Q & A_ Working, Travel Plans & WiFi on a Sailboat (Sailing Curiosity)

Today we're doing another Q&A. We did our first one a while back and everybody seemed to like it, but today what's different is we've asked our patrons to ask us questions. Yes, because we need to keep the list of questions to a reasonable amount. Exactly, exactly. And because of a lot of what we do, a lot of what we're able to do is because of them. So we thought this was a little way to give back a little something to make it extra special for our patrons. But it's not just for our patrons, it's for everyone because I'm sure pretty much the general everybody has the same questions. General. The general. Everybody. Let's just start. Grab a beverage. It's just tea. I promise. We are here in the lovely Abacos of the Bahamas. You may have noticed for those of you that have seen it before, the lighthouse, which indicates we are in Hopetown. Yeah, it's a cute little town, but of course you won't actually see us in Hopetown, the video about Hopetown, until a few weeks from now because in the nature of answering questions, our videos will forever and most likely always be a couple of weeks to a few weeks behind from where we actually are because it takes time to shoot, edit, travel, find internet, upload, write, blah blah blah. So unless we just start really raking it in and are able to hire an editor to come on board and have a giant satellite dome that can download at like 50 megabits per second, the videos will always be a few weeks behind from wherever we currently are at this exact moment. So think of this as a sneak peek. Now that's done. Oh, and before we dive into questions, if we mention a website or additional resources or anything like that to any of the questions we answer, there is a post that goes along with this video, as always, on our website. So there will be a link in the description box down below if you want more information. That is where you'll find it. And one more disclaimer, the light is going in and out of the cloud. So if we go like this and we go like this, you know, we thought about wearing glasses, but we decided it's not personable enough. So you'll have to just suffer through the squinting. All right. So starting with working, Susan asks, I know when you were in the RV full time, you still did other jobs in various locations you visited. Do you plan to continue that? And if so, how will that look differently for you? Well, for right now, yes, we are still doing various jobs along the way. If you have not read our make money and travel piece that describes how the heck we make all of this happen, how we earn cash. We do have a few things kind of in the background still we're doing. A lot of it you won't see on our website, so it just doesn't have anything to do with it. It's videos or photos or something we've created for somebody else. Yeah. So we do still have some of that going on. We've always found our clients naturally along the way. We get somewhere, even say Hopetown, we might visit a particular place and we think, man, their website could really use updating their photos. Maybe they could use a video. Then we just pitch them and if they're interested, they'll hire us. They'll hire us to shoot a video for them. So anyway, but the idea behind Patreon, one of the main reasons we started it was the fact that we wanted to focus. We wanted to focus a hundred percent on Gone With The Winds and not to any, our company that does work for other people. So we wanted to focus on our story and the things that people kept asking us for, like the adventures and all the little details that go along with living this kind of unique lifestyle. So yeah. So our goal is, is to officially be able to 100% fund ourselves through Gone With The Winds and we're on the verge of that for sure. Especially thanks to all of our lovely patrons. And YouTube and comments and everything else. It all helps. Oh yeah. It all adds up. Just, it's just very small little bits that all add up to. So yeah, we're not dismissing anyone out there that, that clicks a link or uses our Amazon link or all of that is amazingly helpful. Yeah. It's what allows us to do what we do. So all of it adds up and yeah. So that's the long answer, Susan. Yes. No, we don't want to do it anymore. We would love to do only this. It's our most passionate. It's our passion project is what we call it. Yeah. Okay. So Mark asks, in keeping with your non-conventional career paths, in what ways has your chosen path added to or detracted from your sense of personal fulfillment? In other words, whereas many people work the nine to five grind all their lives to buy a little happiness at the end, it seems that you, us are buying happiness now to afford a better life day after day. Would you agree with that? That is a very well thought out and kind of deep question, Mark. Good job. Uh, I would say the first part of it, which is your sense of personal fulfillment. Um, I would say we have a much greater sense of personal fulfillment now, but that's only because we saw that we were missing something in our lives and we decided to go after that, which was really just not living in Dallas any longer. Our jobs were good. We had good jobs. It wasn't that it was the fact that we were missing out on travel and nature in the way that we wanted to experience it. And that was our personal fulfillment was to go out and, and do this adventure that somehow turned into this wonderful opportunity of going with the winds and made it what it is today. So, right. Which is also, it becomes sharing the thing that we wanted so much with other people, which is the travel, the experiences, being out in nature. Um, so being able to share that and kind of creating a way to make that into a money making thing as well, which is why we call it our passion project is incredible, right? That's kind of what everybody is always looking for. That job that is fulfilling, they feel good about, they feel like it matters. And yeah, and we, we have met plenty of people along the way that have a nine to five job that they are totally a hundred percent passionate about. I mean, yeah, it's just, I mean, there's a million, we could, we could go on, the list could go on. So a lot of people do find their passion project in the nine to five. Yeah. So I guess the thing is, is it's changing your mindset. Some people do just go through some sort of a grind waiting for retirement. And I feel like that's a really wrong way to think about life. Um, life is the adventure and you should be living it and that can incorporate your job. What you do being a nurse can be a very fulfilling job. Um, there's a traveling nurse that's on our make money and travel section. Or it could be a pain in the butt. I mean, it depends on how you look at it. Well, and it's all about, do you truly enjoy that job? And if you don't, our personal obviously advice is ditch it, find something you are passionate about and something you do feel like fulfills you. And this is part of what fulfills us. So why this, while this lifestyle works for us and yes, it is definitely day to day fulfillment, but it is not a perpetual vacation, which is what a lot of people initially look at it and think, oh, it must be nice to just be independently wealthy and not ever have to work and not deal with the same stuff everybody else deals with. But that's not true. It is a lifestyle like any other. Yeah. So yeah, disclaimer, we are not responsible if you quit your job and you hate living on the road or on the water. Right. Plenty of people do try to live this lifestyle and the sacrifices you give up, you know, sometimes whether that's having your coffee shop and being a part of your city council or your community, your, um, your family and friends being close by and having those weekly get togethers, you know, you've sacrificed certain things, but you gain a lot in other ways. And I feel like every lifestyle, even if that's a nine to five job, you, it all has some sort of give and take to it. So yeah, I think it's more not necessarily often it's the grass is greener. So we look at the people working in the coffee shop with this job and they, you know, especially when you meet somebody that, and they love what they do like, Oh, that looks so nice. Yeah. And they love their community and they love everything about where they are and how their life is right on track for them. And so, yeah, she could go on forever. She could go on forever and ever and ever. So I'm going to cut the cord right there. I hope that answered your question in 30 minutes or less teleworking jobs. So William and Rhonda asked, do you have any suggestions for websites that offer teleworking jobs? Beautiful front yard. Oh, she's talking about the photo that was with the patron. Yeah. Sorry. Also, if you could keep us updated on any difficulties you have on your travels with Singa. Oh, wow. This is Singa and Cleo bringing them to various countries that would greatly be appreciated. We'll talk about the cats a little bit later. Yep. We're getting to that. But to answer the first part of your question, which is. Suggestions for websites, telemarketing jobs. Yes. We personally don't have experience with telemarketing websites and that sort of thing. So we don't really recommend anything that we don't personal personally have experience with. But we can tell you that in our make money and travel, I know this is the third time we've talked about it. We have interviewed people that do telemarketing jobs or teleworking jobs. Right. There are lots of people that find multiple multitude of ways to make this traveling lifestyle work, whether they're in a van, whether they're in an RV, backpack, sailboat, whatever the case may be. Some of them are just traveling expats. There are a variety of ways to make money while you travel. And that's the problem. There's not one specific website that is just like this never ending scroll of jobs. However, there are some fantastic websites that exist that do offer traveling jobs or work that you can do from anywhere. So I will underneath your question on our website list some of those websites because I won't try to go into all of them here, especially because each one of them targets a completely different thing. And we don't have personal experience with them, but we've met and interviewed lots of people that do. So reading over our make money and travel section, you'll find a lot of really helpful info there as far as depends on what your skill sets are. But yes, I will link to some stuff. She likes repeating herself. I do. It's good. It's one of her good, good things and bad things. So if you didn't get the first time, just wait. You might get it the second time. I'm not perfect. I'm not saying that. So, Mike, travel plans. All right, move on before I get in trouble. Mike, once you guys start sailing around the world, is there one place you've been dreaming of going to the most? Let me start with this. We discussed this one question a while back. I think for me, Thailand is up there. I just kind of have this vision in my head of sailing, you know, with our sails up, sailing in with this giant rock cliff and all this lush garden stuff hanging off and these boats full of fruit and vegetables, you know, just kind of paddling by us and coming up to us and making food right to our boat. I don't know, it might be a dream. He watches a lot of National Geographic. If this place exists, I would love to find it. So that in my head is kind of my top destination for now, I guess. Yes. And Nikki, it's the world, right? Yeah, that's for me. It's not one individual place. I want to be everywhere at once, which is always kind of my perpetual problem. I think everywhere offers something very unique and different. And I want to see it all. So there's no one place. I couldn't say I want to go here first. Yeah. I guess, where can I get to right now? Yeah. And where can I get to right after that and right after that and right after that? Well, we're in the Bahamas. I know. But I'm here and I think it's awesome, which makes me super excited to get even further down the Bahamas and then to get to the next spot after that. And then I'm like, oh, and there's Cuba and then there's Haiti. And then, yeah, it's a problem. Yeah. It's called Wanderlust, I think. That's true. Pam says, I have a lot of questions, but most are grounded in what this is all like. I'm thrilled you got out. And if I recall, you have to stay out of Florida for a while. Are you guys going to stay in the Bahamas for a while? Go more south for the winter? Have you got lots of places tagged where you can tie up? Yes. Yes and no. There's a lot of questions. OK, so let's see. We do have to be out of Florida for a minimum of six months, and that's for tax purposes. Yes. If we're in Florida for longer than six months, then we have to pay taxes in the state of Florida. Yes. We've covered that before. I can put a link to where that info is. But the biggest thing is we don't necessarily want to go back to Florida. The idea is to keep going. The general idea. Yeah. We might end up back in Florida just because we do need to get our standing rigging and our running rigging taken care of. That might be the best place to do it. However, it just depends on how far we make it over the next six months. We may not decide to turn around and go back for that. We may just decide to keep going or get the work done locally somewhere. So a lot of up in the air as far as that stuff goes. Yeah. And it's a there's no real schedule for us and we don't have places specifically pinned. We kind of as we get closer, we look at kind of what's next and what's realistic to sail. And that's kind of how we schedule everything. And of course, around the wind and the weather. But yeah, the wind and the weather dictates a lot of where we can go and what we can do. But that's the beautiful thing about starting off with the Bahamas and even the Caribbean is. Oh, yeah. You don't have to plan so much. No. You look on the charts and there are little anchors all over the place. So there's plenty of places to drop a hook. If one spot doesn't work because of the wind and the waves and the weather, most likely the one right up the like four hours from there does. So it doesn't require a huge stretch to get to the next spot. Yeah. Joey asks, how long do you plan slash expect to stay in the Bahamas? Do you have any vague plans on which direction you'll go from there? I know you're not really welcome back in Florida for a while unless you want the tax man to come down on you. OK. So, Joey, you definitely got the drift on paying taxes in Florida. So we definitely don't want to pay taxes there unless we're going to keep our boat there all the time. Yes. Exactly. But as far as travel plans go. Yeah. The idea right now in our head, and this could all change, is we're here in the Bahamas for six or seven months. We go back to Florida. And as far as how far south in the Bahamas, we don't know. We might make it all the way to the BDS. Yeah. Who knows? But that's only time will tell. Only time will tell. Yeah. So there's no real schedule. Mark, I'm just wondering if you have any itinerary that sounds solid beyond a couple of weeks or if you'll just sail by the seat of your pants. We sail by the seat of our pants. Pretty much. Connectivity and Wi-Fi. OK, here we go. Scott asks, a friend of mine said he used a Yagi USB antenna like the turbo antenna. And I guess these are two different brands of some sort of antenna. And it afforded him the opportunity to be on the hook and still grab Wi-Fi. Do you have one of those? Yes. Not that brand. No. But we do have an antenna. It is called the Wi-Fi Ranger. Yep. And we had it in the RV and we installed it on the boat. It has worked. That's Singa up there. Yeah. There's basically a couple brands in the marine industry. There's Wi-Fi Ranger and Rogue Wave. And right now, Wi-Fi Ranger has just come out with a brand new one that will actually pick up 5G signals. The Rogue Wave and the older Wi-Fi Ranger does not do 5G. And like all routers, all new routers are 5G. So it's kind of like they're so far dinosaurs. But yes, you can. They're catching up and they're getting better, but they do make a huge difference in our ability to pick up Wi-Fi. Right now we're here. I don't know how far away from Internet, but we can but we see multiple networks. And if we were to go in and patron a place, then we could get the Wi-Fi code and then we would maybe be able to come back here, log in, and be able to use their Internet from the comfort of our boat. And it does say on the Wi-Fi Ranger something like three miles line of sight. But it does have to be line of sight. And three miles is probably a little optimistic. I'd say more like a quarter of a mile or half a mile in real list. Although some of these are we're probably a mile away and we aren't picking them up. It's always hard to tell. It is. Yeah. Trees and buildings and stuff get in the way of that. It's a line of sight. Direct is very important. Yes. I love more info on Wi-Fi. Oh, this is John that asks. Yeah. I love more info on your Wi-Fi on your boat. I had a friend who has a Battelle. It's a phone company in the Bahamas. He said he bought a plan of minutes and he was extremely impressed with his coverage throughout the travels in the Bahamas. Battelle Co. BTC. Everyone here calls it BTC. And it is really I'm not going to say it's the only option here in the Abacos so far, but it pretty much is the only option. If you want something that works really well. Yeah. We had this idea in our head because T-Mobile allows you to travel. They have one of the best international. If you're from the US, you have one of their plans. You can travel abroad with it. And if they have a relationship, I guess, with the local companies, you can roam on their network. Well, we are roaming here on BTC at a whopping 2G speed. But it does not. Yeah. Think back 10 years ago when you had Internet on your phone, I guess a couple of four years ago, but it's that creeps. It creeps, but I'm pretty sure it's not even 2G speeds. I've not done a speed test. I really should. It takes time to load a page or most certainly not watching any sort of video or streaming anything. Loading emails can sometimes take a little bit of time. So it works. Yes, but it is probably not your best option, especially if you're going to be abroad long term because they do have this weird three month thing. You have to go back to anyway. We'll go into a little more detail on the website. Yeah, but BTC has worked well. Oh, we also had this idea that we can go and patronize a restaurant, buy a beer, buy some food or coffee or something and get high speed. Yeah. But so far that data at the restaurants and cafes has been approximately 2G. Not any better than what we were finding with our T-Mobile. Yeah. So we were forced to buy a BTC. The SIM card was like 16 bucks and the data is $50 for five gigs. That is in an upcoming episode. You will see us do that. That's a prepaid plan. And just to give you an idea, this video will be about two gigs to upload this video and the post and everything else that goes along with it. Yeah. So it'll cost us 20 something dollars to upload this, just this one video. Yeah. Cool. How is managing the Internet on the boat different than on the RV? Do you find it worse? Better? If it is worse, what changes would you do to your current Internet setup? Okay. Before I forget, I will, we do have a lot of the information on these products that we use on our website. I will make sure and link to it in the post. But as far as difference goes, when we were out in the middle of nowhere in the RV in Oregon or Arizona, Washington, yeah, anywhere, if you're out in the middle of nowhere, the Internet's not good. Period. So out in the middle of nowhere off of an Island on the middle of nowhere in the mountains, like in the desert, it doesn't matter if you're far from everything, you're far from everything. Internet's a challenge. So I would say there are challenges to both. Yeah. But the setup makes a big difference. Definitely. And our Wilson booster or the WeBoost that we have on this boat and we had in the RV is amazing. We were in the most remote islands of the Abacos and we still had BTC signal because of our booster. You know, with the booster off, it was nothing. Nada. Yeah. But you turn the booster on and, hey, you've got some bars. So it can take you from none to some or from right on the edge of usable to actually getting good, especially with data speeds. And the cellular, of course, it works really well for that. Anyway. So, yeah, the only thing different we would do with our Internet setup is if something amazing came out that just blew everything away or if we could afford satellite. Yeah, there there is good satellite options, but they are insanely expensive. We have met some of the people that are crew on like the big mega yachts, super mega yachts, and they tell us about their Wi-Fi on their boats. And it's crazy. They can be out in the middle of the ocean, like on a big crossing, and they are still streaming and downloading and watching stuff. I'm like, no way. But they pay anywhere from three to five thousand dollars a month for that connectivity. So anybody want to donate that? Yeah. Yeah. 20 grand for the 20 grand a month patron. No, I'm going to stop right here and check the that the camera is still rolling. Okay. Okay. I got to cut it right there. I don't know if I'm going to have the bandwidth to upload an hour video, and I don't know if you want to sit through an hour video. So we'll end it here. And the idea is I didn't want to cut it at all. So it's like we're just having this conversation. You're asking a question. We're having an answer. It's not cut. It's just real. It's us. It's the way we are. And it's our honest opinions, unrehearsed, unscripted, all that just sort of like a normal conversation would be. Okay. So yeah, fade to a beautiful shot of bohemian water. And oh, if you want to see part two, which I will try to launch next week, make sure you subscribe and you'll get it in your inbox.