Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Expedition Sailing and Overlanding with Brian McVickers

Transcript

Expedition Sailing and Overlanding with Brian McVickers · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Scott Brady, and welcome to the Overland Journal Podcast.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I'm out here with my longtime friend and business partner
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Brian mcvickers, and we are sailing across the Northern Pacific
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to the Bearing Sea on the Kailani. This is a
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: fifty two foot sailboat made by Island Packett and we
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: are aiming right now for a pass next to Unimak
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Island in the Illusions, so we can make safe passage
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: into the Bearing Sea. And we're going to do just
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: our little intro here because we're going to bring it
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: back to the studio for the in depth conversation. As
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: you can see, we're both busy at the moment doing
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: sailing stuff, so we will talk to you in the office.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And Brian, thanks for being on the podcast.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Man got happy. Hello and welcome to the Overland Journal Podcast.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I am your host Scott Brady, and my co host
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Matt Scott is not with us today because he is
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: bouncing around somewhere in Zanzibar, I believe today on his
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: honeymoon congratulation. Matt really excited for Laura and you and
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I have a special guest today in our studio.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: Brian mcvickers.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: We just did a little introduction of him and our
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: expedition with the Kailani Expedition in the intro feed that
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: we be recorded on the boat. But now we're back
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: in the studio and we're going to talk through expedition sailing.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk a little bit about your life
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: and the things that have trained you to not only
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: be our chief business development officer, but an expedition sailor
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: and certainly an overlander in your own right. I think
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: that they all come together in a very interesting story
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: that I believe that our listeners will really enjoy. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: now for a quick break from one of our supporters,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Let's take a minute to recognize one of the godfathers
• 1:41
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• 1:44
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• 1:50
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• 2:12
  Speaker 4: Thanks Scott. I appreciate being on the podcast. It's get
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: to see it happen every week, and it's kind of
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: fun to be on behind the microphone.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you know, it's super fun to have you here.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: And it's also so rewarding for me that the team
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: of people that we've worked so hard to assemble at
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Overland International, we're all adventurers, we're all travelers, and we've
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: all got these great stories to tell.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: So it is fun to have our own team members
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: on the.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Show as well and talk about these very interesting topics
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: like expedition sailing for example.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Today.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember well fifteen years ago when we all
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: first came together to create what we've done. I remember
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: that we all brought some different sense of adventure with us.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: I think that sense of travel and exploration we all
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: had in common, regardless of our other backgrounds.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we certainly did, and expedition Expedition Portal had started.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I had this crazy idea of a magazine with Jonathan
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Hanson and I called you up and I said, hey,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: can you can you meet us in North Phoenix.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: To like for some sushi at sushi restaurant. That's right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: And you had some experience, well quite a bit of
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: experience in marketing and advertising in other other areas of
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the outdoor space, but you had not done the overland thing,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: because the overland thing wasn't much of a thing at
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: the time.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: There wasn't really much of an industry.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: But we sat down and we had this conversation and
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I think I was mid sentence and You're like, I'm in.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. It wasn't a hard decision by any means.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: And I don't remember that. You know. I had just
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: come off of several years exploring by sailboat, and when
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: we came back to land, I still wanted to explore.
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: And that's how I got into overlanding. And I remember,
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: you know, buying an old you know, land rover Discovery too,
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: and you did.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you had like the one reliable two thousand and one.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: It was Discovery Great truck. I had that for eight
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: years before Great. It was so reliable.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: I remember getting into the overlanding thing and using it
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: for traveling. We really enjoyed that. But I've always had
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: you know, coming from a background of being an athlete
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: and being competitive and then competitive sailboat racing. I had
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: this great truck and I was like, so, how can
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: I compete with it? What can I do? That's when
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: that's when you were doing the Expedition Trophy. That's right,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: I remember, and that's one of the first times we
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: met was at an Expedition Trophy and we were all
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: having fun being a little competitive with our trucks.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Well, and I actually think the very first time that
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: we met was in a Fries parking lot and you
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: were actually buying my grandfather's welder from me. It was
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: just a giant stick welder. The Lincoln tombstone, the red
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: box it was, it wasn't and you had the only
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: one of your two kids at the time and they
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: were in the in the little car seat in the back. So, yeah,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: it's been it has been a long time and so
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: fun that we can take this journey together. And then
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: more recently we took a very serious journey. And why
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: don't you share with the listener what we did.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Sure, so very recently in we set sail in
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: June mid June, I think June seventeenth through June nineteenth.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: We left from Long Beach, California, San Pedro area and
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: we crossed the Pacific Ocean on a fifty foot island packet.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: We sailed up to the Bering Sea and so that
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: was a pretty momentous kind of expedition in many ways.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: So we had I have a good friend, Rusty Friends,
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: and he bought this island packet back in twenty fourteen,
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: and I helped him sail it down the West coast.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: So we brought it from Portland down to San Diego.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: And Russy is a lifelong friend. I met him in
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: Saint Petersburg, Florida, back in two thousand when we were
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: both preparing our boats to go cruise of Caribbean. Independently
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: of one another. We just happened to meet at DOC So,
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: you know, a number of years later he says, hey,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: I bought this new boat and helped me out with it.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: So we sailed it down the West coast. And then
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: last fall, as we're all kind of sitting around, you know,
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: dealing with twenty twenty, he calls up and he said, Hey,
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: let's let's sail to Hawaii. And he said, yeah, that's
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: a cool idea, And you know, because it's a great sale.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: I've never done it, but it's you know, about a
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: three week sale. It's a bit of a bit of
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: a sleigh ride. You know, you've got to win behind you,
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: and it's not terribly difficult. I said, well, what are
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: we going to do when we'll get there? And he said, well,
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe we'll go up to Seattle. I said, well,
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: if we're going to go to Seattle, you know, why
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: don't we go to Alaska and then prepare to do
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: the Northwest Passage up over up over Canada and go
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: to Greenland. And he said, no, that's that's crazy. We're
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: not doing that. And this was an eleven o'clock at
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: night conversation, and about five point thirty the next morning,
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: I just get this text and he says, okay, we're
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: doing the Northwest Past. And he's the kind of guy
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: that is either it's all all or none, so it's
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: full throttle. And so ever since then, we just started,
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: you know, creating this plan. Then Canada just didn't open
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: up for travelers. So Canada for twenty twenty one, for
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: the first half at least, you they weren't permitting anybody
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: to come into the Canadian waters, so we couldn't do
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: the Northwest Passage. We decided, well, we still have the
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: time allocated, and let's come up with another idea. Let's
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: go explore the Aleutian Islands up in Alaska. Nobody goes there, sure,
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: and when we were there, nobody was there. And it's
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: just really historic and beautiful area of the world to
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: go explore. And so to get there, you've got across
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: the Pacific. And that's when I knew that you had
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: always wanted to do a sailing expedition of some sort,
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: and you and I have done so many land based
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: overlanding expeditions together. I just thought it was a great
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: opportunity for us all to go do something really amazing.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: And when you first asked me, of course, I was
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: completely honored. But I'm in the back of my mind,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, what can I possibly contribute to this endeavor,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: because I mean, I had done a week of sailing
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: and gotten a bare boat license, so you could basically
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: rent a sailboat and hopefully not run into something. And
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: that was in twenty and twelve, so before I started
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Expedition seven, and then I didn't touch another sailboat until
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: we stepped on to Kailani in Long Beach, So I
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: had less than I knew less than nothing. You knew
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: very little about saying we started.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: But you know, I remember talking with you about this,
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: and it's like a lot of expeditions where the expertise
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: in the physical you know, driving the vehicle or sailing
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: the boat. I mean, you definitely need that. But as
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: we've experienced before, what can really make or break an
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: expedition or you know, a big trip like that, is
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: the people involved. So it comes down to personalities. You know, demeanor,
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: can you keep her cool and adverse situations? And you
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: know you're well proven in that. So the lack of
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: sailing experience was the least of any concern. Besides, you've
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: got medical experience. You can work on a diesel engine,
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: you can, you're very mechanically inclined, and the rest of
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: it you pick up along the way pretty quickly.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Well, and it was it was literally being thrown into
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the deep end, literally the deep end. And that's what
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: I love about endeavors like this, as you start into
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: them with an idea of what it's going to be like. Again,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: this is when you know nothing. When you know nothing,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: you start into it with an idea of what it's
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: going to be like, and it could have It could
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: have been a thousand different ways, and we got one
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: of the easier ways, but it was still completely different
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: than what I expected it to be. So I think
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: it would be interesting to talk about the fact that
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: you started underscholastics academic opportunities for sailing for you when
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: you were in college. So you're racing for the college.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: What did you learn from that that then you moved
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: on to cruising with now your wife Amy?
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: Sure, you know, it started a little bit earlier than that.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: When I was twelve years old. My parents signed me
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: up for sailing camp in the summer. And we live
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: just outside of Chicago and a little town called the Grange,
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: and I would take the train into the city every morning.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: I had my Duffel bag and I'm sitting there on
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: the train with all the business suits right, and I'd
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: get into the s and I'd go down to Columbia
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: Yacht Club and I'd spend my days learning how to sail.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: That quickly turned into racing because the little yacht club
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: had a junior racing team and we would race the
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: other yacht clubs up and down the coast of Lake Michigan,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: and so I did that through starting at twelve years
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: old into high school. When I was in high school,
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: I was more involved with the racing team. We would
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: start to travel around the country. I started our Lions
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: Township high school sailing team. Nice had one member which
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: was me, and I remember the principal gave me sixty
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: five dollars to enter regata. That's awesome my sponsorship as
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: a high school sailor.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: And what kind of boat were you sailing at that time?
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: At that time, so.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: We were racing sunfish lasers, four twenties, fja's things like that,
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: so small single and double handed sailing boats. And then
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: as I got into high school, my stepfather invited me
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: to sail or race on our family boat, which was
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: a thirty three foot tart and ten one design. Racing
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: it means all the boats are identical to one another,
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: and then they operate under some they call them, you know,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: kind of class rules, so nobody can put too much
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: money into their boat and make it too much more
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: advantageous in the next boat, so you're limited year to
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: year what you could do to the boat. And so
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: it was great racing to learn tactics and strategy and
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: really the fundamentals of racing sail boats because everybody was
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: racing the exact same racing.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: What a great way to do that. Yeah, levels of
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: playing field.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: Really, it's one of my favorite ways to race is
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: with one design. It's kind of really the only way
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: to do it. I love it. And so then getting
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: later into high school, you know, it's time for college,
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: and I started to apply to colleges that had racing teams.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: So I got into Old Dominion University as well as
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: a couple others, but they had asked me to come
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: and also be on the racing team. So for college
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: I raced with Old Dominion. It's in Norfolk, Virginia, Wow.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: And there it was pretty much year round. We would
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: practice from three o'clock to six o'clock every day, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: then we had regattas on the weekend. So we would
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: travel up and down the East Coast racing other colleges.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: And what boat was that for those races?
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: So for those we did lasers, fjs we did. Those
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: are the primary two boats, so lasers and fjs. And
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: then and then every year for the they would have
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: a larger Agata or a larger series where we'd do
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: small keel boats. So we would often do like J
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: twenty twos, J twenty fours.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen some of those come up advertised for sale,
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: and they have a pretty long keel they do with
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the weight concentrated very low down on that keel they do.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah. JBoats have been kind of a classic racing boat,
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: and the J twenty four class especially as very popular,
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: and then the the J twenty two's is just a
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: little bit smaller and that's a popular class as well.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Somehow along the way you bump into Amy, who is
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: now your wife, and you guys hatch a plan to
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: go sail for years around the Caribbe and so like,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: how did how did you go from bumping into each
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: other to heading off on what is an amazing adventure,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: especially at that age.
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Sure, So, so my summers, my college summers were
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: spent teaching sailing. There was a there's a yacht club
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: called the Waukegan Yacht Club, and for three or four
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: years I was a lead instructor there and so I
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: headed up there program and so that got me into
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: teaching sailing and then coaching racing and that after college,
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: I started teaching adult classes at Columbia Yacht Club. So
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: I was I remember pretty vividly to this day. And
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: and so I was working for CNN and Turner Broadcasting
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: at the time. I get done with work and I'm
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: in a suit, you know, suit and tie, and I
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: get up in front of the class at the yacht
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: club and I look out and there's this tall redhead
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: in the in the class, and uh, that's pretty much
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: you know, end of the ro beginning and the end
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: of the store right there. And so we became Yeah,
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: she was a student in the glass, and so we
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: got to be great friends. You know, we brought her
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: onto our racing boat for training, and because we would
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: do we get a bunch of the keel boats, the
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: big boats in the yacht club to help take the
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: adult class out for Wednesday night beer can races and
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: some of the races on the weekends. And so we
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: had a friend at Amy and you know, she came
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: on our boat and then a kind of the end
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: of the story and we we were good buddies, just
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: good friends for about a year and a half before
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: we even started you know, officially dating. Sure, And so
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: great story yeah, and it just you know, love her
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: to death and it was just amazing and we get
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: along so well. And so you know, fast forward a
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: little bit to around two thousand and well, just back
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: up a little bit before that, probably nineteen ninety eight,
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: nineteen ninety nine, we went over to we went to
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: France and we chartered an Oceanis fifty five I think.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: Nice boat.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: Beautiful boat, absolutely gorgeous boat. And we we circumnavigated Corsica
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: and and so that must have been two thousand and No,
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: that was nineteen ninety nine because the entire time I
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: had this this engagement ring with me the entire time.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: And so I proposed to her on Corsica on the
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: there's a ten thousand foot peak there called Baba La,
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: and so we went up there and and so that was,
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: you know, part of our story because the significant part
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: of that story is that's the first time we really
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: saw people living on sailboats. And up to this point
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: I just raced them. I raced sailboats, and we saw
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: cruisers on their cruising boats, and you just kind of like,
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: you know, that's not really sailing, you know, and and
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: so you know, it's all about racing and so, you know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: that's the first time we met people who were living
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: on their boat and exploring the world by sailboat, and
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: we just fell in love with the idea. We thought
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: it was great. And so we went back to Chicago
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: and we were trying to decide what we're going to
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: do when we get married. You know, do you move
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: out to the suburbs, do you get a condo in
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: the city, do you start a family right away? And
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: our solution was to sell everything that we had, buy
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: a sailboat, live on the sailboat, and then go travel.
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: So figure it out and figured out along the way.
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: And so we bought an Allied Princess Too, which is
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: a thirty six foot stay Heale catch, and we bought
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: that in Saint Petersburg, Florida, moved down to Florida. We
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: lived on the boat for two years, saving every penny
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: we could, and then we took off and we went
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: down to the Caribbean.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: How was that living on the sailboat for two years
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: in a marina?
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think a lot.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: I'm probably speaking for some of the audience at least,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: but I know I'm speaking for myself that there's this
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: very romantic idea of if you think about the cost
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: of real estate in southern California, for example, Sure, or Seattle,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: and you look at a slip that maybe eighteen hundred
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: or twenty two hundred dollars a month, and you realize
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: you're on the water in usually one of the better
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: places of southern California or wherever you're at and living
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: on the sailboat. So to me, it sounds very appealing.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: How was it to actually do it?
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a it's a great point. It does. It's
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: supposed to feel really romantic, right, it was. It was.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: It was kind of like living in a trail trailer park. Sure,
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: you know, is that the Florida part? Yeah, that only
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: made it work, and so it was interesting, you know,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: we and that's part of the reason we wound up
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: going to the Caribbean is so we got into you know, economically,
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: it was great. We were paying four hundred and fifty
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: dollars or five hundred dollars a month for our boat payment,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: and then we were paying i think three hundred dollars
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: a month from the marina fee to live aboard in
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: the marina, the slip and all the amenities, so economically,
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: it was less than we were paying for an apartment
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: in Chicago, so that helped us to save more money.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: And we were working regular our regular jobs. And so
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: after a while, you know, we had we had come
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: up with this idea of doing a circumnavigation, and we
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: had planned it out. We were planning out the route
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: circumnavigating the planet the plan. So that was the original goal,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: to circumnavigate the globe. And what we found is we
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: could never get to a point like of having enough
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: money where we felt like we would be doing that responsibly,
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: and so we were waiting and saving and trying. And
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: then the other thing we noticed is there are a
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: lot of people I think that marinas, especially live aboard
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: marinas down in Florida. It's kind of like where sailing
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: dreams go to die, because you know, there's a lot
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: of people who they're working on their boats and they've
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: got these stories about what they're going to go do,
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: but it's never the right time. There's always another project
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: that their boats not quite ready to go yet sure,
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: and so they'll say, hey, there's a down in Florida.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: When you're especially trying to leave those waters, you really
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: watch the weather. There's a lot of weather windows which
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: you watch anywhere, but down there, with the hurricane seasons
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: and everything, we're always watching the weather windows. And they
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: would come and go and there, and there was always
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: another project that for you know. And so eventually we
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: woke up one morning and we kind of looked at
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: each other and said, we either need to leave or
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: we need to find another idea, like sell the boat,
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: move on with life. But so we decided, okay, we're
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: just gonna We're just gonna leave. And we left with
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: no plan except that we're going to go south. And
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: we had really detailed plans to circumnavigate, but no plan
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: to just leave. So within I think a week of
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: making that decision, we were gone. And I remember getting
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: into I think we were in Marathon Key, which is
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: down in the Florida Keys, and it's a very common
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: jumping off point to across the Gulf Stream. And we
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: were in sitting in the bar, waiting for the weather window.
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: And there was this family there who was going down
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: to the Caribbean, and they had every detail of their
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: Caribbean experience planned out. They knew exactly where they were
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: going to go. They had the maps they had the
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: anchorages laid out, they had everything covered, and they looked
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: over at us and they said, what are you guys doing.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: We said, well, we're going to go south, and that
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: that was our plan, and so we just figured it
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: out along the way, because it wasn't part of the
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: original plan, but we decided, you know, we're going to
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: make an adventure of it, and so we did. We
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: went and got lost in the Caribbean for two years,
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: and it was an incredible experience in traveling, in meeting
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: other people and being self sufficient. You know. We would
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: think we left Florida with two months worth of food
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: on the boat, and that lasted us quite a long time.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going to unpack this, this whole statement that you
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: made about thirty seconds ago, because we always hear people
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: on this podcast.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: I've said it is just to go.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're actually one of the few people, Amy, and
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: you were actually one of the few people that just
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: woke up one day and decided that the path that
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: you were on was not working and we're just going
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: to go. And you actually did it. You actually, within
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: sounds like seven days, you were gone.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we had already made all these plans to
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: be leaving, but we just couldn't quite get there. And
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: I think part of it, you know, we had planned
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: the circumnavigating part out so much and that became the goal,
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: and I think we were overthinking it. So we were
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: overthinking it. We were you know, probably over preparing the boat.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: We were probably over you know, we were probably thinking
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: we need to have so much money to be able
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: to go do that. And when you know, now I
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: meet people who have the sale the globe or driven
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: the globe overland, and they work along the way, they
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: figure out a way to make it work. You just
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: go do it now today doing it, I think about
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: it often, especially with a lot of the people that
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: we work with with Expedition Portal and Overland Journal. We
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: have contributors that are out traveling the world and they're
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: able to do that and sustain financially by writing and photography.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: And twenty years ago that wasn't a thing.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: It wasn't even a possibility.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you didn't have connectivity like that.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And I think I think that if I look even
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: at the best trips I've ever had are the ones
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: that I was under prepared for. Oftentimes the trips that
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I'm over prepared for. The outcomes are usually very much
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: what I expected, and that's going be a good thing,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: especially if you're trying to do a production, or you're
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: really trying to get to some place, or your goals
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: are not about the adventure. Your goals are about arriving someplace,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: like maybe prossing a very dangerous area. But I think
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: that when a little bit of serendipity happens is when
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: you really do find the true joys of travel. So
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: that brings me to the question of what did you
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: learn from that process of letting go and then just
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: going that you've then since applied to your travels after
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: that point.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Sure, I think, you know, one of the biggest things
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: we learned was you don't need You don't need all
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: the stuff that you think you need. And I think
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: by the time that we realized that we were really
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: set up, we had a really we had really gone
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: through the boat. We'd never had any issues with the boat,
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: you know, in the entire trip, you know, while we
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: were living on it and while we were sailing it
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: down in the Caribbean, we never ran into an issue.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: But part of that is the way that we prepared it.
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: But what we got we found that we got to
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: this point where what we we had already prepared the
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: boat well and now we were just adding gadgets. And
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: once we realized that we don't need the gadgets. I mean,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: some of them are cool and they make it better,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: but you know, we weren't even putting on the latest
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: and greatest gadgets. We were kind of putting on what
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: we could afford, just kind of going. You know. So
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: the boat was reliable, so we were never really worried
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: about the breakdown, the bad things happening to the boat.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: But I think when we started going, it was the
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: places we were going to go. And then after the
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: fact that what I found was we didn't know where
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: we were going. And so the places that we missed
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: out on were all the kind of the touristy places
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: where everybody was going. And then we realized we were
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: really fine with that. Yeah, totally. So we went off
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: the bat the beaten path a little bit. You know,
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: we missed out on a couple of maybe highlights, but
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: you know, I think I missed out on the pigs
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: swimming off of whatever beach that they're on down there.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: That's a total tourist thing anyway, totally, totally. That's where
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: all the that's where all the cruisers go. And I
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: didn't get to see that, and I'm okay with it,
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: you know. And because we got to see you go
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: to see the island that I can't remember the name
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: of it, but it was completely deserted, and you'd and
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: nobody went there, and you'd walk up on the on
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: land and we would walk across the island because it
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: wasn't very big. When you were walking. Everything was to
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: put it in a pretre. It kind of kind of
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: looks like a little rainfast right the terrain, and when
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: we were walking, it's dead silent. And then if you
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: stop and just stand still, the ground would come al,
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: come to life with snakes and crabs amazing, and they
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: would be skittering all over them and there are thousands
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: of them. But then as soon as you took a step,
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: they all stopped.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: And because it was an untouched place.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: Untouched, nobody went there. That type of thing was amazing.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: One of the stories that I remember you telling me
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: that most fascinated me was you guys were trying to
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: be very careful with your finances because you wanted to
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: stay out as long as possible. And if I get
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: the details wrong, just correct me. But I think I
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: remember you telling me that at one point you got
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: to where you really only needed about one hundred and
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: twenty to one hundred and thirty dollars a month on
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: the boat, and then what you would do to get
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: and that was for like rice and beans and some
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: diesel and then you would just fish or spearfish or
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, how low did you really get your expenses?
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah? So ours our least expensive month was one hundred
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: and fifty dollars. To put that into perspective, we were
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: still paying for we saw had a boat payment, call
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: it five hundred dollars, and we still had an insurance payment.
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: Oh sure in the boat, right, So if you look
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: at those kind of those are expenses that they're there,
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: you can't do anything about them.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: What was the insurance do you remember?
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: It was just it was boat insurance?
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Know what was the cost on the insurance? Eximately?
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: I bet the insurance was maybe one hundred and fifty
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: dollars a month, Okay, maybe, yeah, it wasn't much.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: So if you if you owned the boat, you you
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: probably could get down to three to five hundred dollars
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: a month.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Now that's if you are in a place where
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: you can productively fish and productively maybe even live off
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: the land, because we would one hundred and fifty dollars.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: You know, that would go towards some of the groceries.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: If we went to an island and we'd get a
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: couple of staples here and there, but you get a
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: forty pound bag of rice. You fish every day, and
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: so see incredible. We would fish from the boat, we
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: would fish from the dinghy, and then we would spearfish,
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: so we would we would free dive. We had a
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: pole spear, which is just a it's a long it's
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: like an eight foot fiberglass stick with a spear tip
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: on the end and a rubber band on the other end.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: The range wasn't really good. You had to get really
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: close to the fish. You know. Other people would use
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: like a Bahamian spear, which is more like it's like
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: a wooden doll with a rubber band on it. And
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: then you can actually you can let the spear go
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: and it'll actually go out further maybe fifteen twenty feet,
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: where this thing you had to be within ten feet.
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: But we would get you know, we'd harvest all sorts
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: of fish, lobster, conk. And it was funny because the
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: first time I ever tried to harvest a conk, it
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: probably took me two hours trying to break into this thing,
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: and I couldn't figure it out, and I was, you know,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: destroyed the poor shell just trying to get the conk out.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: And then, you know, I met some local fishermen and
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: they taught me how to do it in like, I
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: don't know under a minute.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: So what's the trick.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: So you count the rings on the shell, so that's
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: a spiral part of the shell. And you get a
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: good knife and I think it's a second ring down,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: second or third ring down, and you take the backside
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: of the knife, the dull part of the knife, and
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: you smack the shell like using the knife a hammer,
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: and you basically chip a little hole in the shell
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: right at that ring that's big enough to get the
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: knife into. And then you flip the knife around and
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: you stick the blade in and you just rub it
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: back and forth a couple of times and it cuts
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: the muscle. Sure, Now the conk doesn't have anything to
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: hold on to, sure, right, And so then you you
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: go around the other side and you grab the foot,
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: and the foot of the of the conk is kind
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: of it's almost like a hard shell in itself. Okay,
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: so you grab the you grab the foot, and then
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: you just pull and this crazy looking creature comes up.
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: So I got pretty good at it.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: And then how do you cook that?
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: So they're really uh, they're really tough, Okay, so you
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: need to tenderize them. And so you they've got like
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: the muscle itself which is the animal. It has this
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: weird skin on it. So you slice it and then
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: the skin peels right off and then you take the
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: and you kind of you're left with this big piece
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: of meat that kind of looks like a chicken breast,
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: and you.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Uh, you just taste like chicken.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: No, it doesn't. It tastes like conk. And you can
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: prepare it on different ways, but you've got to you've
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: got to really beat the heck out of it to work.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: You've got to tenderize it in order to really get
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: it to taste good. We ate it all the time.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: So beyond the fishing and these basic staples, what did
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: you typically fill your days with for two years of
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: traveling around the Caribbean.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so if you're if you're making passage, so if
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: you're making a passage between islands or for longer distances,
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: you're really focused on sailing. When you're sailing like that,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: you're really focusing on, you know, getting the boat to
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: go as fast as you can for the conditions. I
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: say that in a different way too, because racing, racing
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: a sail boat, you're you're really trying to go as
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: fast as you can and you're pushing the systems. You're
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: pushing the boat as hard as you can. When you're
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: cruising and exploring and living aboard, you know, that boat
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: becomes your everything, your home, and and so that it's
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: a preservation becomes a priority as well. So so you're
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: you're trying to sail fast, but you're trying to you know,
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: have some mechanical sympathy on the entire system because as
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: to last you for a long long time. And so
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: you're focusing on sailing, you're focusing on navigation. We didn't
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: have a really whizbang electronic navigation system I think we
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: had We didn't have a chart plotter, so we had
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: a had a nice GPS system, but we use paper charts,
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: and we would take a reading every hour, and so
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: when we were under underway, we would take a reading
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: every hour. And so we would do the good old
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: map and compass and you know your parallel rules, and
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: you're kind of plot it right there on the map.
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: And we still have all the charts, which was really fun.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: I kept them and uh. And so then you you're
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: planning out your anchorage, you're planning out where to go.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Then once you get to an island or wherever you're
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: going to make landfall, you'd go and explore. And so
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: we'd do a lot of hiking. We would do a
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: lot of just kind of going into the small towns
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: and spending time kind of getting to know the locals,
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: because we would go someplace and we would spend two
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: to four weeks someplace, and so after you know, after
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: a week, the locals start to look at you like, well,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: you're not going anywhere, and so they start to be
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: you a little bit more. And then after two three weeks,
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: you're walking through town and you know everybody's name, and
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: you kind of become you're still a visitor, but you're
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: a little bit more a part of the community. So
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: I think it's you're no longer a you're no longer
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: a tourist, and you're a little bit more of a traveler. Sure,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: that's always the goal, it is, and so we really
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: enjoyed that aspect of it. But there were days where
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: we would wake up in the morning and you kind
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: of say, well, what do you want for lunch? And
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: we'd get in the dinghy and we'd go fish and
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: spearfish and get lunch and dinner. And then that was
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: your thing, you know, amazing.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: And then just that amount of quality time together with
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: your wife, I mean it just had to have formed
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: an inseparable bond. Either it was going to be something
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: that you got done with the trip and you realize
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: I don't really want to be with this person, or
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: you realize that, yeah, this is the person I want
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: to be with for the rest of my life.
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's a you know, it was a thirty six
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: foot sailboat, which you know living space that probably turned
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: it into a twenty foot tube and so it's not
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: a lot of living space. Connex box basically, Yeah, it's
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: like living in a connex a lot. It's a luxurious
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: connext but that was the amount. What was the beam
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: on it. I think so it's thirty six foot long.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: I think that that had a I think that had
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: a twelve foot beam.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so a little bit wider than a Connext.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so you go down below and there was a
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: nice couch on either side, and then a V berth,
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: which is like a master state room up in the front,
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: literally shaped like a V. And so that's where we
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: would primarily sleep in the V berth, and that was
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: our bedroom, and we had, you know, there was a
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: chest of drawers built into the boat, and a nice
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: closet and a nice bathroom. But you were you knew
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: everything about each other pretty quickly.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh that's so amazing.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great talking specifically about cruising in that area.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: What what was the most challenging thing that happened for
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Amy and you during that trip? And then also what
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: was the thing that you brought you took aways the
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: most endearing, like your maybe your favorite moment, what was
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: your most challenging moment?
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: What was your most favorite moment from that cruising?
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was good questions. Try not to think about
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: it too much in the sense of time, but you know,
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: I think some of the weather, some of the weather
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: could get pretty challenging. We had a we had a
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: few we had a few instances where the weather was
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: was pretty rough. We had one storm that uh that
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: knocked us down. We had a full knockdown where that
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: puts uh, that puts the spreader, so the spreader tip
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: went into the water. And so you know, a keelboat
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: most of the time they're going to pop back up,
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: and it did. You know, we recovered from it pretty
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: pretty quickly. You know, we got knocked down, we'd rounded
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: up and you know, it was over in an instant.
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: But while it was happening, it was in slow motion. Yeah, terrifying,
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: and it was Yeah, it was pretty good. I mean,
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: when you race, when you race dinghy's, that happens all
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: the time, sure, right, so you're used to the boat
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: either capsizing or near capsizing, and you're used to that
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: movement of the boat. It usually doesn't happen with a
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: big keelboat. So when it did, my instincts went right
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: back to racing dinghies and we you know, we round
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: it up and we popped out of it and we
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: kept on sailing. While it was happening, it was probably
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: more terrifying five minutes after it had happened. Because you
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: realize what just happened, you evaded serious situation. When it
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: was happening, You're just like, oh, this, here's how you
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: here's how you get out of it.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Right, So when you say rounding up, you just like
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: spun the wheel basically to get the boat to turn.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you head up into the wind, got it. And
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: luckily you know that the spreader went into the water,
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: that the sail never went into the water. I mean
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: the sale touched the water. But what can really happen
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: to make that a really dangerous situation is when the
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: if the mainsail was to go far enough into the
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: water that now it's scooping water because now it becomes
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: a big water weight, sure, and then it's going to
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: hold you down. And then if it holds you down,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: now you're going to have water start to come into
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: the boat. It's going to come in and and then
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: if the water gets up over the hatchway and goes
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: down below, then that's really really bad. Yeah. But we
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: were able to you know, we we blew the main sheet,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: let it out all of the way, headed up into
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: the wind and popped right out of it. So it
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: was it was very eventful, but it was it was
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: you know, resolved pretty quickly.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you told me another story about waking up
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: in the morning and stepping into a foot or so
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: of water in the bottom of the boat.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: Oh. Yeah, we almost sank twice.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: So the rounding up was the worst one. And the
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: two near sinkings were incidental.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the two near sinkings were incidental. One one near sinking.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: We were, we were underway and it was it was
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: absolutely gorgeous day and we were on a you know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: we were on Port tac We were on a nice
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: you know, broad reach, and we were I think we
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: were doing eight and a half knots and we were
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: just ripping, ripping along for that boat. It was fast
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: and just everything was perfect. And we when we were
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: underway like that, we always had our alarm set for
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: twenty minutes. Every twenty minutes we would check gauges, you know,
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: look around the boat, check for any problems. And you
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: got into such a rhythm of it that it was
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: good to maintain and you know, prevent bad things from happening.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: This was such a beautiful day that I think we
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: actually like started to fall asleep in the cockpit while
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: we're just like ripping along. It was gorgeous and uh.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: And so then one of us got, you know, wanted
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: to drink of water or something. We went downstairs and
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: we stepped into near you know, probably shin deep water. Whoa,
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: and we're like, oh, we got a problem. So we
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: turn out all the bilge pumps and got the water
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: evacuated pretty quickly, in under five minutes. And then I
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: think we had we had three or four bilge pumps
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: on that boat. Redundancy and bilge pumps for sailboats is
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: a great idea. And we even had a we have
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: a we had a bilge pump built into the engine
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: where we we had a lever that you could convert
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: the raw water intake for the engine.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: It makes a lot of sense.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so instead of pulling from the ocean to cool
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: the engine, you're totaling from the bilge.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: That's brilliant.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: Your engine just became a huge builge pump.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: That's brilliant. So you use the water pump of the
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: engine to.
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: Evacuate the bilch.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: That's amazing.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And that that really makes it fast because that's
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: that's a lot of horsepower bilge pump, and so you
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: throw that over and then you and then you've got
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: to got to monitor it and put it back to
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: raw water, you know, before you go dry on the bilge.
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: But that was a great failsafe for us. And then
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: we just started looking for where the water is coming from,
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: and it turned out that it was just one of
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: our It was actually coming from a bilge pump hose.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: It was you know, looped way up to be an
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: anti siphon, but the heel of the boat and the angle,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: the everything kind of worked out perfectly to actually put
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: that anti siphon loop underwater. While we were sailing at
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: that particular you know, all those situations, the water just
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: came right back in through the bilge pump. And then
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: I think after that I installed check valves and everything,
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: so like a one way valve, a one way valve. Yeah,
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: it makes sense, that's how you figure that out.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: So then what was the what was that? Maybe it
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: was also that magical moment too of sailing that way,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: But when you think back on all of that time
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: and the time on the islands and with the locals
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: and everything else, what was the what's the one thing
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: that Amy and you look back on like that was
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: literally magic.
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: You know, I think I think it was opportunity to
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: meet and spend time with people, you know, people that
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: we normally wouldn't get to experience and you know, say
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: you're their day to day life, right, And so we
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: found the people who lived in the Caribbean to be
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: gracious and you know, very hospitable and welcoming. It gave
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: us a lot of appreciation for a lot of the
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: things that we you know, you're coming from. You know,
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: Chicago has a big city and everything's at your fingertips,
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: and now you're in an environment where you're meeting people
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: who live in the in the Caribbean full time. And
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: again it was twenty years ago, so it was a
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: different place. And you know, they waited for the mailboat
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: to come around once a week, and they were very
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: self sufficient, and you know, the mailboat was also the
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: supply boat. And then they were you know they you
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: know that kind of subsist on fishing and uh and
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: then they get hit with hurricanes once a year.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Sure, you know so and shockingly they are all a
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: lot happier, it seems like than the people in a
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: big city.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a there was a lot of there's
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: a lot of comparison to that anyways. So yeah, that
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: was one of the things we really enjoyed, is just
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: to get to meet different people from around the world.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: And you'd meet people who they had sailed over from
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: Europe and they had done in a lane and crossing
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: where they had been out just circumnavigating, and they're out
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: they're true travelers. And then you'd also meet the people
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: who were down there on vacation and they had chartered
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: a boat for a week. Sure, and those the people
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: that did that, they were approaching their experience completely different.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: Right, They're much more on the schedule.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: And they were on the schedule. They had their list
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: of experiences that they wanted, and they were kind of
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: expecting all those experiences, and they're kind of going down
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: the checklist and moving, you know, at one hundred miles
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: an hour, where we were just kind of day to day.
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: You'd take what you got and you know, experience it
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: that way.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Sure, So bringing kind of this idea of cruising full
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: circle back to overland travel, which is something that you've
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: also done a lot of what comparisons would you draw
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: between sailboat cruising and overlanding and also what things did
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: you learn in sailboat cruising that you think really translated
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: well to overland travel that really actually prepared you to
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: do well in a vehicle as well.
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the main comparisons
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: that I've always made to, you know, vehicle based overlanding
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: and vehicle based adventure to exploring by boat, whether it's
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: a sailboat or a motor boat, is I think in
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: some ways overlanding is easier when it comes to preparation
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: and dealing with adverse situations. And part of the reason is,
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: let's say you get a flat tire in your truck.
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: You can stop, you can get out, you can walk around,
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: you can you allow your environment to stop. You know,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: it's what we used to say, you know, brew a
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: cup of tea sure, and then deal with the problem.
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: And then, as you had just experienced, you know, crossing
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: the Pacific, there's no stopping stop, there's there's no getting
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: out of the car. You know, there's your your.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: If the car cadges on fire, you can run away
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: from it. If the boat catg is on fire, you're
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: swimming in the middle of the ocean.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a problem.
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: So you know, it's a completely different environment. And so
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: you're surrounded by water. You can't just step off, take
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: a walk. You can't. The boat is in constant even
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: if you were to heave two, which is a is
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: a way of kind of putting a sailboat into a
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: safety position where it's not it's not getting it's kind
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: of like hitting pause. But even going into safety position
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: and going and heaving too, you're still moving and you're
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: still still dealing with that type of an environment. And
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: so when you know, dealing with adverse situations on a boat,
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: whether it be on a racing boat or a cruising boat,
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: when I got to overlanding and bad stuff happens, I'm like, well,
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: this is easy, yeah, right, because I know that you know,
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: I'm likely not going to die, whereas on a boat,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: I'm like there's more of a chance to die. Well.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: And also, we're land based humans, right, I mean, we're designed,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: we're made to be to operate on the land and
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: in the water. We're very much a fish out of water.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: And because of that, even when we stopped in the
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: middle of the Pacific during the crossing and we were
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: completely be calmed, the Pacific was this swimming pool, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: we decided to all jump off the boat, and I
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: remember I jumped into the Pacific. Actually it was probably
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: the second or third time that I jumped in, but
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: I decided to really dive in, so I dove as
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: deep as I could get. And this is the boat's
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: far off the water, so it was a pretty and
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: I was up on and I was up on the
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: lifeline rail and I jumped in, probably ten feet above
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: the water, and I remember diving in and plunging, and
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: within moments I went from this very warm, very pool
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: like surface to it getting rapidly colder, and seeing all
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: of the light rays kind of descending down into the
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: depths of this blackness. This transition from this light, very
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: turquoise blue, to this darker blue to total darkness down
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: below me. I realized very quickly that I am I
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: don't belong I don't belong here. I'm not going I
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: can't survive here. And it wasn't it wasn't a bad feeling.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: It was more of just this recognition about how power
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: powerful the ocean is and about how small we are,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: and even on a fifty two foot Expedition class sailboat,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: we were very very small, and we were very very vulnerable.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Of Course, I liked that because it's, yeah, that's how
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: I see the world, and it's how I choose to
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: experience the world. It was also very real that in
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: a vehicle you can hit the pause button, or even
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: if you are moving around and you're solving problems, you're
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: doing it in an environment that's totally natural for a
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: human to do it in. Whereas if you're having to
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: dive in to change out a prop, or if you're
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: having to dive in and fix the rudder, or if
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: you're having to dive in and do some other repair
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: to the boat in the middle of the ocean, that's
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: a very foreign place to.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Be literally out of your element. Yeah, it's I think
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: it gives you an appreciation for the different situations that
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: you could be in. But you know, when we dove
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: in it, it was a mirror. It was a mirror, gorgeous, gorgeous.
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: That was sixteen thousand feet of water, right, which is
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: which is crazy to try to comprehend.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: And I was trying to remember we were close to
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: one thousand miles from Hawaii, and we were definitely a
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: thousand miles from Alaska and the shore of California.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we were out there.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: We were way out there.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: I mean it was just about in the middle of well,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: we were in that Pacific high.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: Really the only thing that I can went overlanding, the
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: only thing that I've only time I've ever really felt
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: that same that same feeling of remoteness and kind of
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: dependence on your vehicle, and is when you're crossing a desert.
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: A lot of places that we we overland, you've got,
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: you know, the temperatures, the terrain. You could you could
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: hike out if you really needed to. You know, you could.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: You could walk. It might take you a couple of
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: days to walk back to where you came from, but
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: you could do it crossing deserts, you know, even if
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: it was just you know, a couple of years ago,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: we went into the Altar Desert down in Mexico, and
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: you get to a point where you realize that if
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: you needed to walk out, you're probably not going to
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: make it.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: It's too far, it's too far.
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: The conditions that you know you're gonna you're gonna get
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: exhausted trying to walk through the sand. The heat is
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: going to get you before anything else that was that
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: same feeling that you get where you realize that that
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: vehicle is your lifeline, like a traveling sailboat to be
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: your lifeline in the ocean.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that and any of the Arctic or the polar stuff.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: It's very similar.
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. You know, when you're driving across the Greenland ice sheet,
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: you know that's probably worse than the desert as far
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: as your survivability.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: True, and it's a rare situation. That was probably as
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: close as I felt to that remoteness of being in
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: the middle of the Pacific. So it's interesting comparing the
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: two because I did notice also on the boat that
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: there were these daily inspections, which is something that I've
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: learned is so important with vehicle based overlanding, is that
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: before you start your day, when you're still in camp,
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: you check the vehicle out, you crawl underneath it, you
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: go through your inspection, you check your fluids, you check
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: your systems to make sure that everything is working properly
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: before you head out for the day of travel. And
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: it's amazing what you find when you do those daily inspections.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: And that's something that we did religiously on the boat,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: and we were so lucky to have Kevin Ryan along,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, because that is a wizard. He is literally,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: for those that are listening, if you ever wanted to
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: build an expedition's sailboat, this is the guy to call.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: And what's the name of his business.
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: It's Outbound Yacht Services and Data Point.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's truly amazing at that whole process. I
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: mean he impressed me not only as a mechanic and
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: as an upfitter, but also as a traveling companion as well.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Everybody on the trip was just wonderful. But it was
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: really interesting to see how Kevin's mind work in the
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: same way that we have to solve problems with overland
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: travel as well. So I thought the daily inspections were
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: really important. And then we also had these weekly routines
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: of going through and changing filters and checking on the desalinators,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: and so when you do a deeper dive into these
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: systems that we rely on a day to data basis,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: a daily inspection is really just a quick check of
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: all of the critical systems on the vehicle. Then you
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: have these wely checks where you're actually looking at the batteries,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: you're actually checking connections, you're actually pulling out the vault
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: meter and making sure that things are working properly on
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: the vehicle, and you have a you have a list
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: of systems that you're going to go down and check.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: And that's what we had to do on the boat.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: And I found that that was a great reminder of
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: how that vigilance is so important when we get really remote.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: So I think that was a really good one.
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: It is it's a it's a form of preventative maintenance,
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: and it really helps you to catch the problems before
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: they get too big, if they're developing at all. That
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: brings back to the similarities. One of the things I've
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: always found was a similarity between a sailboat and at
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: least an expedition grade sailboat and an overland vehicle. They're,
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: you know, usually twelve volt system based. You have a
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: confined amount of space, so the gear that you bring
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: with you is limited, the amount of weight that you
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: can bring with you is limited because just as you
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: want you don't want to overland or overload an overlanding
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: vehicle to optimize performance, you don't want to overload a
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: sailboat to optimize performance.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Remember when we left Long Beach, I mean we were
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: right at the we're pretty heavy the water line.
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: We had five guys with all the gear, including mountaineering
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: gear because you know, to go play on land, and skis,
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: skis and snowboards and surfboards. And I think we had
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: enough food for four years. We did. We had so
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: that we had three months of dehydrated food for five people, right,
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: which is a lot of food.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: Well, and that was just the dehydrated food. Plus we
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: had all of the other food that we brought.
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: Had a lot of canned food, and we had a lot.
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: So I'm not complaining because we ate great.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: And once we started catching fish then life got really
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: really We eat sushi every day.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: It was amazing. It was so amazing.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: But you know, we were like when you know, planning
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: for the electrical even because you know, in the vehicle,
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: it's kind of like when you're when you're pulling into
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: camp and you're calculating the amount, how big your battery
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: should be, and what type of power you should have
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: to run your fridge and maybe charge your computer and
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: your cameras and all that. We had the same thing
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: on the boat because you know, when you're sailing, if
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: the wind is good enough and the conditions are good
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: enough you're sailing just under sail, and we had we
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: had a wind generator and we had.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: That only that only gives you know, what was it
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: eight eight, ten, twelve, fifteen amps something like that.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: Ye, isn't much at the peak, it's about fifteen amps.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: So that's really good wind, you know, and twenty knots
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: of wind you're getting that. We had a hydrogenerator, which
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: was I think those are really cool.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, five six amps. It wasn't much out of that.
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but that that's one of the reasons we you know,
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: we worked with battle borne batteries, right, and we put
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: in a whole new battery bank into the boat in
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: preparation for the demands that we were going to have
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: because we were not only running all the electronics on
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: the boat, radars, we had a we had a satellite
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: satellite antenna, so we had we had constant Internet access
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: on the boat. Granted it was it was low speed,
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: but the power consumption overall demanded a new system. That's
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: where the battle borne batteries really really shined. Yeah.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: It seemed that the advantage of lithium for sailing is
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: again there's more energy density for the same space, and
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: then you've also gained the advantage of a lot less weight.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: So as I recall, you guys had about a forty
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: percent increase in the total available amperage and you actually
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: gained some spaceback on the boat. As I remember Kevin
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: showing me the space, and it was just really optimized
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: because of being able to move towards lithiums.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we had more power with a smaller footprint.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Really impressive to see how that all worked.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: And we needed all of that because again, five people
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: charging devices running all of the garment navigation systems that
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: we had on the boat, which there were multiples of those,
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: and we actually started playing I remember we started playing
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: around with if you turn this on, I mean, if
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: you turn on the water heater, the electric water heater
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: that was it started hammering on one hundred and ten amps,
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: whereas if it was just the basic navigation of the
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: boat with a lot of the screens turned off, we
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: could get down to twelve, fourteen, fifteen amps total.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: You can take it down to a trickle.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: And that was really that was really cool to see,
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: and again came back so much to the overland side
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: of things, as well, and that also brings this whole
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: idea of the expedition sailing and the fact that crossing
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: oceans feels a lot like crossing continents, and there are
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: similarities and there are differences. One of the big benefits
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: of the boat is you have a lot of hot water,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: so we could actually take that part of it was
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: luxurious to take hot showers, very very comfortable showers, very
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: comfortable sleeping, huge galley to prepare great food. So we
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: all chipped in to make these great meals and we
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: were catching fish, which is again we don't typically we're
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: not typically able to collect game when we're on land overlanding,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: whereas when you're out in the sailboat, you're taking this
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: amazing bounty from the ocean.
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: Well, there are people who they incorporate some form of
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: hunting or fishing in to their overlanding. They do, but
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: it's just you have to stop to do it. Right where,
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: we were trolling a couple of lines for the entire time,
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: and you know, every couple of days you'd get the
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: gift of a tuna. It was incredible and you never
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: had to stop to really deal with.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, bluefin today, yellowfin tomorrow, and then you guys ended up.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: I stepped off in Dutch Harbor, which incidentally happens to
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: be where they filmed The Deadliest Catch and these other shows,
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: and we made it to the Baring Sea, and then
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: you guys continued on and talk a little bit about
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: what were some of the highlights of cruising along the Illusions.
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So the the Illusions is a I think it's
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: a very unique place on the planet. If you were
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: to look at a map. A lot of people don't
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: know the Illusions by the name, but if you were
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: to look at a map of and see a picture
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: of Alaska, it's got that sweeping tail that goes off
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: to the west. That sweeping tail is the Allusion Island chain,
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: and it goes out I want to say, eight hundred
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: miles from the eight hundred or one thousand miles from
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: the Lastan peninsula. So from Prince William Sound you're out
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: another call one thousand miles to at Two Island. At
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: Two Island is the last island in the Aleution chain
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: that's part of the United States.
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: And it's on the other side of the International Dateline, right.
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: It is, So it has two geographic significant qualities. It's
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: at one time it's so it's it's the furthest West
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: point in the United States, and at the same time
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: it's the furthest easternmost point in the United States in
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: the other hemisphere. Sure, so it's got those two things
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: about the other side of the date line.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: And then so that it makes Alaska the furthest North,
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: the Furthest East, and the Furthest West right interesting.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: And so we crossed the International date Line twice going there,
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: which was pretty neat, and it was interesting to see
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: the different mapping programs and everything. And I remember we
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: had we were all running garment in reaches and when
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: we got to the International dateline, we fell off the
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: edge of the Earth because the garment map stopped because
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: it's flat. Right, Yeah, that's when you sale you learned
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: that the earth's flat. And so but even though we
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: actually took the Great Circle route to get up to
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: the Bearing Sea, which in itself is a pretty amazing
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: calculation of navigation, right, So it's it proves that going
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: in an arc is faster and shorter than going in
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: a straight line. Oh interesting, Sure, so we navigated by
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: the Great Circle route. But yeah, with the garment piece,
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: you fell off the map and you had to scroll
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: all the way back east past Russia to see yourself
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: to get back to get back on the map. So
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: I thought that was interesting.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: But what you got to the other side of the
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: flat Earth, Yeah, you just turned the page turns.
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: So the the other significance of Atu Island is that
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: it's it was during World War Two. It was invaded
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: by the Japanese and it was actually occupied occupied by
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: the Japanese, and so there was a war that now
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: kind of referred to as the Silent War or the yeah,
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: I think the Forgotten War. And so there was a
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: there was a war being fought in the Allutian Islands
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: during World War two that at the time that it
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: was happening, the US government denied that it was happening.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: And then but then after you know, I mean, it
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: only took about two months and then they kind of said, yeah,
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: here's what's going on. But it was it was pretty
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: devastating to the allusions in the sense that a lot
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: of the the the native population that lived in the
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: Aleutian Islands was was taken away some camp. Yeah, they
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: were taken in pow camps in Japan, and then others
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: were evacuated to United States, but that wasn't really or
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: the United States mainland, but that really wasn't any better
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: because the living conditions that they were put in were
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: nearly they're.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: Just very possible.
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, very very impossible. So you know, some people
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: got to move back. But you know, right now atu
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: is uninhabited. There's a small naval base or it's more
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: like a US Coast Guard base in Massacre Bay that
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: was that was abandoned in twenty ten, and so we
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: got to see that firsthand, and that was that was
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: quite bizarre, so cool. And then we got to explore
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: the island quite a bit. We go for hikes every
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: day that we were there, and then and then we
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: went around the corner to a bay called Holtz Bay,
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: which is really it's got to be one of the
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: most spectacular anchorages I've ever been in. You are, it's
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: a wonderful holding bottom kind of a muddy clay, so
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: it's great for anchoring. And then you're surrounded on three
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: sides by these wonderful big mountains with snow at the top.
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: And there's one of the things out there is it's
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: foggy every day, and you know, if it's not foggy,
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: you wait about thirty minutes, and it's foggy, you wait
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: another thirty minutes, and the fog goes away, and then
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: it's just cycles. And so a Holtz Bay is where
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: we went skiing, and so you could look up in
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: the mountains and there's snow everywhere. And we were late,
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: really really late in the season for it, but we
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: were able to find a couple of cool wars that
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: still had snow in them, and we were able to
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: hike up and get some turns in and you know,
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: so it's August, uh, you know, August skiing in on
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: at Two Island in the middle of the Allusions or
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: at the end of the Allusions.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: And I remember you telling me a story that you
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: went down below and you come back up top and
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: a couple of the guys on the boat they've got
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: all their ice axes and they got all their crampons
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: and everything, and they're getting into the dinghy to go
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: to go climb up an iceberg. Yeah, and then and
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: then what what changed their minds?
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: So so this was this was out in front of
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: the Columbia Glacier, and the Columbia Glacier is the fastest
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: moving glacier at least in the United States. Possibly, I'm
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: sure about that, but that's over in Prince William Sound.
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: You got to think that by by the time we
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: get to this point in the trip, we were all
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: very comfortable with risk. Sure, we were getting towards the
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: end of the trip. We were getting closer two months
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: almost right, yeah, about two months of a trip, and
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: we were getting closer to populated areas. We were getting
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: closer to the end of the trip. So the risk
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: factor was was going down, because when you're out in
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: the illusions, you're completely on your own. Where we were
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: at the Columbia Glazer. Sure you could be in Valdiz
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: in a day. And and so I came up on deck.
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: I went down to get a we're going to do
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: a drone flight. So I went down to get the
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: drone ready. And I came up and a couple of
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: guys had life jackets and ice axes in their hands,
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: and they were holding their crampons because they're gonna put
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: the crampons on their boots in a minute. And they
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: were lowering the dinghy and they were three minutes away
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: from kind of going off towards this iceberg that's floating.
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: And mind you, these are really bad ideas, like this
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: is stuff that you just don't do you really, you know.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: You well, if you survive them, they're great idea, they're
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: great ideas.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: It's what a cool picture, right, but they're really bad ideas.
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: And so as they were about to step into the dinghy,
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: this fifteen foot section of this iceberg just calved off
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: and crashed into the water and it sounded like thunder
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: and it sent a wave towards the boat. And these
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: guys they couldn't get their life jackets off fast and
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: they're like, okay, we're not doing that change change of planet. Know.
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: But but when we were up there, you know, we
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: would see we'd see whales, different types of whales. Yeah,
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: we saw it. We got not intentionally close, but just
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: based on the trajectories of where we were both going.
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: You know, the boat was on one course and we
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: looked off to the left and there were three killer whales.
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: Who was I'm assuming that it was a It was
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: a set of parents and a and a baby, and
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: you could see the baby was this tiny little killer whale.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: And then there was a kind of a medium sized
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: orca next to it, and then there was a big
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: orca kind of you know, flanking them, moving around and
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: kind of guarding and uh and they we just kind
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: of started to converge naturally, and and we probably got
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: about fifty yards away from one another. And then the
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: biggest orca, which we're you know, we kind of assumed
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: that his dad, maybe it was mama much much about
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: killer whales, but the tail went up and it just
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: went smack smack smack on the water, and we all
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: of us were like, okay, we need to leave. It
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: was just a clear warning that we were too close.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: And so they went in the other direction and we
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: went in the other direction. But that was that was
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: a pretty neat encounter. And so that there's birds everywhere, constant,
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: you know, surrounded by birds the entire time, a lot
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: of whales feeding and then a lot of good fishing.
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: You know. We were in an anchorage and we had
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: we had set anchor. We were only there for twenty
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: minutes or so, and and Rusty had thrown out a
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: thrown out a lure on a rod and it was
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: just a little jig. It looked like a crappy jig,
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: you know, something that you'd kind of get panfish with
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: he hooked up, he hooked into something and it just
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: wouldn't stop pulling, and we'd get it a little bit closer,
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: and then it would run and we were like, this
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: thing is pretty big. We don't know what it is.
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: And we got it up, and he was trying to
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: figure out like where the fish was, because we saw
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: something in the water, but he didn't look like a fish.
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: We didn't we were expecting this little panfish or something.
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: We pulled up one hundred and twenty five pound halib.
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: It wow, and it was so big that we had
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: to put it in the dinghy to clean it because
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: we couldn't get up. We couldn't bring it up on
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: the boats big and so it was about one hundred
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: and twenty five pounds. We got about eighty pounds of fish, incredible,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: eighty pounds of meat off of that fish, and we
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: ate it for a month. It still had some left
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: over at the end of the trip. We and then
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: not only that, but we started trading it along the
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: way because we weren't very we couldn't catch salmon very well.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: We had all his halbit. We'd trade the salmon fishermen
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: for Alibi.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Hey, that's what it comes down to. Yeah, that's great,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: nothing wrong with bartering.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So looking back at two months on crossing the Pacific,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: and of course the goal is to stage the boat
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: and then move up through the Bearing Sea, through the
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Bearing Straight and into the Northwest Passage and hopefully cross
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: over the top of Canada. But at this point in
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: the journey, what were some of your key takeaways from that?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: What were the things that you really learned maybe that
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: surprised you, Things that relate to overlanding that you think
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: are really important mindsets to have.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know that. I think the thing that stands
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: out to all of us, you know, the five of
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: us that were involved, including yourself, was the team. We
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: never had any arguments, We never had any blow ups,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: we never had any emotional breakdowns. It doesn't mean that
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: every day was you know, sunshine and unicorns, but you know,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: we never had any issues. Sure, you know, at least
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: personal issues with five people living in those confined quarters
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: and so everybody was on their game. Everybody was you know,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: part of the objective, and everybody really was interested in
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: working together as a team. And I think that that
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: was a really big takeaway because whether you're doing an
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: expedition on land or on the on ice, or in
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: a desert or you know, through the forest, that teamwork
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: is critical. You know. For an overlanding trip, it becomes
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: even more critical because you've got multiple usually multiple vehicles
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: that usually involves multiple ownership of different vehicles, trying to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: get everybody with the same objective. Right on a boat,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: you've got the same objective because you're all going the
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: same place. That's right, you get through.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: Us mutiny, right, I guess that's what happened hundreds of
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: years ago. People like, actually, that island over there looks
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: really good right now, you know.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: But on an expedition with three or four trucks, you know,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: if somebody wants to leave one day and go drive
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: the other direction, they can, and that creates a lot
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: of that becomes an issue sure where you're at and
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: what you're doing, so the people involved, I think is
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: pretty critical. And also learning to be that close to
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: other people for that amount of time and you know,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: just be cool about everything and be.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah and give people space and start to learn what
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: makes them feel a little bit better. If there mate
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: you can tell that they're off a little bit. We
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: always were checking in on each other. We did weekly
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: medchecks as well, which I think was really important. Josh
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: would make some insane elk sausage burrito and hand it
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: up to you into the cockpit while you're on watch. Yeah,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: it's literally it was literally like magic, and everybody was
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: mindful in that way. Rusty would make fresh bread or
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: Kevin would would handle something on the boat that made
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: life that much easier, and everybody was really mindful. And
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: I think that that was one of the takeaways that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: I had was if you take care of the boat,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: and if you take care of each other, your chances
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: of success are very high. And that certainly applies to
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: overlanding as much as it does of sailing.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that I love to ask
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: on these podcasts, and I have a thousand more questions
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: that I should be asking you even about your overland trips,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: but one of the things that I love to ask
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: is kind of what top couple books that you have
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: read in the last couple decades that really stood out
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: to you, something even recently that you've read.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: You know that's not a good answer for that question,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: and you know as much as I should read. I'm
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: not a big reader.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: That's okay too.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah. You know, for example, I think everybody else on
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: this past trip that we just got done doing. You know,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: you were on the boat for a month, and I
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: think it was voracious. You read what a dozen books.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Five printed books and three audiobooks?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, And I read one and a half
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: books in two months, and everybody else was in that
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: eight to ten or plus range. And so I just
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: I don't read a lot. I tend to consume written
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: material in smaller chunks.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: But I do remember on the boat, to your defense,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: that when we were getting closer to the islands, or
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: if there was something that we needed to prepare for,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: like we were doing some training to prepare us for
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: bad weather, you were deep into the into the books
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: about how to do that. So it seems like nonfiction
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: technical volumes have a lot of appeal to you.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. You know, I
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: like for sailing and even for overlanding, it's you know,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: there's there's certain books that you can turn to that
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: they've got all the answers, and you can go in,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: go what you need, and then and then get out.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: You're not necessarily reading a book for a week. So,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: you know, I've got a whole collection of marine sailing
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: expendit books. You know, a lot of Chapman type stuff,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: who's an author, and a number of others that are
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: They're very specific, right, it's about there's a I have
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: the weather book, and I have the anchoring book.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: The anchoring book is insane. Yeah, it was a giant
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: book about anchoring. Yeah, it's got to be two inches thick.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: It's all about how to anchor. Yeah, it was so cool.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: Most people think you just throw the anchor over. Far
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: from the truth. We were on Kiska Island and we
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: were anchored there and we had just gotten in and
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: we were getting ready to go to shore, and we
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: were going to go there were two ponds that we
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: were going to go fish, these ponds for salmon, and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: the weather turned and all of a sudden, we've got
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: I think it was well, the weather turning, we just
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: kind of hunkered down, so we decided not to go ashore.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: And then we only had a single anchor down. And
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: then we woke up about two thirty in the morning
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: and it was blowing forty knots and the anchor was dragging,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: and so we spent you know, we all got right
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: on it. We all knew what to do, and we
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: rigged a second anchor, which now stays rigged all the time.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: And we had meant to have it rigged all the time,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: but we just hadn't gotten to it yet. So no
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: better time. Two three in the morning in the dark
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: with sideways rain that literally stung face. And so we
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: rigged the second anchor. We put the second anchor out,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: and then we had anchor watch for the rest you know,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 4: the rest of the day for the next twelve hours
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: or so. But you know, it's those little skills that
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: you learn by reading those books, you know, And so
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: the I like to dive in to a book, get
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: what I want and need out of it, and then
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: go do it, Go do it and get on with it. Right,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: So I'm read novels. It's okay, Yeah, no, there's but
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of value to that. I always wish
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: that I, you know, would would read more and just
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: never quite do.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: I know, you went and sailed the Caribbean for years, right. Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I always really like to
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: ask in this podcast is what kind of advice would
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: you or what would be the number one piece of
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: advice that you would give someone that was looking at
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: going and doing cruise sailing or living on a sailboat,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: or looking to travel around the world in a vehicle.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: What would you what would you tell them?
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: You know, I think the most immediate thing that comes
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: to mind is to make the decision to go and
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: then go and don't get hung up on everything that's
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: going to hold you back. And it's really easy to
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: do because you know, adult life has a lot of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: different things that that it throws at you. But if
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: you can make the decision to go, and that allows
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: yourself so you've made the decision, now you can start
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: the planning and and I think a critical part of
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: the planning is training. You know, we all know how
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: to drive a vehicle. For most people know how to
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: drive a vehicle. That's saying a lot, Yeah, we're all
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 4: the best driver in the world, right, and so a
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: lot of people know how to drive a vehicle in
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: the sense of, you know, they can they can make
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: go straight down the road. Maybe you know, you want
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: to get some training on you know, how do you
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: drive a four wheal drive vehicle properly? You know, on
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: the trail and deal with adverse conditions, and then that's
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: just going to keep you safer, going to preserve the vehicle,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 4: and it's going to allow you to travel further. Similarly,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: and maybe a little bit more important, is learning how
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: to sail, because you know, we've all grown up, you know,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: in in cars or trucks being driven. You know, you
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: grew up watching your parents drive the vehicle, right, and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: it kind of comes, you know, pretty intuitively. Not the
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: same for a sailboat. And the sailboat has a little
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: bit riskier you know, consequences for messing up, and so
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: you know, take a take a sailing class. I'd suggest
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: if you can try to learn how to sail dinghies
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: before you worry about sailing bigger boats. The dinghy's are
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: going to teach you a lot more, a lot faster,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: because they're much more responsive. Everything you do on a
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: dinghy has an immediate reaction, and so you know, you
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: have to you learn how to manage a boat much
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: more efficiently if you start learning on dinghies, and then
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: from there you you learn about big boats, and the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: big boats tend to have you know, more systems and
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: they're also more powerful, so there's certain things you have
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: to be careful of there, and so you know, kind
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: of graduate into a bigger boat. There's lots of classes
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: available for kids, so there's junior sailing programs all over
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: the country, and there's lots of adult sailing programs around
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: the country as well, and you know, as an example,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: there's lots of great benefits of being part of an
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: adult sailing program, and sure you get to meet somebody
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: as amazing as my wife, and so there's there's really
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: good things about those and you can find them in Colorado,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: you can find them on the coast, you can find
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: them in Chicago. They're really all over the country, whether
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: it's through a club or a yacht club. There's even
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: a there's even a sailing program in Phoenix, Arizona, which
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: is in the middle of the desert, right, so lots
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: of opportunities to learn and then from there, you know,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: if you were to buy a sailboat, it's like buying
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: approach it the same way that if you were to
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: properly approach buying an overland vehicle. You know, figure out
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: where you intend to go, the type of sailing that
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: you intend to do, and then there's different boats are
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: going to provide a better solution for the different environments
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: that you plan to be in. If you're going to
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: go into the Arctic, you're talking about high latitude sailing,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: and the conditions are much different than if you're going
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: to go to the Caribbean. And they're different than if
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: you were to go sail on the coast in Texas
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: or off the coast of San Diego. You know, all
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: those different areas are going to have different demands on
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: a sailboat. You can spend five thousand dollars on a
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: sailboat that you're going to have a ton of fun
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: with and it could take you out to Catalina Island
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: off the coast of California and back and forth and
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: you could have a wonderful time. Or you could throw
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: it on a trailer and you know, take it down
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: to the Sea Cortes, or you could take it to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: your local lake and go sailing and have fun.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And so you're right when you think
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Compared to vehicles, you could take a clapped out sedan
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: and somehow get your way around the world.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: Sure, if you leave with too small.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: Of a sailboat, without the basic safety features and you
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: try to sail around the world, it's probably going to
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: be a very different outcome.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: So that is that is very true.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: And I remember actually, as you were saying about the training,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: I remembered one of the first times that I talked
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: to you about trade about sailing.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: You're like, yeah, you should go do this sailing class.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: And I said, I said, I want to just get
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: on a boat and I just want to go do it.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: That's how I'm gonna learn. I'm just going to go
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: And I remember you laughing at me, just like you
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: are now right, And I'm so glad I got I
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: got training. And it didn't take much.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: You took a you took a basic US sailing adult
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: sailing class. It was the Colgate School, I think is
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: what it was. It was maybe a weekend.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a long It was a long weekend
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: because we also did we went all the way up
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: to to bear Boats.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: So yeah, and you had some bookwork to go along
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: with it, you know, but it was a it was
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: an introductory sailing class. Then you had the opportunity to
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: go on a trip. Granted, there's not a lot of
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: people who get to go on a Pacific crossing. Sure,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 4: and and so you got I feel very fortunate, Well
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: you got, you got you know, years and years of
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 4: the typical sailing experience condensed into a month helped or
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: skill level advanced very quickly, right, and so you know,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: you can still achieve a level of competency to be
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: able to go and either charter boat, say from the
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: moorings or another charter boat company you know down in
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: Ribbean and the Virgin Islands, even off the coast of California,
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: there's lots of charter boat companies that you you really
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: don't need a whole lot of experience a charter boat.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: You need to have a credit card and then they'll
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 4: pretty much give you the boat, sure, you know, but
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: for your own safety, you want to have adequate training.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: To be Sometimes sometimes those systems stop working and and
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: then you need to be able to have a chart
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: and you be able to use a.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: Compass to navigate.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: Not only that, but you know there's I think the
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: one thing the biggest differentiator between overlanding in a vehicle
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: and exploring by a sailboat is the weather. Your overland
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: vehicle it really isn't dependent on the web. You can
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: drive it through a rainstorm. You can kind of go
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: where you want or maybe park it under. You can
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: park right, you could stop, you could park it. You
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: would be just fine. Everything about sailing is contingent upon
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: the web, every piece of the weather, whether it's the
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: wind speed, the waves, the height of the waves, yeah,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 4: the sea state all yeah, the sea state, I mean,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: the duration between waves, currents, tides. All these things that
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: you take for granted on land are going to influence
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: a sailboat and they're going to influence your travel schedule
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: as well.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: And I think that's I think that's why I really
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: enjoyed sailing so much, was it's like overlanding, but way
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: harder and also oddly more comfortable with better food sometimes.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: So it's really an interesting thing to consider. For those
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: that are listening, Please check out Kailani Expedition on Instagram.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: You can see a little bit more about what Brian
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: and I did, and fortunately Rusty Frands was so generous
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: to bring us along, and we had a great crew
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: of Josh and Kevin as well, So check out that adventure.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: Where else can people find more about you and your travels?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: Brian sure so well, certainly through expedition Portal dot com
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: and Overland Journal, and then on Instagram it's at mcvicars
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: on Facebook, I think it's Brian mcvickers. And then for
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: this most recent trip, as Scott mentioned, it's at Kailani
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: Expedition on Instagram and then their website is Kailanivoyage dot com.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an amazing journey, Brian, and thank you
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: so much for recommending that I go. It was a
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: life changing experience. I have had my lowest resting hard
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: rate that I have ever recorded on that trip, so
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: it really I found immense stillness in the chaos of
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: the seas, and it really was a transformative experience for me.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: And I cannot thank you enough for you and Rusty
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: as well for providing me with that opportunity to go.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: And for those that are listening, as Brian said, don't
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: sit in the marina, get in your vehicle or get
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: on your boat and go see the world and we
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: will talk to you next time.