152: REFLECTION, ADVICE, NEXT STEPS - OUR ONE YEAR of Sailing & Boat Ownership

Hey sweetie, it's been a year. Can you believe it? It has been a year that we have been on the boat. I can't believe it. There she is. This is the moment we've all been waiting for. This is the first time we've seen Blown Away. We're just blown, well, you knew that was coming. Welcome to our boat. I can act like we know what we're doing, but you'd find it out anyway, so I'm just We are on a boat and we have no idea about anything. We've had every bit of pride stripped from us. We are taking the dinghy for the first time to go to the grocery store. Oh my goodness. Some guy tied us up, thank God, because we still don't know how to tie our knots. Today was our first full day of sailing lessons. Captain Ben is the best, isn't he? We're getting a really good introduction. Yeah. Just like any big day, you know, you have to give yourself a little grace. How many days do we have in this? Fourteen. Where are we, sweetie? At the P-10. Official first voyage, real voyage. Bye, Saint Lucia. The first sunset. Every day we have a rainbow of some sort. We're going to laugh. We're not laughing. Look at this. Oh no. Oh, we're going to have to edit again. We've got a huge problem right here. Oh, we're back in the freaking rocks. The beast had no teeth. The councils are on the move. That's what I do. The Bahamas, this is our first swim. If it's like this, I'd never leave it. I think what I love about the parasailor most is that the ride is so smooth. Welcome to Beaufort, North Carolina. Oh, yeah. We left this morning. It was perfectly clear. Get on my butt. I remember back when we first got on the boat, how much I was going to appreciate just a year from that point. Yeah. And how much we would have learned and how we would have gotten all the tough stuff out of the way and the adventures. And just I was really looking forward to a year from when we began back then. And now we're here. Yeah. And I would not go back for anything. Why is that? It's definitely been the hardest, most challenging year of my life. Most rewarding as well. But wow, I would not want to do that again. At least not the way we did it. Listen, the boat's still floating. The boat's in really good shape now. It is. We've broken a lot of stuff, but we haven't really hurt ourselves physically. We thought you might be interested in hearing from us about a few things now that we are celebrating our one year anniversary on the boat. And that is a video on just celebrating and reflecting and providing some advice to those of you who may be following in our footsteps, as well as where we're planning to go next. So that's kind of this video. And then we thought it would be really interesting to give you our perspective on would we buy a charter boat again, given what we've experienced in the past year. Yeah, because we've had a whole year's worth of experience of just finding all the shoddy repairs. And, you know, we had rosy glasses going into buying this. But that's next video. But yeah, next video. So that's going to be a good one. You don't want to miss that. Yep. And then we'd also like to do one or two videos on the financial piece. So what we paid to upgrade the boat to where we wanted it. And then what are our monthly expenses in being on a boat? Guys, we love doing all this. I think the reason why we do it is because of our subscribers. Definitely. And we're not even making any money off of AdSense. We do this for you guys. We do this so that we can get to know you guys and meet you down the road and help you realize your dream. We're hoping that you guys will learn from our mistakes, learn from the things that we're doing well. So really, if you appreciate those things, please hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Share these videos. Hit the like button. We're kicking off a new season and we're aware. In the Abaco. At a dock in Abaco boatyard. Specifically, we're stuck here because our windlass exploded. So it sheared that bolt and that bolt and that bolt. So it did have four bolts in. Okay. And it's requiring a little more expertise than what we're used to. But we're learning. We're being patient. It's beautiful here. So let's talk about some things that we learned this year. Like we are so glad we did not buy a bigger boat than a 44. That's for sure. Because bigger boats take more money. And when you first make your purchase, you just started spending money. And I recommend you find that boat that you like. And you kind of back off a size. I think it's better if you get smarter in how you organize and how you edit. Not just take everything. Take the things that are that are important to you. And you really won't know that until you've used the boat for a while. And you're dialing your boat in. Which is what we're doing. Spare parts. Repairs. How we're using the boat to better prepare us for what's to come. You know when we were in China trying to get insurance and really discouraged. We actually received a WhatsApp call from Zhaolin Zetar. That was the coolest thing ever. Yep. And he said you can teach a monkey how to sail. And you guys have really encouraged us. And neither of us really had sailing experience. And certainly not recently. And not on any live aboard type of boat. He was right. You can teach a monkey how to sail. We've learned how to sail our parasail. We've learned how to sail the main and the jib. That's our sail inventory at this point. And we feel really comfortable with all of them. And especially since we've just changed out our reefing lines to eight millimeters. Boy that was a great move babe. Big big change in getting that main up. It's much less of a hassle. So we did learn how to sail. We learned all of the systems that are required for a boat. Which is like a mini city that floats. Yep. Well we've become plumbers. We've learned. We've become electricians. Electricians. But I'm telling you that is the toughest one for us. We're getting better. But that's the slowest one of all of them. We just got to keep at it. Yeah. We're learning how to use caulk and adhesive. That's a really big deal. I think that and duct tape are the biggest things for a boat. You got to keep that water out. You got to keep things stuck together. And you know the 3M, 4,000, 4,200, 5,200. All these things are UV, not UV, SikaFlex, LifeSeal. All these things are important. I'm learning how to work with WES systems. Fiberglass, epoxy, to do bondings. So that's been something new. Satellite system. We've learned how to use Iridium Go, Garmin inReach. How to communicate with it, to do tracking, calling. inReach is pretty simple. But the Iridium Go, you have to install this thing to your boat if you want really good reception. We put in a security system. The solar is phenomenal in the electrical system. Lithium amp hours that we have. It's just, I can't imagine living on a boat with propane and weak lead acid batteries. We've also learned weather to constantly be checking the weather and the wind to ensure that especially where we are now, we're in the right place and we're protected. That's definitely a new skill. Never thought about that. We've also learned weather or not to do something. And putting Chris Parker on speed dial is always a good way. You really need to learn weather and PredictWind is a powerful tool. We use that a lot. And then there's Windy. There's a few of them out there and it's good not to depend on any one given source. But it's a powerful tool that they didn't have that like back in the 70s and the 80s. Well, we're really grateful for people who helped us along this year too, specifically. And please forgive us if we leave out any names because there's so many of you. That'd be a whole video unto itself. Well, cruisers in general have been incredibly helpful and we're thankful for that. Three of our friends that came on board, we're really grateful for. First was Steve who came on and did, I don't know, 700 nautical miles with us. Man, he went a long way from Puerto Rico all the way up the Bahamas. And then Jeff came on board when Steve got off and spent a month with us going all the way up the Bahama chain to West End. And then lastly, Alex, who just joined us in Deltaville, Virginia, and came on this passage to the Bahamas. It was a four and a half day passage and he has been a godsend. And I've never met so many super nice, knowledgeable people in my life that are just falling all over themselves to help you. And basically, that's what it is. So we thank all of you, the cruising community out there. Yeah, that's been probably the best thing about cruising this year is the community. So we definitely have some advice for people who are following in our footsteps and we wanted to share some things that if we were to do this over again... Would we do it the same way? Ignorance is bliss going into something. And I think we were naive and just a bit crazy, but we did it. At times, I thought my head was going to explode. Just all the multitasking, the things we had to do the boat and to get our head around. And just even concepts of modifications and that type of thing. We couldn't understand until months afterwards, you know, building up a base of knowledge, which is really required before you can start even conceptualizing what people are talking to you about. And I think if we would have eased into it more, that would have been a whole lot better. People have heard our story and just cannot believe that we've done what we've done in this short amount of time. But I would recommend, I think, looking back, a more gradual approach. And how... What form would that take, sweetie? I think if you could volunteer as crew for a Salty Dog Rally, you can easily find people who are moving their boat and say, hey, I'll come on and do crew for you for free and just to gain the experience. And it's really a fantastic opportunity to learn and slowly become adept at sailing and the experience that you have on the water. Building overnight passage experience is really important as well. And you're not going to get that chartering a boat because they typically will ban any night passages for charter. So if you can crew, that's going to just be a huge benefit. I think another piece of advice I would give is to take some classes. Take classes on mechanics and electricity and plumbing and basic, I guess, DIY projects, if that's something that you're not skilled in. And neither of us really had those skills. So we had to build that up from scratch. I don't know. You can watch stuff on YouTube. I think getting some experience first and figuring out what you need to know and learning from people that are working on your boat and helping you. Those are kind of the best classes that I've learned from. And it's good to have some books to reference books on hand. I think something that's really important to understand, too, is setting your expectations before you get into this. A frustration level can be very high because you experience some really difficult challenges when you are on a boat, whether you're experienced or you're a novice, you're going to experience those things. We have dragged anchor. We've hit sandbars. We have had our anchor free fall. We have dealt with the frustration of trying to drop anchor in only coral and how that was going to hold the boat. We lost our windlass two days ago. We've had engine issues. We've hit docks. We've been up all night dodging other boats or dodging or just trying to keep our boat from slamming against docks. So if you're not willing to be up to a challenge and have a growth mindset, I just wouldn't get into boating at all because you have to learn these new skills. Yeah. Plus, when things happen like now in the Bahamas, you're usually a long way away from help and parts. So you need to be prepared to modify some things. And you need to be prepared to be a little humbled. I think another key piece is limiting boat work to nine to five, like a job and Monday to Friday. Because if you do boat work around the clock, Devin Fraser told us about that, you definitely burn out. I think there are days when we're really good about balance. And then other days where, you know, sometimes you just got to put in the hours. Some exceptions to that would be like if you've hauled out and you're on the hard and you're spending a lot of money each night and you need to get through it, then it's just like, you know, exam week and you just got to get through it. Yeah. But I think there are some awesome things about sailing that we've experienced in the past year that we never would have if we hadn't tried this adventure. Like interaction with animal life, whales and dolphins and sharks and being able to see beautiful sea life. Just seeing places that you normally wouldn't go like Luberon and the Dominican Republic and a lot of the places here in the Bahamas are very remote and you can't see them by anything. Unless you're on a boat. And then going up and down the east coast, I think that's one of the best things that we could have done. You remember we were dreading that? Yes. And think of all the friends that we've reunited along the way. That has been incredible. We've also seen some incredible places from the water. Like sailing into New York City was just epic, truly epic. Getting to go back to my hometown by water. It was such a different perspective. I mean it was easy. It's just like another world when you're coming in. The whole Long Island Sound and Cuttyhunk and Martha's Fingers, Newport and Montauk and Nantucket. Just really quaint beautiful places. The weather's perfect that time of year. Yeah, it was definitely fantastic. On the whole, I'm really amazed at all that we have accomplished. All the big passages we've made. The last one being our longest yet, four and a half days on the water. We've done well and I'm really proud of us. We couldn't have done this without you all. We couldn't have gotten through this year without your encouragement and your constant love and generosity. We're just so grateful for that and we have made it and we're looking forward to this next season here in the Bahamas. And then who knows what's next? We've talked about Panama. We've talked about Guatemala and Belize. And we've also talked about getting through the canal and crossing over to French Polynesia. So we don't know yet what's to come, but we are prepared to just continue to enjoy sailing and keep growing and learning. We're so thankful. Yeah, we're grateful. Grateful for this year and for all that we've learned and experienced. So on to year two.