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Offshore sailing: Vivian and Nathan's journey from delivering boats and conducting training sessions to launching their own career offering offshore trips aboard their 47-foot sailboat Ultima, blending travel, excitement, endurance, and fulfillment by helping others achieve their sailing dreams.
After starting out delivering other people's boats, and then training those same people, Vivian and Nathan began to realize there may be something there and started offering offshore sailing adventures aboard our 47' sailboat, Ultima. Ultimately, they’ve turned their passion into a career giving them a great mix of travel, excitement, endurance, and a sense of satisfaction helping others achieve their sailing goals.
FB & IG: @oceanpassages
Vivian is also a photographer. She worked on a couple of documentaries and started a photo business before venturing into sailing. Now, she is a sailing photojournalist. Find her work at vivianvuong.com.
IG: @vizamedia
You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast. Thanks for adventuring with us as we discover
what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast. This is Caleb.
In today's revisited episode, we have Mason interviewing Nathan Zart and Vivian Vaughn.
In this episode, they explore how their passion for sailing started,
even though they were both born, sort of, in landlocked western United States
and how that passion eventually grew into a career.
Today, they take groups out offering offshore sailing adventures and training sessions.
And through that, they've been able to live a life of travel excitement, endurance,
and a sense of satisfaction with helping others achieve their sailing goals.
It's a great episode. Here's Mason.
But if you don't mind, start with telling us, where are you right now?
We are in Solomon's Maryland. It's about an hour and a half south of Washington, D.C.
at a little marina where we'd like to do a lot of our boat work and yard work.
They have a all-out travel lift and pretty much everything we need to work on the boat here.
Yeah, it's called Spring Cove Marina.
And it's probably the best marina I've ever been to just because a lot of marinas don't have a lot of park area.
They don't have a lot of real estate, but this marina in particular, they have a huge area to sit with picnic benches.
And they have a huge yard that they let you do most of your own work on if you don't want to contract somebody.
So it really helps us out. You get best of both worlds.
So you live on a boat and have a yard you got to maintain.
No, no, in the yard, we work on our boat.
Very cool. Let me ask you this. You know, I've always wanted to know when you when you're on a boat and you want to go to a marina,
you just pull up like you would at a hotel and say, hey, do you have any, have any slots available any space available?
Or do you have to call ahead? What does that look like?
Typically with marinas, you would need to reserve.
But sometimes if you are just traveling, you call ahead on VHF radio and you say, hey, I'm, you know, about a mile or two out.
Do you have any available slips? Of course, you could always call ahead on the phone and reserve a slip.
Sometimes marinas don't answer their phones, though. So yeah, you do just have to kind of sail up and hope they have something available.
Yeah, it's funny. It really depends on how big of a city you are in.
Let's say you're going into New York City. Typically, they're usually packed full.
If you're going in a little river, you know, inside of the Chesapeake Bay, then most likely they'll have a spot.
Yeah, it's really interesting. So take us back. I know you guys have probably told the story a billion times and you're probably sick of it by now.
But I'd love to hear. I know you're not from, you're not like raised on the water necessarily.
You weren't from there. You're from New Mexico or you were living there before. Can you tell us kind of, you know, where you're both are from?
What did you grow up doing and what led you to this? Because that's, you know, you just don't end up on a boat.
Yeah, that's 100% true. We both grew up kind of in the Western United States.
I grew up in New Mexico, Vivian, kind of all over the place.
When I was in high school, I started doing a bunch of whitewater rafting and that kind of got me interested in water and boating.
And I always thought it would be cool to go sailing out on the ocean, but I had no idea where to even start with that.
And it wasn't until many years later after I had gone university and some friends of mine, friends of both of ours asked us if we wanted to move to Florida and learn how to sail and buy a boat.
And it was funny. We were just roommates at the time and our friends said, they asked us both.
But when we went home that night, Nathan was like, oh, so we're moving across the country together.
And I was like, I guess we are. And two weeks later, we got married in Vegas.
Hey, I don't mean to try, don't roll us into us, but my wife and I did the same thing.
No, she came and saw me while I was biking across the country and came to Vegas. And we're like, hey, let's just get married.
We got married at the courthouse. I don't know if y'all did as well, but yeah, we did.
Oh, that's crazy. You're in good company here. Very, very like minded folks.
So you got married on your way to Florida.
We got married. And then we, it took us about four months to pack everything in the house and have a garage sale and kind of tie up loose ends.
And then we filled up our beat up $500 car with all of our belongings in Java across the country.
And then it took us about another four months to find a boat.
Yeah, all four of us bought a 37-foot boat that we all lived on for about two years.
And then we're like, all right, we got to go our separate ways.
But it was all in good terms. And yeah.
Well, what would you say the most, I don't know, intimidating part of that whole journey was, was it, was it living with other people or was it, you know, live on a boat in general?
No, I mean, we had all four of us had lived together at different times.
That part wasn't too daunting at all. We all got along and we all knew how to deal with each other, but really it was just for me, especially it was just learning how to sail and trying to figure out where we were going to learn that and whether to take classes that sometimes we're super expensive or what to do, but we kind of just figured it out ourselves.
Right. So we learned about sailing. And then once we bought the sailboat, we started meeting all these really cool people in the sailboat community that were just living aboard their boat, they were traveling, you know, and we wanted to do the same thing.
But at the same time, we had land jobs and all four of us had full time jobs, a shore and we're like, how do we go cruising and how do we afford this lifestyle while still, you know, being able to make money.
So, you know, after two years of that, that's when Nathan and I decided that we wanted to go and make a career out of sailing and we moved to Fort Lauderdale and started working on bigger boats as crew and that's kind of how we got into what we're doing now.
Well, since you, you know, the classes were expensive. What, what, what did you start doing to learn how to sail?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I started really just by reading books, some of the most simple just how sailing works books, how to sail.
And I just kept reading and reading and then we also found the US power squadrons.
Well, and where we were in Melbourne, it's the sail and power squadron.
And they, they have classes from everything from just basic seamanship up to celestial navigation and coastal navigation.
And we, those classes were actually really affordable and we took pretty much all the classes that they offer.
At the same time, we were just trying to get out on the water as much as a good neighbor of ours who would met through the power squadron at a little 14 and a half foot day sailor that he would let us take out whenever we wanted.
And we kind of started sailing on that and then we bought our 37 foot boat and, you know, we just, we had some guidance from our friend and roommates, Megan's dad, who was a sailor.
And but then we just started taking the boat out and kind of figuring it out ourselves.
As you've learned how to sail was did anything surprise you about maybe what you had in mind of what it would be like and then and actually doing it.
Most was how easy it was to transition from living in an apartment or a home and then moving everything into this boat that, you know, water.
Being on the saltwater, especially it's not the best environment.
Or, you know, things get corroded. Yeah, things get corroded.
And then, you know, over time, you transition and you say, I don't really need this anyway. I'm just going to, if things rot and mold, then they don't belong in the boat and then you realize that you don't need a lot of material things anyway.
I mean, we have what we need on the boat and a little extra, but we keep, we have this thing that we're trying to do.
If we buy a new piece of clothing, we have to get rid of an older piece of clothing, like if I get a new hat, get rid of an old hat.
So that really makes us mindful of on, you know, what we buy.
But it hasn't really stopped.
Yeah.
As far as other things that we're kind of surprising to learn as we kind of ventured into sailing, it really actually turned out to be not as complex as I thought, you know, not knowing anything about sailboats, you look at them and you think, oh, there's all these ropes and lines everywhere.
And they all do something different and I, and it's, how do I figure out which ones do what.
But as I read a lot about it and then just started doing it, it all became pretty intuitive and it really wasn't as complex as, as it seemed at first and wasn't as daunting as it seemed.
Very interesting, very, you know, a lot of this is selfish, selfish questions because I'm curious about this. I don't know much about it.
Was there any, you know, this is the adventure sports podcast.
So we talk about people using really adventure sports to experience the world, experience nature and to, to be in touch with, you know, just kind of our greater purpose.
And, and using that medium of sport of travel as a way to achieve that.
Did you find it more physical than you expected or is there a lot to always do or is that also less complicated than you thought it would be.
It's funny. I just ran into one of our Marina neighbors and he's fairly new into sailing and he goes, does this get any easier?
And I said, no, but you start getting better at it and it gets more fun when, when that starts to happen. So I mean, you know, everything there's a challenge.
But it's really if you're someone who wants to learn and kind of challenge yourself and push yourself to live uncomfortably for a little bit to kind of, you get, you get the benefit and you get the reward.
Because what we really love to do is being out there in the middle of the ocean, which is where the adventure starts.
When, you know, we're dodging squalls or we're, we're in the middle of a rainstorm or lightning storm and you have to kind of fend for yourself at that point.
And yeah, I mean, it does get somewhat physically demanding at times.
You know, possibly all the time. I mean, just bringing in your groceries is a support in itself.
Right. A balancing act. I'm sure.
Yeah. I mean, handling the boat in in difficult conditions.
And I mean, even just making a simple sale change in normal conditions is pretty physically demanding and, you know, I mean, sailing definitely is a sport, even if you're not racing.
I mean, it's something that you're always kind of competing at least against yourself to try and sale is easy and as best as you can.
And there is always something to do. I mean, you're, whether even if you're, you've just set the sales and you're on a good tack and you're sailing along with the autopilot.
There's definitely stuff to do. I mean, there's always boat maintenance to do. There's, you know, even, even cooking underway can be a challenge at times, depending on the state of the sea. I mean, we stay busy pretty much all the time.
What, what does your life look like? Are you constantly moving around because from, from what I understand, you started out delivering boats as a way to make money and also as kind of kill two birds of one stone.
Are you still doing that or what is, what is kind of daily life looking like?
So after we sold the first boat, we sit down to Fort Lauderdale and we were in and out of boats for five years and we're using the $500 car as our storage and, you know, there were times where Nathan and I were working separately for months at a time and we started to get sick of it.
Have you ever gone through all the hassles of getting on the plane, security, luggage, long waits at the airport, all that kind of stuff. And then when you finally arrive at your destination, not only are you worn out, but you also might feel a little bit disconnected. I know that I do when I hop scotch around the planet on a plane.
That's one of the reasons why I love the great American road trips where you get to drive from one place to another and connect all of those dots.
You get to experience the changes in the terrain and the weather and the people and the communities.
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We got really lucky where this guy is on the end part of his career and wanted to help people and mentor them into doing what he does so that he can kind of hand over some business so that he's not so busy.
And what he does is take people out sailing on sale training passages, he got his start delivering boats just kind of like we did.
So he said, you know, why don't you guys find a boat that you can have about four to six people sleep comfortably in and let's start doing training business together and we said okay and that was last spring we bought our boat.
It took us, you know, five years to find this boat because over the course of five years our search for boat kind of teeter taught her to small boats versus big boats, but then when we finally had a goal in mind, then we were like okay, we need a boat with at least, you know, these kind of parameters.
And when we found her that's when we were in Maryland and we spent nine months in the boat yard that's that means that you're out of the water your boat is on the stand and you're climbing a ladder up and down and you're replacing all the things necessary that could, you know, kind of upgrading gear and installing new parts.
And we did that for nine months and then we're like okay yeah let's start our business we got a few people booked on our passages and then the pandemic hit and we were in Florida and we were about to go to the Bahamas and you know that's the best thing to do right start a business during a pandemic and.
So we were supposed to go to the Bahamas in two days before they shut the they shut down their borders and we lived on anchor in Palm Beach just south of a peanut island for all of quarantine I mean we spent two months there yeah.
But then the delivery business also kind of picked up so while we couldn't really take our boat anywhere people were still looking to have boats delivered we brought a boat back from.
St Thomas to North Carolina and then we were in talks with people to deliver boats all summer some of it fell through due to as not being able to travel internationally but then this fall we have delivered.
Two boats and we have two more to deliver in December so we kind of split our time between delivering boats and running training passages on our boat.
Whenever we are on our boat where you know we're constantly working on it we're upgrading things all the time and things break when we're sailing as well I mean you know it happens yeah it happens sailing back in June we were sailing from Florida to Maryland and we had a.
She blocked break and I ripped our sail and we couldn't sail anymore we ended up motoring into both Fort North Carolina and.
Getting some stuff fixed there before continuing on up to Maryland so you know things are always happening and and but it's fun I mean but every day is different and.
Right if you're the kind of person who doesn't want routine then boating is definitely for you.
So you've got your boat now and you can do tours and take people traveling obviously not right now so the or not as much over the summer maybe it's starting to pick up more but what did you when it came to deliveries what does that look like do you have to.
Obviously a lot of times fly somewhere and how much time does it take to get used to the boat to how much you know care you take in of it and then getting it to where it needs to go like I don't know it feels like an adventure of course but also you've got someone's very expensive asset on your hands you know.
Sometimes there are also you know not the best quality boats to so you can also ask the owners for a survey which is basically the report like a what you get during a home inspection.
It's called a boat survey and then you can kind of run and see you know what needs to be worked on if it has been fixed and what kind of equipment is on the boat and then.
And then yeah anytime that we show up to do a delivery I spend a bare minimum of probably about two days going through the boat and you know it's a very similar process to me as looking at boats when we were looking to buy one I just get on board the boat I generally look around on deck at first check all the lines and ropes and the rigging all the stuff it's holding the mast up.
And maybe take a look at the sales make sure we're actually going to be able to move the boat and then I go below and I start opening up everything and I open up all the cabinets all the lockers they check all the villages I find where all the through holes are all the systems how.
Stuff is ran wiring everything and I just try and as quickly as I can familiar my familiarizer myself with the boat and then generally have a pretty good idea if we need to do any work on it before we take off or if the boats good to go and I would say that overall we've been very very fortunate and we have had the opportunity to deliver.
Some very very nice boats.
But when we started there were times where we delivered boats that were like constantly leaking and I'm going to feel that we're pretty rough but yeah.
For the most part we've we've delivered pretty nice boats.
It's like house sitting and car sitting at the same time you know you've got a you've got a home or or this this large thing this vessel but you also kind of have to maneuver it somewhere so that's like like house sitting but you got to drive it around that's pretty funny.
And then also what's what's becoming interesting is that the owners that buy these boats you know during the pandemic there are a lot of people who have bought boats because it's a great way to kind of still be active and be outside but you are away from crowds and you can bring your family aboard and you can still do something fun.
And so there are a lot of people who have been hiring us who just bought a boat but then they also want training as well so not only are we moving and you know fixing boats but we're also kind of teaching people how to sail their boats as well which is you know at first it's a little I would say I'm a little hesitant to be like well you do this this and this because it is their boat.
But then you just realize you know you're you're helping someone kind of live their dream and it's really satisfying to see the look at you know sometimes some some of our clients will send us pictures of them sailing and you're like yes like that's awesome yeah I mean it's it's really rewarding and most people really are more capable than maybe they even give themselves credit for right.
Right but and teaching people doing these training passages it's really just kind of empowering them and and being there and showing them what they can do I love letting people just do as much as they're comfortable with and kind of urging them to get comfortable with more and and just trying to let them do as much as they can.
And I feel like a lot of people who end up buying boats they have already really well versed they've read all the sailing books they've taken all the classes they know what to do the only thing that they're cautious of is actually how to live on a boat you know how to run a boat and how to how to put your provisions away or how to even grocery shop for you know two weeks to the Caribbean from the States.
A lot of our clients are very proficient sailors but they've either yet never lived on a boat or they've never done a long ocean passage where they've crossed you know thousand miles of ocean they've never maybe done overnight passages.
And I think that's the kind of thing that we bring in is our little unique twists on the business is that we we help people realize that they can sail off shore overnight on these really long distant passages and you know after day three or four you're in the rhythm and then you know by seven by day seven and nine you're like I don't want to it's kind of it's exciting to see land but then when you get close to the land you're like oh I want to do it.
I want to keep sailing.
Just turn around and go back.
Right.
Stay out of nowhere.
That's too funny.
It has to be rewarding to take what you've learned in someone wants to actually my friend Paul my best friend he's he told me one time he goes someone out there is willing to pay you for what you know.
Just think about that and it's like what do I know that other people need to know or want to know and would be willing to build something on that I could pay some bills with not you know make millions of dollars but just make a living and so it sounds like that's exactly what y'all have done.
Yeah and I mean when like I said when we first started we were wondering you know how do we sail but how do how do we get rid of our land jobs because we are we were super unhappy with our land jobs.
And it didn't seem to be like any future with it so we just feel very fortunate that we get paid to do this I mean.
That's the dream come true I think yeah I mean we've worked really hard to get where we are but it is absolutely a dream come true I mean we get to do what we love for a living and part of that is definitely sharing our knowledge with people.
I want to ask this I always want to know for folks who have taken a passion and turned it into a career or at least a partial career how has it changed your relationship with with the passion itself because sometimes it's good sometimes it's it's more challenging you don't love it as much how has that experience been for y'all.
That's a good question and it has changed kind of how I feel about sailing it was a big jump going from you know crewing on deliveries to being the captain on these deliveries and just taking on all that added responsibility and not having anyone else to rely on and really I mean deep ocean sailing.
That's what it's really all about is self-sufficiency and being resourceful and relying on yourself and your crew and that was something to get used to as I transitioned from crew to captain.
But I wouldn't say that my passion for being out on the ocean has diminished at all I still that's what I want to do when I want to share it with as many people as I can.
And for me I guess my passion before sailing was film and photography and I was doing that for a few years and then kept doing it while I was sailing and then once we started leaving our hometown or our port town in Florida I couldn't keep up with the clients who wanted my photography services because I was on a different schedule than I used to be you know I was unavailable.
And so for a while it kind of felt like I was losing a part of myself but then I started doing photography through a sailing medium and now that is actually really fulfilling and has really changed the way I looked at both sailing and photography.
So creatively it really makes me happy now I'm like teaching workshops on how to fly drones underway and helping other sailors get the best shots and I'm just this year getting published in some sailing magazine so it's actually the two have helped kind of morph into this on little different thing that that is my own.
Which is really cool Nathan used to think that he was dragging me along with this whole sailing thing and now I'm like no I got this.
So you know that that's really cool you know I was going to say film and photography gosh you've got like a gold mine now of beautiful boats and just spectacular places you really get to really get to work on that craft.
And also document because a lot of people are really interested interested in this lifestyle I know there's a lot of very successful youtubers.
About the sailing life in the sailing world we've had a lot of them on the show and their episodes always just get so much interaction because I think it's something that people see.
This sailing world kind of like the van life world it's something so different so kind of contained and so I don't know appealing in a lot of ways but it's also a huge jump for most people so you get to document that and share it with the world that's that's valuable for what you're doing especially since you have a business attached to it you know.
It makes us have more goals in mind for the future you know we keep thinking of different plots and ideas on making our own sailing documentary and what kind of things we'd like to show the world and it's it's nice to have.
Those types of goals within your goal you know yeah it's nice to have things to do other than just sailing and you know sometimes.
Sometimes you do want to just get away from the boat and and not think about it and focus on something else for a little bit.
Can each of you do you have an experience or a day or something that you can you know that quickly comes to mind that you share with people.
You know when they ask hey are you glad with the choice you made like maybe a day that made you think you know this is this is why we chose this this is this was the right decision.
I don't know I would say that there's actually been a lot of those days but some of the ones that stand out are you know we were delivering a boat in the Pacific once and we looked out we were kind of hugging the coast of Mexico heading north to California and.
We looked out to the west and coming out of the Pacific Ocean were just hundreds and hundreds of dolphins pretty much from horizon to horizon as far as like jumping out of the water flipping you know running into the boat for fun yeah it was.
And when you see stuff like that I mean it makes you know any of the challenges worth it so yeah it's so it's there days like that that are that are super fun what about for you Vivian.
For me oh man there's been so many times I guess for the most recent one seeing so Nathan wanted to become a writer and I wanted to be you know a published photographer.
And this last month we had a magazine where Nathan did the article and I published the pictures and our friends are just passing it around and you know we're next to these authors who we have been reading over the last few years and we're like wow people are reading this you know I could hold it in my hand and it just made me really happy to be able to actually
have something out there in the world I mean that's why I do the photography is to kind of share my journey with people and to show them you know there's so much world out there there's I mean I grew up traveling by car and plane but never did I step foot on a sailboat until I was in my 20s so this whole world completely new to me and it's you know it's nice to be a part of and it's.
It's even more wonderful to share it with with people who don't know much about it because I was there once as well and then you know now I own a boat and you know maybe one day you're going to own a boat Mason.
Yeah I mean you know if I've got a kayak that's it's a long way to go to a sailboat but there's I'm not going to lie you know we moved in from the mountains of Colorado and every other person.
In this area has a boat I mean our neighbor has two boats literally 10 feet from our house there's a big old boat not a sailboat but there's a ton of them around here and every time I see it it's like you know dang I need to learn how that works because there's obviously something that there's obviously like a bug that bites you with that because it feels like people who are into it are really into it you know what I'm saying it's one of those kind of hobbies and lifestyles so I don't know maybe I'm scared of it I don't know.
Where has been maybe a place you really enjoyed one of your favorite locations and maybe a location you're excited to sail to one day or that you're looking forward to.
So for me it's the island of Madera which is a Portuguese island off the coast of the western coast of Africa and we were say we sailed there from France on our way to Florida so we were doing a transatlantic.
We stopped there for a few nights to kind of refuel and repot vision and before that trip I had never heard of Madera and I knew of Madera you know it's similar to port wine but yeah that's that's the same place and it was just a really cool little island in the middle of nowhere and I love the food the people the sites the things to do and so.
You know maybe next year once this whole pandemic kind of subsides and we can start traveling internationally again we were thinking of doing a transatlantic from Florida or Maryland up to back to the zords and doing a transatlantic loop so we would go from the zords and then to Madera and then the canaries which are Spanish owned islands and then back towards.
Back towards the US and so that's in the future for us that's it's exciting to think about those plans.
Yeah I think my favorite sailing destination I've been to was probably the zords something intrigues me about these little islands or little island groups that are just out in the middle of nowhere I guess it's they just tend to have.
This big sailing culture because that's how people got there and it's always been part of their lives so it's interesting and the zords are just an incredible place and people are so friendly and the food is so great some of the best seafood I've ever had and cheap cold beer.
Hey can't beat that.
Who would think cheap way out there in the middle of the ocean yeah yeah and if you're sailing for two weeks straight non stop I mean you're on 24 hours you know the boat is moving.
So after two weeks of that you're like all right I'm going to walk off the boat and get a cold beer.
My gosh you know I'm also curious about this and I know this is a little different you know you it seems like you jump in that boat in the world is really wherever there's water you can get to not.
Probably technically every single spot but it probably feels that way like we can just go.
What has been the most realistic danger you faced I know that we hear crazy stories of pirates or storms or whatever what what are some dangers that you face and that you're kind of mindful of while you're out there.
One thing I'm super mindful of and a big threat is lightning lightning can if it strikes your boat can pretty much disable all your electronics.
And you know the blink of an eye and then it's hard to navigate it's hard to do anything you don't have cold food so lightning is a big one and we did.
At one point we were delivering a boat we had just left Acapoco Mexico and we're heading down to Panama and we ran into the biggest lightning storm I've ever seen.
Lightning was just striking the water all around us and every flash would light up everything there wasn't a whole lot to see other than waves.
But we didn't get struck kind of miraculously but it's a big threat and it's something that concerns me but you know you try and avoid it as best you can you can't always do that but so far we've been lucky.
We also had our fair share of close calls with hurricanes. I helped out a friend of ours and a write out hurricane Matthew back in 2016 on his 45th sailboat we were in the intercoast of waterway in Florida but he had just bought the boat and didn't have insurance on it and because there was a name storm in the system he couldn't get insurance yet.
We spent the night in the river we actually at one point all two of our anchor roads parted and the boat was a drift and we had to fire up the engine and just kind of try and hold the boat in place in 90 mile an hour winds while we were until we could get enough light to see and navigate to somewhere where we would be safe.
So yeah I mean hurricanes and storms are out there and we have you know these days we have better weather forecasting and weather routers so with good planning you can generally avoid that stuff but sometimes you just kind of have to look at me and take what you get.
But you know I mean other things you know that some people would think are kind of a big concern stuff like pirates serve.
Not that big a deal I mean you're more likely to have someone break into your house or get mug walking down the street and you are to run into a pirate in the ocean that's exactly what I was going to say I mean if you're.
The type of person who leaves all their things out on deck and they you don't walk up then it's kind of inviting people to take your things other than that we haven't ever had any encounters luckily with any.
Thieves or pirates for me big dangers for me on a boat I guess would be gear failure I mean there there have been times where we're on a boat and winds pick up and then you know we have to we have to change sales really quickly and then something breaks or something comes loose and then.
Because of that another thing breaks or comes loose because it's all kind of connected so that can get really dangerous and heavy weather and just have to kind of know what to do is you know sale.
Upwind and kind of slow the boat down or heave to which is a maneuver that we do when we need to stop the boat quickly.
You know and this all comes with proper training and being and kind of knowing experience experience and also a lot of communication you know a lot of the times this year especially Nathan my double hand.
And passages which means just the two of us sail a boat non stop for days at a time and so it really all comes down to communication if I see something wrong on deck and i'm not necessarily comfortable on going object by myself you know we never go on deck at night unless another person's in the cockpit but you know fits in the daytime and Nathan's down below taking an app you know all we have to we have to tell each other if.
I mean I guess how severe whatever it is but i'll wake Nathan up if something happens or he'll wake me up if he needs an extra pair of eyes and we both have to kind of be like okay we're running this boat there's no other gold and to make landfall yeah safe and sound.
Make landfall safe and sound what do you miss the most when you're out there about i don't know what you call it land life.
Nothing.
Electricity that yeah I mean generally when we come back into port yeah I mean often in craving you know big burger steak but we pretty well on passages as well I mean we have.
I mean we're not crazy we're not alcoholics or anything but we also don't drink underway so you know by the end of a passage really all right it's time for a beer.
Glass wine that's pretty good after being out there for a hot a long hot shower is really nice because we conserve water on the boat and even though we have.
A water heater you know I actually have gotten it down to where I can shower with exactly three liters of water that's you know rent shower and.
Like everything I'm good with three liters of warm water but when we're on land yeah i'll take a nice 10 15 minute long shower.
Oh I can imagine that's so that sounds so fun sounds so exciting so unique of a lifestyle and gosh this is fantastic is is there anything else you want to share with listeners you know you feel free to plug your website i'm going to share everything in the intro as well but.
This is just so fascinating and there's a million more things I could ask but I want to make sure we share what you want to.
Yeah if you have any questions or want to see what we've been up to we have our writing links and our.
Sailing schedule posted on our website which is sale ocean passages calm and our Instagram and Facebook are at ocean passages within us.
And if you want to see my photography it's at visa media perfect awesome thanks so much this was great I really enjoyed it.
Thank you for having us.
Yeah you'll have a great night we'll talk soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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