuna (bigeye/bluefin, >100 lb) | 0.3–1.0+ | Rare treat only. |
| King mackerel, shark, swordfish, tilefish | High | Avoid. |
| Barracuda | High | Avoid — mercury and ciguatera (see below). |
Illustrative daily-intake arithmetic
EPA's reference dose (RfD) for methylmercury is 0.1 µg per kg body weight per day. Eating ~170 g (6 oz) daily of fish averaging 0.12 ppm delivers ~20 µg/day — about 0.3 µg/kg/day for a 70 kg adult. That sits above the conservative RfD but below levels associated with observable effects (~0.5–1 µg/kg/day). Translation: healthy adults can run this for long stretches, but the smart move is to average it down & mdash; 1–2 non-fish dinner days per week roughly halves your lifetime average, and choosing sub-0.1 ppm species whenever possible keeps you near the RfD even at 7 dinners a week. Children's smaller portions keep their per-kg dose similar; be more conservative during any pregnancy or nursing.
Practical rules
- Default to juniors: mahi under ~15–20 lb, tuna under ~20–30 lb. Release the big predators.
- Rotate species — don't make any single species more than ~half your fish dinners.
- 1–2 non-fish dinners/week (your legume/egg/cheese nights) doubles as mercury management.
- Note: fish is rich in selenium, which binds mercury and likely offsets part of the risk — a helpful buffer, not a license.
9. Ciguatera: mostly a reef problem — and your FAD location is your protection
You've got the mechanism right: Gambierdiscus dinoflagellates grow on dead coral and macroalgae in warm reef areas; herbivorous reef fish eat them; the toxins (ciguatoxins) concentrate up the reef food web. Key facts:
- Cooking, freezing, drying, salting — nothing destroys it. Avoidance is the only tool.
- Geography dominates risk. High-risk: Caribbean, Bahamas, tropical West Atlantic, South Pacific islands, parts of the Indian Ocean — and the range is creeping poleward (Gulf of Mexico, Canaries, eastern Mediterranean). A deep-water FAD tens of miles from any reef sits in a fundamentally low-risk zone.
- Species risk ranking: worst are barracuda, moray eel, amberjack, large grouper, kingfish, and some snappers — reef-associated predators. True open-ocean pelagics (mahi, tuna, wahoo, billfish) are rarely implicated because they don't feed on the reef food web.
- Your "reef-visitor" scenario is real but manageable: a large pelagic that feeds along island slopes can pick up toxin (occasional Pacific island cases involve near-shore-caught mahi). The defense is exactly what you proposed: eat small, blue-water-caught fish from your offshore FAD, and simply don't eat reef fish or anything big caught near coral.
- Symptoms (hours to days after eating): GI upset, then the characteristic neurological phase — numbness/tingling, itching, and hot-feels-cold temperature reversal. Most recover in weeks; a minority have lingering symptoms. There is no antidote; treatment is supportive.
10. Can you buy a machine or test strips for mercury / ciguatoxin?
Short answer: not really — not cheap, not easy, not yet. Plan around behavior rules, with optional lab verification.
Mercury
- No consumer test strip or dipstick accurately measures mercury in fish flesh at the ppm/ppb levels that matter. Anything marketed cheaply for this is not trustworthy.
- Lab testing (ICP-MS) costs roughly $30–$80 per sample with days-to-weeks turnaround. Very practical option: freeze a labeled composite sample of each species/size class you eat, and mail a quarterly batch ashore for screening. Within a year you'd have a real dataset for your FAD's fish instead of generic tables.
- Portable direct-mercury analyzers (DMA-class instruments, e.g. NIC/Milestone style) exist and give results in minutes — but cost roughly $15,000–$30,000. Plausible for a fleet or community seastead, overkill for one household.
Ciguatoxin
- A field kit (Cigua-Check, a membrane immunobead assay, ~$20–30/test) was sold for years; sensitivity/specificity were mediocre and availability has been spotty or discontinued — verify current status before relying on it. Do not build your safety plan around it.
- Definitive testing is LC-MS/MS at a handful of specialized labs — expensive and slow.
- No validated dipstick exists. Several biosensor projects are in development and the next few years may improve this — but as of now, geography + species + size rules remain the real test.