Our eldest was throwing up chunks of carrot on me and I was moaning on our bed with our youngest child. I was 6 months pregnant and offshore sailing with my husband, a friend and our 2 kids aged 2 and 3 years old. [Read more…]
how we make money to stay afloat
We love to cruise but our greatest stressor is money, of course. We sold our business, house, furniture and cars, put it all in the bank and have been living off that money. Carl and I had often joked about sailing until we were broke, and well the joke is now a reality. We’re not exactly broke but we are extremely cash poor at the moment. We have 3 properties down south that bring in a little bit of income but not quite enough for our family of 5 to live off of.
We found a bunch of great ideas out there of how other cruisers do it.
Brittany from Windtraveler wrote a great piece about earning money while living on board, Making Money Living Your Dream: Earning While Cruising
Genevieve wrote about how they do it, Ways to make money to keep cruising
Dini dishes about their bread money, Cruising Finances: Top 10 ideas to make money while sailing – and more
Jody and Peter, those two crazy coconuts, announce there charter jobs here: Official Announcement
Everyone is a little different and it all depends on your circumstances. Windtraveler now lives on board in the BVI’s running their own charter business, SV Necesse uses their skill of writing, photography and sewing to make the ends meet, Sailing Yoga Family teaches yoga and Where the Coconuts Grow work for a charter company while living in the BVI.
From having a baby in the Bahamas to cruising Greenland and completing the Northwest Passage we could easily write a book on how to blow through your savings on a boat in record time. We would do it all over if we could, actually we’re planning on it – minus another baby.
To continue our wild lifestyle we planned on coming back to land life for a while to save some money but the thought of heading back into the rat race has been daunting. Change of plan!
Carl is a professional captain by trade and what better way to replenish our kitty. Right now he is an engineer on a boat headed to the Bahamas for the summer, the gig is for 4 +/- months and should help put another hole in our cruising kitty belt.
We’ll continue to hunt for another boat over the summer and hope to be on the water again come winter time. I’ve set up a website to help get the word out about my skilled husband, please share freely.
Please check out All Latitudes, Capt. Carl for hire.
I found The Monkeys Fist a great resource for the cost of cruising.
Please share how you make money while traveling, we’re always up for fresh ideas.
Happy Salty New Year
Of course it’s the 11th hour and I’m writing a post for the New Year. I’m late for everything, never on time, always in a flustered rush. But hey, if I was on time that wouldn’t be me.
New year resolution…. better time management.
Ha! Let me put that on the list of eat better and exercise, those New Year’s resolutions seem to roll over year after year.
We all know very well on the improvements we need to make on ourselves but what of those achievements we’ve reached previously in the year? Lets check those puppies out people! What did you pull off in 2015? [Read more…]
piggy wiggy fun
We love Staniel Cay, the kids LOVE Staniel Cay.
Here are a few pictures (of the thousands) I took from our beach fun. The swimming pigs are not to be missed. Bring in some left over veges from the boat and wait for the piggies to swim out to you for some grub. The last time we were here we saw one of the pigs jump in someone’s dingy. FYI do not venture back in the bushes, the kids told me there’s lots and lots of pig poop back there.
Here are a few pictures (of the thousands) I took from our beach fun. The swimming pigs are not to be missed. Bring in some left over veges from the boat and wait for the piggies to swim out to you for some grub. The last time we were here we saw one of the pigs jump in someone’s dingy. FYI do not venture back in the bushes, the kids told me there’s lots and lots of pig poop back there.
George Town, Bahamas
If you’re headed for the Bahamas it won’t take long before you hear the question:When are you getting to George Town?
All cruisers eventually hit George Town, it is the prime destination for all cruisers. Beautiful beaches, great grocery store, good spot to fly in and out off and of course there’s the social aspect of it.
For us being in George Town was like being a cruise. We arrived during Regatta week where there were 370+ sailboats. Everyday there were scheduled activities for both kids and adults. Carl is more of a social butterfly than me, I’m happier chilling out on the beach chatting to other mums.
In the week we were there Carl played volleyball, poker, competed in downwind dinghy race, blind rowing race and we all did the poker bar run. The kids had a Spanish class and participated in kids day. There was also a pot luck for cruising families one night and the Regatta concert too. We were busy everyday, we officially needed a break from George Town, we were exhausted.
We met some great families there and bummed we had to leave them behind.
Thanks to Chrissy and Sean on SV Paisley for hanging with us and giving us some hand-me-down winter clothes for the kids.
Thanks to Chad and Marsha on SV Free Spirit for some good beach hangout time. Thanks Abby and Jeff on SV Mojo for the mumma advice and beach fun. Also thanks to Shelley on SV Shelle Belle for the extra kid toys, Carl is especially thrilled with the Ikea bag. Trip and Lisa on SV Piper, we hope to see you again.
We had such a great time and have never seen so many boating kids, we would get to Volley Ball beach and our two girls would literally disappear for a couple of hours playing with all the other kids.
George Town is a must in the Bahamas, especially if you have kids. Just don’t stay for too long, it sucks you in and before you know it you’ll spend the whole winter season there….. or longer!
Above is the group we mainly hung out with, this was the day of the poker bar run.
Above is a bunch of kids got together to be taught Spanish for the morning, boat schooling at its best!
Farewell George Town and our extended family.
Nightline visits Salty
We were contacted quite a while ago by ABC’s Nightline to see if they could fly in and do a piece on our family. I was very hesitant at the start and of course Carl talked me into it. I was so scared that they would be very critical of us, our boat and how we raise our kids. But the more we spoke with them the more I realized that they were after a story that was more about the positive aspects of raising kids on a boat, so that was ok with me. We were still a little nervous trusting them when editing the footage and knowing it would air without us seeing the final product. There were many times that we didn’t even realize they were filming us.
Ben and Reena were onboard for 2 days, including a sleepover – brave, brave people! Big thanks to them for producing this small snip it on our life that we can keep forever.
I hope the Kaufmans and the rest of the live aboard community sees that we did this in support of them not to be TV superstars. It’s a chance in a lifetime to have the experience of a news crew onboard and to be able to keep this footage to share with all our family and friends. It was a fun and exciting time.
Bahama re-cap
Here’s a photo montage I put together of our 2014 Bahamas trip. I’m still only learning how to use Corel Video Studio so its not that action packed.
We loved The Bahamas and it was a perfect starting point for our cruising with the kids. Carl knows the waters like the back of his hand from cruising there on mega yachts for years. If people ever tell you that you can’t cruise The Bahamas with a 7.5′ keel then they don’t know what they’re talking about. Sometimes we had to anchor out a little further out than the rest of the boats but that just meant more privacy. Our boat has a long enough waterline so we didn’t feel the swell that you get from being a little bit further out and we didn’t get the bugs either.
Our new little “Crew” member was born on Nassau and is our true little Bahamian boat baby. Our original plans were to make our way down to the Caribbean for hurricane season but due to family commitments we are now up in the New England area. It is truly lovely up here even though still a little bit on the chilly side, especially when you’re on the furthest mooring away. It takes us a good 15-20 minutes to get here and when it raining it completely sucks!! While we’re up here we hope to sail up to Maine and Newfoundland. I’m dying to see a Puffin! Want some fluff and puff! (fluff is spreadable marshmallow in a jar and puff being a Puffin – of course… what were you thinking??)
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