Quote:
Originally Posted by Fore and Aft
noDangerz your a hoot. We are just having a cultural difference, the way I read your original post and your CF Handle led me to believe when I clicked I your blog I would find some awesome yarn. Instead I find a white bread blog which was not quite what I was expecting.
90% of the newbies I deal with do not have your budget and if they did I am sure they would overcome their hurdles a lot easier and maybe still be cruising instead of giving up.
There is no right or wrong way to go cruising, but definitely having money helps smooth the transition from shore life to cruising life.
Cheers and great photos on your blog |
Wow...
I mean, I've never claimed or aspired to be an awesome storyteller or writer, so feel free to take your jabs man... but
"White bread?" and
"your budget"??
Are you sure you clicked on the right blog? Do us a favor and
Dont judge my story by the chapter you walked in on.
I mean, I guess I should be honored and consider this that awesome moment in life where I know we've finally
"made it" if what shines through for you in our story is us "having money" or some appearance of big budget or deep pockets.
Since you clearly looked at the bookcover and made an assumption, allow me to summarize
[and I do apologize to everyone else for the length of this post... I'm 3 coffees in and apparently typing here sounded better than scrubbing the
deck with the captain]. =)
Our story is entirely one of giving up the high paying jobs and money that came with them to chase our happiness.
We did it the same way most do... we worked hard and saved for years.
But rather than spending that money on "stuff" we also gave up our 5br house,
sold all our belongings and moved into smaller and smaller apartments.
We kept working and minimizing our lifestyle to pay off all our debt while watching the savings grow until we finally had enough money to run away for a 1-2year trip.
We looked into but couldn't afford a boat, so we moved into and drove the beat-up VW Bus (that we already owned, didn't know how to fix yet, and which broke down every 3days) from BC to
Panama and back again, at which point we ran out of money.
But unlike most, we didn't walk away from the trip feeling re-energized to go back to
work. Instead, we felt "broken" and unwilling to go back to the lives we had worked so hard to run away from.
Our savings was empty, so we drained the 401k's to renovate our garage into a "home base" so that we could survive without taking the jobs again like most people do (a garage seemed like a sizable upgrade to a van... especially in rainy
portland and sleeping on the concrete floor during the
project was far warmer than sleeping in the van).
There was no "having money" to smooth the transition, we were tapped.
We sat and stared at an empty bank account, poured a drink and made the tough choice between continuing along the "normal" path of begging for our jobs back or trying something more "choose your own adventure".
After finishing that
project, the only way we could see to make ends meet was to continue living in a van, so we rented out the still unfinished garage/home we just spent months designing/building for ourselves and kept living in the van and boondocking/stealth camping instead to build the accounts up again.
Highlights certainly included waking up to sunrises over the ocean and snow-filled peaks but lowlights included years of peeing in bottles and "showering" in sinks every morning at the park with the local homeless population (real whitebread silver spoon type stuff!).
We continued living in a van full time for 7yrs while trying to figure out a way forward, renovating our homes with our own hands to increase rents. We saved that extra money month-by-month and starting 2 different side-hustles to make extra money by doing what we love and by trying to help others minimize and make the most out of small spaces like we had done.
We reinvented ourselves a few times and worked our asses off to make our lifestyle continue year by year...
and yes - eventually we
SPENT IT ALL ON A BOAT TO SAIL AWAY!!
We saw a window of opportunity (after spending months straight sleeping on the shop floor and designing/building out a couple campervans for other people) to either take the safe
route and use the profits to setup our business for future
security or to RUN AWAY AND LIVE ON THE SEA!
Was an easy choice for us because it had always been our ultimate dream and we knew the opportunity wasn't likely to come around again.
Cruising was the dream we never truly thought we could afford even with the good jobs; and we knew/thought for certain we had given up on it when leaving them behind with no financial plan for our future.
Yes, we could have bought a cheaper/fixer boat and saved more cash to ensure a few more years cruising... but we made a choice to buy a newer boat so we could (for once) not spend all our time fixing things/renovating and instead focus on teaching ourselves to sail. To be fair... that decision may have turned out differently than expected as we've still spent ample time and money replacing things...but you know how that one goes.
Earlier this year, as we celebrated 18months aboard we ran out of money for the second time in our now 10year journey.
After the boat
purchase and
refit we had enough savings from our last projects for what we thought would give us a year or two aboard... hopefully long enough to see if this dream was actually what we thought/dreamt of.
In the back of our minds we still had all the naysayers on CF chanting that we'd hate it, that more likely we'd fail and turn around (and honestly though odds were good that maybe we would).
Instead, we have loved every
single second of it - but our savings was still depleting faster than we thought (it is a boat after all) and while we started considering chartering or other options for making money while cruising COVID shut those options down pretty quickly and then also took away the (small but very helpful) rent checks from back home.
Less than six months ago our account was drained again. Like, gone.
Zero dollars in the account and bills yet to be paid. We signed up for forbearance plans just to keep our homes from getting foreclosed on and to buy us some time, and again we had to decide what to do. We researched bankruptcy law, we looked into loans and eventually had to decide whether to turn the boat around, sell it in FL and go back to
work like so many others we've met and read about here, or to once again push forward and figure it out.
When the quarantines lifted and we raised our
sails... but we pointed south instead.
We decided that working for ourselves out here looked better than working for someone else back home, and we reluctantly chose to dive back in and resurrect the business remotely that we had left behind 2yrs ago.
I've now been working 12-16 hour days, 7days a week for the entirety of covid from the boat.
Certainly, not the way we may have scripted it... but FAR better than putting on a suit and tie again... and at this point it doesn't seem like a horrible way to spend a pandemic since most of us find ourselves trapped/limited and transitioning in one way or another. Besides, we've now become accustomed to rolling up our sleeves and doing whatever it takes for a short period of time in order to make this journey continue for a longer one... so now's as good as any.
ForeanAft, I'm amused that you look at our life and see some kind of silver spoon, deep pockets lifestyle... but we both started out with zero in life and simply decided we could be or have more if we worked for it.
We tasted the good lives with corporate jobs (but like many had nothing but debt to show for it) and decided to get to work and leave anyway.
We have twice now completely run out of money but also figured out how to make more.
We aren't still out here because we had some never ending savings to "smooth the transition".
We're still out here (and still FREE from our corporate jobs) because compared to the 7years we spent crammed into a van and stealth camping most nights...
this boat and this lifestyle are an absolute upgrade in every column!!
There's simply nothing to smooth.
I feed into this forum because this thread like so many others on here hit a deep nerve with us.
Current wannabees have the same questions we wanted to ask years ago but were afraid of the standard overriding theme of the naysayers here, which is not to go until you have all the knowledge and all the cash and none of the fears. The theme seems to be convincing everyone else to not go so that I either have an anchorage to myself or feel better about myself, or both...
In our experience, the real path is seldom that "clean" and certainly not as hard as it's made to appear on here...
but sadly very few wannabees like us remember to come back and tell everyone else "you know what guys... it's totally possible, and YOU GOT THIS!" even if each of our stories/journies/paths are different.
Like most others on here, we didn't have some trust fund or stockpile of cash, had no parents /relatives that could bail us out, we didn't live in an area where it was easy to take lessons or sail on nights/weekends, we never knew anyone in our lives that owned a boat we could ask for time aboard, and we had no backup plan of any kind... but we chose to do it anyway. I "retired" early before my 35th birthday against countless fears and every lesson I'd been taught in life about
security and
safety, but I chose to follow the path of my hippy wife and chase happiness over money and I have precisely ZERO REGRETS!
Sure, we've made countless
mistakes and faced our share of failures and still have so very much still to learn/figure out both in sailing and in life... but instead of taking the normal or tried-and-true path we paved our own, we reinvented ourselves as often as needed and we simply refused to take no for an answer.
But since you seem focused on the money, you know what else we refused the entire way?
- Every
single penny ever offered to us by those reading our blog to "buy us a
beer or a burger".
- Every single dollar offered to us from companies who wanted to
sponsor us.
- Every single proposal from a production company who wanted to pay us make our story into a reality TV show.
- Every single suggestion that we should start a youtube channel to collect money from patrons while sailing.
Why? Because for us this has never been about making money.
This is about choosing freedom, and living our perfect life and not having to answer to or choose words carefully for any boss or
sponsor or patron.
For us, this is about living authentically/transparently and either making it (or failing miserably) on our own so that others know that there is actually another way than what the masses tell us.
We got out here and remain out here by working our asses off and by doing whatever it took/takes to keep going, which in my mind is exactly what this thread (and frankly this lifestyle) is all about.
It's not about having all the answers.
It's not about working until the "magic number" in your 401k looks big enough to live out the rest of your years.
It's not about realizing that you're suddenly "comfortable" with all the knowledge it takes to sail and
liveaboard and cruise.
A large part of what it's all about is eventually admitting to yourself that you don't/won't know enough and don't/won't have enough to ever feel truly comfortable - but that you're also going to do it anyway; and then simply figure the rest out along the way.
ForeandAft, If we are seriously your definition of "white bread" and "having money" and "smooth transitions" throughout the journey... than you should absolutely change gears and become the biggest supporter of everyone else on here dropping everything and going cruising right now, because many have far more in the way of knowledge, experience, cashflow, savings, backup plans (and certainly sanity) than we've had at any step along the way.
Have a couple of our choices, projects and businesses turned out to be successful right up there with our many failures, and did some of those choices (and the hard work we put/are still putting into them) allow us to jump on an opportunity to buy a boat and live out our dreams?
Yes, for sure.
Maybe I'm confused or maybe I somehow missed the point...
but isn't that the whole goal and what we're all on here trying to figure out?
and maybe I'm just in the wrong thread... but isn't that exactly what the OP prompted us to share?
Though I'm also certain most prefer stories of capsizing, running ashore, getting eaten by pirates or at least general failure and turning back home... because everyone seems to prefer thinking that's what happens to those of us who actually made the leap into cruising.
Cheers.
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