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
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

When are you getting to George Town?
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
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