126: FIRST 6 MONTHS OF OWNING A BOAT REFLECTION: Best & Worst of Sailing and Liveaboard Life so far

When are we putting the boat up for sale? I'm not having a good time. I want to go back living on land. I'm just not happy with moving around the beautiful places that are uninhabited and meeting just really interested people, okay? One of our most popular videos was the highs and lows of the first week. And so we thought at three months we could give you a highs and lows. And we tried to film it how many times? Six or seven. Six or seven times. And it just wasn't meant to be. I don't know, we could never do it. The sound was bad, the video was blurry. So we are now at six months and we have decided to use the GoPro to keep it simple. And we're here to give you the five best things about sailing and the five things that would make us want to pack it all in and sell the boat. Before we begin, we want to thank a few people. We want to thank our Patreons. That means that we have people who love us so much that they actually pay a little bit of money to support our monthly endeavors, our weekly endeavors of making videos. And so we want to say a big thank you to Michael and Muriel and Robert and Connie. Thank you. For being our Patreons. So thank you so much. You are filling our tanks. We appreciate all of our viewers, especially these two couples. And we're just honored and humbled just that people would think enough to do that. Well, we also want to thank a few other couples who have been so generous in different ways. They're not Patreons, but they have done really beautiful things for us. So Jan and Kelly, Jed and Angela, and Sarah and Greg. Thank you so much. A lot of you have been asking about our blown away shirts. And once we figure out how to get them online and sell them, we will let you know. We're glad that you're excited about our shirts and want to wear them. So thank you for being interested. So I'd like to say first and foremost, one of the hallmarks of this six month period has been we're very comfortable living at sea. Being water people, boat people. The reason for that is because we've learned a lot of skills. We've been able to practice those skills. We've had multiple experiences to develop confidence. And I think what that's helped us do is it's reduced the amount of fear, which is really a joy killer. But it's a real feeling. And we don't fear things like we used to. I love living on the water so much that I really wouldn't want to go back to living on land. And the fact that we've never, except for when we're at life or key, had to unpack. But just staying with our boat and having our home with us wherever we go, I'm still trying to get used to that. I mean, that's just a simply amazing thing about cruising. Yeah, we've definitely improved our ability to troubleshoot, which is helpful. I think we're less panicked about something that goes wrong because something goes wrong all the time. And our skills are improving, which is really important. I think at six months we have really gotten to the point where we love what we're doing. And we are a lot more comfortable with it. We are going to now go through the best part of sailing. Should we start with the best or the worst? Let's go best. Start out. All right, we're going to start with the best. Then we end negative, though. It's okay. It's just real. So I think where we are right now is one of the number one reasons why we love sailing. And that is to visit remote, rugged, off-the-beaten-track places that most people can't ever get to unless you have a boat. There is no infrastructure here. It's all just raw beauty. And we have enjoyed the Exumas in general. I think they have been the most remote places we have gone to. And Caja de Muertos in Puerto Rico was also very remote. But without a boat, you really can't get to some of these places. And so that is one of the best things about sailing that we have discovered. Sweetie, I'm enjoying the berries as much as the Exumas. Wow. I really am. Really? These last two anchorages that we've been to, we've had a great time. And we've seen lots of wildlife. And it's been raw and real and remote. Our cute. Another reason that we love sailing and enjoy our new lifestyle is the sailing community and the friends that we have made. Even in this anchorage, we have friends sailing India. So shout out to Stefan and Dorothy. But I just think back all the way to St. Martin and all of the people we met. Or even in St. Lucia, my goodness. We have met so many great cruisers. And have had wonderful evenings spent with people, getting to know them. And incredible meals with them as well. And experiences under and above the water. So I think that's the second reason why we have loved sailing and would continue. So the third one is active outdoor adventure and lifestyle. How would you describe that? Well, every day we get a lot of exercise. Whether it's hiking or swimming or snorkeling or just adventuring. We are getting so much exercise. So much so that at the end of the day, we are exhausted. And that is the best part, I think, about living this kind of lifestyle. I think it also is part of boat maintenance as well. It takes a lot of energy. Boat yoga. Getting down there in the engine and doing this and that. I mean, it's a big stretch. Yeah. What does it mean to you, the active lifestyle? Getting out and just exploring this real aquatic environment. Like today, for instance. We have our friend Jeff, who is our adventure sensei. And he has been with us, just teaching us, mentoring us along the way. Almost as if we are apprentices of his outdoor adventure school. He has been teaching us how to use our drone. We got lessons today. Very helpful. So that we can capture this incredibly beautiful environment for you from a totally different perspective. And then, after we did that, over the blue hole, and jumping in and getting stung by jellyfish that aren't supposed to sting, we did our dinghy snorkeling. We went outside into the open ocean. And right there is where the current's coming in. And that's where you're going to get the best fish life and the best coral. I wouldn't, in my right mind, unless somebody showed me how to do that, I would never try that. But Jeff knows how to do it. He's done it. And we saw sharks, lobster. It didn't get caught on video, but I saw the biggest spotted eagle ray I've ever seen. And the reason why you do it with your dinghy is because if things get out of line with the current, you climb back into the dinghy and then you start the engine. The fourth reason that we love sailing and our new lifestyle is just being completely untethered, free to decide where we go and when we go. Also, I would add to that being totally off-grid, is that we're not dependent on the diesel generator. Everything is renewable energy. The way we set up our boat and truly our carbon footprint has gone to just milk. Only when we have to use the engines, come into an anchorage or leave an anchorage, and that's very briefly, do we ever use diesel. So we don't have to use any dinosaur juice. Fraser, I give you credit, that is a description for diesel, and I just thought that was really clever. But it just gives us the freedom to make decisions about where we want to be for how long we want to be there. Our fifth reason for loving our new sailing adventure is seeing new and beautiful places everywhere we go. We have already been to so many places and islands that we have never been to before, and we look forward to continuing that as we move up the chain north. It also has helped our geography significantly, knowing where these islands are, because we're constantly having to chart and map out our journey. So I think that's a wonderful part of sailing. People have asked, well, what are the hardest things about sailing? And we want to share five of those with you, because there are some things that are really hard, and you face them every day, and you hope that the things that are great are more than the things that are really hard. I think some of the hardest times that we have faced have been when we have made really big mistakes, and they have been extremely costly, not only financially, but in time as well, because to get things fixed, thankfully... You left out another one, humility. Yeah, definitely a lot of humility. Oh, realizing, oh my gosh, how stupid can I be? You wish you could turn back time, just 10 seconds, because in 10 seconds, you could cost thousands of dollars of damage. We have made our fair share of mistakes at this point, and they've been very costly. You know one thing that's a redeeming factor about this? What? People that we've talked to, they say you will only make that mistake once. Yeah. So it's like the school of hard knocks, and you just become super wise because you do not want to repeat what just happened to you. Yeah, well, the good news is all of these costly mistakes we've made, we haven't repeated them. We haven't, yeah. I guess. All right, the second worst part of sailing is that things always break every day, and they always seem to break in the smallest of spaces where you have to literally do, what do you call it, body yoga? Boat yoga? Body yoga. So it seems like things always break in the hardest places to reach. That's at least our experience. That's boat life. I mean, I admire these architects and how they design everything. Every millimeter counts. And if you're big like us, I mean, it's tougher. If you're a smaller person, you need to get a boat because you've got a huge advantage. That's right. Yeah. I think we are improving over six months on diagnosing issues. Although we have a long way to go in that area, we are improving. So that's a good thing about when things go wrong, you learn. If things are not going wrong, you really don't learn anything. So it's been fun having Jeff and Steve on board because both of them are fixers and helped us to resolve issues that we maybe couldn't have figured out on our own. So once you do find out what's wrong and why it's wrong, oftentimes what you need to fix it is not on your boat or must be customized wherever you are. And I think that's the third big frustrating thing about sailing. There's nothing standard. Nothing standard. Like this boat, as popular as it is, the Leopard 44, there were under 200 of them made. So it's not a big production line type thing. And there were changes made over the six years that this thing was made. So everything is custom. And that makes things inaccessible. You can't find them. You have to find somebody who can do upgrades or to repair broken items. But the good news is the cruising community is so wonderful that if you put a post on Facebook or ask people in the anchorage about a problem, everyone will come to your rescue. And you learn how to jerry-rig things and use ingenuity to solve problems that maybe you hadn't thought of before. So that's one of the good things. Good point. We are now starting to encounter the fourth reason why boating can be a really horrible experience, and that is... Oh, it's humid. Oh, my goodness. It's sticky and hot and humid and mold is growing. And it is just not a pleasant place to be. If you do not like glamping, do not buy a sailboat. Or don't come and visit us. Don't come and visit us because literally we just live outdoors and we've got a cover over our head. But it's indoor, outdoor, everything. But most of the days it's really comfortable. There are some days, especially more recently, where it's been extremely humid and sticky and no wind. And that becomes a little bit unbearable. And so the extreme weather conditions can make sailing just more challenging. But what do we do when that happens? We run air conditioning off our batteries. We run our air conditioning off of our batteries. And they're powered by our... Our solar panels. Right. So our solar panels are what's giving us all of that power to be able to run the air conditioning. A fifth reason why sailing can be challenging is that you have limited resources. Limited food on board. Limited diesel. Electricity. Water. Everything has to be taken into account. So we take marine showers. You just can't allow the water to run freely. But how do we get that water in the first place? We have a water maker. And upgrades are really crucial to living in a remote environment like we're doing. For all the upgrades we've done, you've got to check out our tour of our upgrades. Really good video. And we are going to do a detailed video on each of those upgrades including prices and all the nitty gritty details. Even though we can make unlimited amounts of water, we still don't waste it. Because there's wear and tear on our water maker. So food is also another area where you need to be flexible and improvise because you can't just jump in your car and run off to the grocery store or the market near your home and pick up groceries. That doesn't happen, especially in these remote islands. So you have to be really flexible with what you eat. And if you are hooked on a particular food and it runs out, you're not going to get it. You're not going to find it. And you may find a few other people are hooked on it too. And I guess it's kind of a communal lifestyle, isn't it? Like everybody has to share everything. You have to make sure that you eat things before they go bad so you don't waste anything. We don't waste anything on our boat. And there's limited refrigerator space, very limited freezer space. You know, one of the funniest things is if you're a guest on our boat, we all know exactly how long we take showers because you can hear the water pump go. And you know it's four gallons per minute. And we know like when you're in the bathroom, there's not a whole lot of privacy. There's no privacy on a boat. We can tell what you eat, when you eat. Oh yeah, there's no hiding anything from anybody. So we get to know each other really well, sometimes a little too well. And it's not just what you want to do all the time because what you love to eat, those little savory items, well, that's less for everybody else. So you have to think about everybody else. And, you know, back to the whole communal living, it's very important. Yeah, that's a great point. You have to be flexible and you have to think about others as you snarf down the final bag, the final jet of chips. Chips, which everybody loved, but you didn't tell anybody about that. We know you. Okay, we've been there. We've been that person also. So those are the five worst things about sailing. There are a couple of other things that kind of come to mind. One is that you just have perpetual cuts everywhere on your body because of just sharp edges or reef or… And that salt gets in them and it takes a longer time because you're constantly reopening, everything's wet and salty all the time. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have enough time to heal. And you have to make sure that you treat them quickly with antibiotics. Yeah, triple antibiotics. Because you don't want this thing to get out of hand. I think a temporary challenge for us, which will hopefully disappear, is the COVID restrictions. I think that has made movement from one country to the next a bit more complicated and challenging that we have had to face that. It hasn't been impossible to overcome, but it has been difficult. Everybody's tired of talking about COVID. That's true. We're going to quit talking about it because y'all are tired of hearing about it. Anyway, one of these days, six months from now, a year from now, it's all going to be over. So, next thing. Next. The last one is weather. And our movement is fully dependent upon the weather being cooperative. Wind has to be going in the right direction. Wind has to be strong enough. Even anchoring. If the wind shifts 180 degrees, a safe anchorage could be run up on the rocks. Knowing the weather, being able to switch anchorages based on different wind patterns, it's very important. And then passage planning. Weather is everything. So, we're sitting right here on the berries because we have some northern wind that's coming down. I'm loving the northern wind because it doesn't have any humidity. That's good. Which is good. So, that has been our six-month review. We've grown up a lot since we had our one-week highs and lows video. Oh, and in the process, you guys have grown up a lot just seeing the progress we've had. And hopefully, you've been entertained and you've been learning. And really, YouTube is the reason why we got started in the first place. Different types of people with YouTube channels. And we're hoping it's benefiting you. If you appreciate videos like this that are entertaining and informative, please make sure you hit the subscribe button. It doesn't cost anything. It means a whole lot to us. Make sure you click the like button. Make sure that you share. Sharing is very nice. And then comment. We want to hear your comments. We will reply quickly to you unless we're in the middle of nowhere and can't get data. One other exciting milestone that we haven't talked about yet, which is we have started to monetize on YouTube. So, thank you to those of you who are stomaching those ads so that we get to put a little bit of money in our pocket. We would like to just say thank you so much for all of the encouragement that you have given to us over the past six months. We could not have done this without you. Thank you so much for believing in us, for following us, for supporting us in every way. Thanks, patrons. You all have made our lives so meaningful, and that's why we share ours with yours. We appreciate you. We love you. Yeah, we love you guys. Thank you so much.