There’s something about February on the Great Lakes that makes a person reflective. Maybe it’s the -20°C wind that slices through your jacket like it’s auditioning for a horror movie. Maybe it’s the fact that my boat — my proud, noble vessel — is currently wrapped up on the trailer like a giant fiberglass burrito. Or maybe it’s because my onboard solar camera is the only thing still “boating” right now, faithfully sending me photos of absolutely nothing happening.
Every few days I check the feed to make sure no raccoons have moved in and started a poker league. So far, so good. The boat remains critter‑free, motionless, and deeply asleep. Honestly, I envy it.
But while the boat hibernates, I’ve been busy. Since the end of 2024, I’ve been writing blog posts about my ongoing escapades as a new boat owner — and somehow, people keep reading them. I’ve shared tales of pump‑out runs that felt like expeditions, fishing trips that turned into philosophical discussions with seagulls, and of course, the infamous “three‑hour tour” that did not end with me stranded on a tropical island with a movie star and a professor. (Still disappointed.)
This winter, though, I decided to take things up a notch. I announced my grand vision: a fully digital boat, powered by a Raspberry Pi, structured like a modern operating system, and assisted by an AI mate named Helm. Think of it as a Tesla, but instead of self‑driving, it politely reminds you that you forgot to close the seacock.
And because I apparently enjoy suffering, I decided to build the whole thing myself.
Well… myself and ChatGPT.
A Life Lesson in AI Employment
Let me tell you: working with AI has been a life lesson. If ChatGPT were a real employee, I would have fired it, rehired it, sent it for retraining, fired it again, and then given it a performance bonus for accidentally doing something brilliant.
It’s like working with a very enthusiastic intern who insists they know exactly what you want — even when they absolutely do not. I learned quickly that every instruction must be explicit. Painfully explicit. “Paint‑by‑numbers for robots” explicit.
And short‑term memory? Forget it. Literally. If I don’t remind it what we were doing, it will happily reinvent the entire project from scratch and congratulate itself for the innovation.
But here’s the twist:
It also gave me some of the best architectural advice I’ve ever received.
Good requirements in, good results out.
Bad requirements in, chaos out.
It’s basically software engineering karma.
The Project That Got Real
Somewhere between the frustration and the breakthroughs, something surprising happened: the project became real. I now have:
- A four‑tier architecture
- A lightweight, container‑friendly system
- A predictable boot and discovery process
- A clean API layer
- Voice control hooks
- A web dashboard
- And a Raspberry Pi that’s doing more work than some marinas
- List
It’s no longer a “fun idea.”
It’s a prototype.
A real one.
One I’ll be sharing with the open‑source community in the coming months.
ChatGPT even bullied me into setting up a GitHub account and documenting everything. Honestly, good for it. Someone had to keep me honest.
So What’s Next?
Now I wait for the ice to melt and the mercury to rise. I’ll keep checking the solar camera to make sure the boat hasn’t been commandeered by squirrels. I’ll keep refining the software. And when the season finally arrives, I’ll launch a boat that’s smarter than I am — which, frankly, is the dream.
Until then, I’ll keep writing, keep building, and keep laughing at the absurdity of it all. Because if boating has taught me anything, it’s this:
Adventure doesn’t stop when the lake freezes.
It just moves indoors and starts writing code.