LIFE ON A SAILBOAT - Zero to 10,000 Nautical Miles in 2 Years

Okay that one's for you. Merci beaucoup. Happy Sailiversary. Happy Sailiversary. It's our Sailiversary. Grab a sundowner and meet us on the deck. Okay buddy, come on. Just sit right there. All right, two years of sailing, four countries, over 10,000 nautical miles. Yeah. You would have told us we'd be sitting here saying that two years ago. Yeah we said you're crazy. Maybe or I don't know. Maybe you're not, I don't know. I don't know but here we are. Here we are. So cheers. Cheers. Two years of being sailors. Exactly. Oh that's nice. It's very good. I'll make sure she puts the recipe on the website. It's super difficult. You just watch me make it. The purpose of sitting down was one, we wanted to celebrate with you. Yes. Because well you've been a part of it. A big part. All of it. Yeah but we've hit so many milestones this year. Things that we've learned. It's been a lot. It's just been a blow your mind or blow our mind kind of learning experience this past year. That's why we're sitting here. Yeah. Not just for sundown. Well that too. All right I'm gonna have to refer to the notes because yeah I had to organize our thoughts so we didn't ramble too much. I still make no guarantees. The very first thing is passage making. Yes. Well hold on let's back up. For anybody that doesn't know the story, we started out with zero sailing experience. I can count on my one hand maybe how many times we've been on a sailboat. So we actually bought a boat before we knew how to sail it. Here we go. This boat is well sounds perfect on paper. Bought the boat in May of 2016. Signed up for sailing classes in June so exactly this time two years ago we were in sailing school most likely either studying for or taking a test. Darn. I thought I had a hundred. I thought for sure. Okay. You passed. Yeah I thought I had a hundred. Apparently I got two wrong. That's okay I got two wrong too. Yeah but I thought you would get a couple wrong. It's official. There you go. All right so Nikki. Okay. That's you. Thank you. Congratulations. Jason congratulations. Thank you so much for spending time with us. This is the date where we got our certifications and were officially allowed to sail our own vessel. That's why we say it's our sailorversary because that's the first day that we were truly sailors. Yeah that we felt like. Yeah. Today is kind of a big day because it's our very first solo trip like just Jason and I. Nobody else on board. We're all on our own. We sailed around Florida, around the Bahamas. What do you think? I think it's beautiful. We made it. We are in the Exumas. Did a ton of like maintenance and service work and learning the ropes of boat maintenance and parts and engine work and all that jazz. Spent a lot of time with Kent and just kind of. Great luck it puts me in front of it. What a joker. All the stuff we learned then has helped us out now. Tremendous. So at the end of that year our sailorversary for the one year sailorversary we filmed in the Bahamas just before we were about to cross to Florida. This time last year we were focused on moving all of our stuff out of the RV and into this boat which we had just signed the papers on and had no idea how to sail. Set sail back across the Gulf Stream to Florida to retrofit our boat like it was set up really well for coastal cruising but it was not set up for passage making. For the price of a servicing this one which is now 10 years old and has been expired for a couple years would be about the same price as buying this one brand new. That is why we got a new life raft. Right so there was still a last few things on our to-do list and some of them even left over like the rigging that we hadn't done from our survey. Initial survey yeah. And that is scoop. You can see all of that documented in beautiful HD video. Except for this one. All my cursing. So then that picks up this year for this second year of being sailors. We started off again in Florida. Two months in service prepping the boat and then you're gonna miss us. You know you are. We're gonna miss you. I know. Unbelievably we will miss you. Thank you. Ticket. Are you all teary-eyed too? And then set sail for our first passage. Our first big offshore passage and that was to Panama. Yeah and that's kind of where the idea of passage making was like our biggest thing for this year. We took on three big passages and prior to that we had done nothing more than the Bahamas and everything is just like an overnight. Day sail, overnight sail. Pretty simple stuff. Yes we hadn't really spent a whole lot of time. I mean we've spent time at sea but not multi-day passages. So we went from no passages to three big ones in one year. We also did something else different this year as we brought on crew. So for that first big passage we brought on two patrons, Dale and Justin. You'll remember them from some of the videos. I'm Justin. I'm Dale. And they knew zero about sailing. They knew as much as we did when we started. Which was cool because we welcomed them with open arms and we taught them everything we possibly could in the time frame where they were. But yeah so it's great and they definitely caught the sailing bug. They were in it just like that. So they were they were great. We had a really good time. That was our passage to Panama which was a total. We really stretched that one out. Yeah. Total of 18 days for our 1600 nautical miles. But that's because we had fun and did a little island hopping in the Bahamas on the way. It's goodbye Bahamas. Hello Panama. The goal is make a straight shot and it'll be our longest sail ever. Longest passage ever. And then did the larger leap which was I don't know like three or four days at sea. Five days. Six days. Seven days. I don't remember. I'll have to go back and watch the video. I'd have to reference the video. Maybe it was six days. Felt like six days or seven days. The next big milestone we brought in two crew members and my mom for our Panama Canal transit. Which is awesome. Yeah it was so much fun. This is my mom. Hi. Of course you know Nikki. That's Nikki. This is John. Peter. The RV geeks. Yeah. And it was something I was dreading. I don't know I'd watched so many videos and thought well that looks boring and people are like well it's just government. Or it seemed difficult. Yeah. Like it was going to be a lot of bureaucracy or challenging and I don't know. And there was bureaucracy but it was so organized. Yeah I loved it. It was easy. Yes we just uh paid our money and we're ready to transit the canal. So we had a really great time. Our two crew members that we brought on the RV geeks they are used to small tiny house living because they live in an RV. They were the easiest crew members almost ever. We're going through a lock. Yay. Three of them. It was a lot of fun to have friends on board but also people who already understood the lifestyle so it's like just very little explanation needed. And my mom's been on several times so it was no big deal for her. I don't know if I can see a sloth probably not even a monkey but maybe a jaguar. She's always like the party lady. She brings the beer and she brings the good. Best guest ever. Parts everything yeah. Okay guys when we do something awesome on Curiosity you know. We ship all. We have to ship all. Ship all. All right so that was the second big milestone of the year. Then the third milestone would have been our sail to Ecuador. Ecuador yes. So we brought on an unexpected crew member. Yep. And this was probably the most seamless transition we've had so far. Yeah definitely. With having a crew or guest or whoever on board. And that would be Kate. Our friend Kate. We met her in Panama. Introduce yourself to all of our friends. Hi I'm Kate Brand. I'm from South Africa originally and yeah I sailed all the way here on our own boat from South Africa. Thousands and thousands of miles under her belt. A couple long passages so we thought this would be awesome. She wanted to join us and yeah it was a fantastic seven-ish days. Hold on I can actually tell you. So to Ecuador was six days 680 nautical miles. We had pretty good weather other than like one night of storms. That was right in front of us. Oh man. Aside from that it was all pretty much smooth sailing except for you know getting approached at sea and everything else. That was nerve-wracking but I don't know I guess I feel like I look back at the overall passage and think of it as being really really good. Yes definitely. And the sleep. I mean having somebody on board who you trust to manage and you know manage the sails and wake us when things are going awry. Like we slept for six hours straight. I mean that's like that was a lot. I'm pretty sure it was the most Kate's ever slept on passage and it was the most we've ever slept on passage. So everybody was just really rested and in a good mood. Singha's not in a good mood. No. I know we'll pay attention to you in a minute. After the video's over. Okay say hello to everybody. Hello. Okay now go be quiet. Yeah he misses Kate. I love how you guys do things and how you make things special every day. You don't just go into like hibernation mode. Kate was on board with us for Ecuador and that was an excellent passage and it was really stellar to have somebody on board who already knew what they were doing. And that's where we are in Videoland right now. Our video world's always a few months behind and we're in Ecuador about to set sail for another location in Ecuador before we make the big leap which is our fourth milestone that we're going to talk about. Yes. Bye bye Salinas. Bye bye Ecuador. We really enjoyed it. French Polynesia. That was a big one. We did it honey. We did do it. That was a that was a long 20, 25 and a half days. 24 days at sea and over 3,500 nautical miles. French Polynesia was not only our biggest passage but also the first passage we've really done long passage with just the two of us other than our general cruising around the Bahamas. We chose to do that because it was a challenge. It's a long sail. We wanted to see if we could do it. I mean obviously we would have loved the six hours of rest but we wanted to push ourselves. Yeah but also we just wanted the experience. It was our first big passage so we really kind of wanted that just for us. Of course we filmed it so it's for all of you. You'll see all of that coming up very very soon. So passage making. That was three big passages, four big milestones all in a year and going from no real passage making to legit passage making. How's that saying go? One small step for man, one giant leap. Let's just not even compare it. To total all that up we've done over 7,000 miles just this year alone. Just in year two. So the number one thing that we learned about passage making or I guess that we set out to do and accomplished was to sail conservatively. Okay so in Panama on the sail down we had a gust come from behind. 50 knots of wind out of nowhere. Damn good thing we weren't flying spinnaker. No. Went from 15 to like 30 to 40 to 45 to almost 50 in just like an instant. Dark no moon you can't see hardly anything and boom 40 knots of wind. Yeah we had a nice little squall come out of like absolutely nowhere. Yeah didn't see it on the radar. So after that we made a pact Nikki and I that we would sail conservatively. Yeah. And what does that mean? That means putting curiosity to bed at night. Yeah because everything always happens at night inevitably. Of course. Every freak storm everything breaks it's usually all at night in the dark. Yes so putting her to bed what does that mean? We reef. We sometimes double reef. Yeah just depending on conditions and what we think we might see. Well the clouds have moved in. I think we got some weather coming our way. Making sure that everything's stowed everything's really super tidy. Give ourselves a good head start so if anything happens we're kind of already prepared or a step ahead. And that makes the sail more comfortable. We might slow down a little bit if nothing happens but I can sleep when she's on watch and she can sleep when I'm on watch sort of. No it's good. So not only putting curiosity to bed at night but it's also during the day is if we even think about reefing if we think something might get caught like we just go ahead and just take care of things or get ready to reef. I don't know I just we just we're not pushing the boat or ourselves hard at all especially for the big passage to French Polynesia. We very much follow our reefing guidelines set by the manufacturer and we're on the conservative side because it's on the conservative side those charts are on the conservative side and we pretty much start reefing when they say to start reefing but we're cool with that. Yeah we're not a racing boat. Exactly it is not a performance boat we're not going to be setting any sort of records for fastest time so we do whatever we can to make it I guess easy and comfortable on ourselves and very manageable and I felt like ever since we started doing that everything has been better. Good luck. So sleeping and watches in general we would typically do three on three off but we felt like because this was such a long passage we wanted a good solid night's rest so we we tried to do longer watches and it worked out yeah and we didn't do strict we didn't do strict guidelines because if I'm feeling good yeah if I'm feeling good then I'm just going to sail for four or five six hours whatever and if Nikki's feeling good same thing yeah and if I'm tired then I'll sleep for four or five or six hours if she's feeling like it's great. Yeah if or if we only did two hours because we were super zonked for whatever reason you'd just go wake the other person up and be like sorry struggling need you to come up. It doesn't have to be rigid. And it worked really well for us there was only a few times where we really needed to do that but it worked out well you weren't sitting at the helm like prying your eyeballs open thinking two more hours. Why? Exactly so I felt like the moment you started to hit that zone where you were feeling like you're going to crash you just go to bed so it's really good. Yes. Weather is another huge deal picking the right weather window looking at the swell looking at basically all the stuff that predict wind offers just taking it all into consideration because a simple sail that the wind looks good but the waves are going to hit us beam at four meters yeah that's not going to be a good sail and if we can avoid that then we will. Yeah because we found that like sea conditions affect everything especially crew morale so if it's super super sloppy it's just everybody's going to be more exhausted we're more tired it just feels it's obvious just a more difficult day. This doesn't stop feels like it's been hard for like three days or something. For me I've never gotten seasick on the boat on this boat I've never gotten seasick and in the beginning I was really worried that I might because I don't know I get woozy on roller coasters and I don't really get car sick but like airplanes small airplanes when it's hot I'm like oh this does not feel good so I've never thrown up never felt seasick but that said I'm lethargic sometimes if the sea's not good then or we're getting hit beam reach and we're making good forward progress and we're just doing this all day then I'm like you know I'm not a hundred percent I don't feel great I'd much rather just fly and be there on those days to be perfectly honest. I don't want to sell a lie so yes it is not my favorite way to travel to take 30 days in this semi-uncomfortable sea it's a little truth all right. On a long passage you pick the best window you can and then hope for the best but that's all you can do but for the shorter passage you're never on a hard schedule in the moment we feel like a schedule nipping at our heels we try to remind ourselves like don't put yourself in a precarious situation because you're in a hurry just bad mojo yeah and so that's me and Nikki is like stomach of steel she can pretty much do almost anything what is going on in here it's time for a haircut 20 whatever days at sea it's time for a haircut couldn't wait one more day no yeah I don't really have a lot of trouble at sea as far as getting sick goes or not feeling well but that doesn't mean that if it's a crappy day it's just a crappy day like I'm not immune to getting irritated or sick of it or even if I am like head down it's hot I'm down below bending over and standing up a lot yeah I can still end up like going oh I need to go sit outside for a minute get some air so I can see how if you don't feel well and it doesn't go away that would really suck it's a lot of give and take because I feel bad then if I'm not doing much and she's in there doing all this other stuff you know you always have this idea hey we're going on this 30-day passage or this 20-day passage and we're gonna get so much done I'm gonna edit some video and I'm gonna do this chore and that chore yeah but no between fixing the sails and and showering and sleeping and eating and cleaning up after eat like there's so many things to take you away so that's why after a 20-day sail you don't have a video done well or your boat needs tending to balls all night and travel all day that's what we're gonna write a song about today hey hey we are hearing a lovely moaning sound coming from the helm this entire piece just ripped straight out of the traveler because our sugar scoops are so low they consistently get water swept up on top so we have I don't know a whole ecosystem growing here and it turns out something's wrong with our bilge get out of there quick before a wave yeah all right we're clean at that point you've been at sea for 20 like the bottom's dirty the top is dirty everything inside is salty but even like you can clean all you want it's hard to keep up with it uh and just yeah existing living and sailing is kind of all you really do on passage somehow that all circles back around to weather yeah I promise it does yeah well if it's perfect weather then you are more productive that's true that's true and then we have edited video and we have done things but if it's not nice calm seas and perfect days then it doesn't I feel like that was the that's the biggest stuff about passage making crew versus huh oh both both yeah who knows what we're gonna do next I mean obviously we're gonna we've invited some patrons on board for some big meetups um in Tahiti and yeah yeah there are no future plans at this moment no we're not very good at planning other than the sails themselves but we do know okay so the first year was like learning and learning and outfitting and learning and the second year of course learning and learning learn but passage making yeah and this year we have the one year long stay French Polynesia visa we're gonna be here for about a year we're just so looking forward to hopefully not breaking too many things on the boat yeah so we can spend a lot of time diving and hiking and swimming and snorkeling and get some sun and wear bikinis and you're gonna wear a bikini board shorts spearing and enjoying the lifestyle it feels like year one was go go go learn learn learn year two is a lot of passage making we still did a lot of really awesome stuff but this year feels like it's gonna maybe go slower I always think that though and it hasn't happened yet so who knows there's a lot of nautical miles between all of these islands so we will see I think you just repeated everything I said I probably did I'm really good at that happy bye guys we're gonna watch this what's left of the sunset yes and enjoy our cocktail yeah but hey thanks for being a part of our year our second year as sailors and sticking with us supporting us yeah so many different ways it's been a year man cheers to you cheers guys