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.
The tablet does have an LTE modem, but in this case it’s getting internet from the boat (Teltonika RUTX11 modem)
I have a Raspberry Pi running Signal K on the computer. This transmits all boat sensor data (depth, wind, GPS, AIS targets, etc) to the tablet. On tablet I can then run a chartplotter app, for example Navionics, SeaPilot, OpenCPN, or my current option, Orca CoPilot.
Nexus 7 (FHD, the better model) was the best tablet I've had. I used it even as a phone replacement for a couple of years.
Now I'm using a Galaxy Tab Active 3 as a chartplotter on the boat. Also quite nice, but would be too slow for a "main device". Not to mention camera quality.
The previous year’s flagship is one option. Samsung’s S22 and S22+ both fit in this range, and even the S22 Ultra is not too far off. And those still have a few OS updates left. Pixel 6 Pro seems to sell for the same price as 7a in Germany.
This has been my strategy for the last two phones (Note 8 and Note 10) and it has worked great. Following this thread with interest as this is the year I’m due to upgrade.
This was my primary device for a couple of years. I didn’t have a phone at all. I could do everything I needed to do. Camera quality was of course terrible, but I had one of those Sony “lens cameras” paired with it, and that worked great.
I even sailed across the Atlantic with the Nexus 7 as my only media device (I packed a Kindle but it died a week in).
That is why I’m considering a foldable now. If only they weren’t so fragile…
I find around the 8” mark to be the perfect tablet size. However, not a lot of good options out there, especially for more high end hardware. If money is not an issue, a foldable might do it?
Seconding this recommendation. We’re using one as a chartplotter on our sailboat, and it works great.
The actual Atlantic crossing was 14 days