H
ow many times have you heard
the following?: ‘Cruising is
fixing your boat in exotic
locations’; ‘A boat is a hole in
the water that you chuck money into’;
‘BOAT stands for Bring Out Another
Thousand’.
As a youngster growing up in London I
could hardly be blamed for accepting as
gospel truth the inevitability of financial ruin
that came from owning a boat. Like many
others, I thought that seeing the world from
the deck of your own sailboat was a
possibility reserved strictly for millionaires.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
In 2009 my partner, Jasna, and I started
from scratch to build a totally sustainable
and permanent lifestyle at sea. We didn’t
get it right immediately, but we persevered
and a few years later achieved our goal: a
self-financing life afloat.
We enjoy this freedom by keeping our
expenses under r600 a month and doing
all the work on our simple little boat
ourselves.
By 2014 the ability to earn our small
income from the boat meant that we were
free from any geographical ties, so we
chose to head for French Polynesia and
have been living an idyllic life in the South
Pacific ever since.
With the right attitude, by ‘getting real’
about what is truly needed, and leaving
behind everything that is not, it is possible
to write a completely different story.
So what are the practical essentialsrequired for becoming a sea gypsy?
■ The right attitude or the ability to
change. The main thrust of ‘getting real’ is
abandoning the idea that you have to
achieve anything at all other than smiles
(see the panel, top right). Not win races,
cover miles or visit ‘X’ amount of countries.
■ A small, sturdy sea boat designed for sail
(and not just ‘sale’) with a fully-protected
rudder and a decent keel attached over a
goodly portion of the hull. Many boats are
built for the charter market but advertisedas bluewater cruisers. It’s important you
learn to recognise these and have the
confidence to reject them regardless of
what the broker or manufacturer claims, or
how much you like the cushions.
■ Remove unnecessary gear and its
inevitable maintenance and eventual
replacement. Washing machines, dryers,
complicated electronics (particularly
external) generators etc, watermakers,
freezers, outboards, inflatable dinghies- all are unnecessary on a well set-up boat
and keep you in bondage to the chandlery
and the import agent when you should be
drinking rum from coconuts.
■ A bullshit detector set to ‘kill’. For
example, lanolin is a grease that comes
from sheep and has a million uses on a
boat. It costs a couple of quid a tub. But if
you're not careful you can spend six times
that much on a branded lanolin grease in
a fancy tin. The sailor who can identify and
avoid these spending opportunities takes a
massive step towards lowering their costs.
■ Generate a small, sustainable income.
We have several micro-income streams –
we write articles for magazines, do the
occasional yacht delivery and use affiliate
programmes. If you do not know what an
affiliate programme is, there is a great
book called Living a Laptop Lifestyle (see
our website for the link). If you just bought
that, congratulations, you have a great
book and I just made a quid. Now do you
see how affiliate programmes work?
If none of that is your cup of tea, no
Jasna and Rick’s motto is ‘smiles on deck
not miles under the keel’Free your mind... the rest will follow! Author, musician and entrepreneur
Rick Page on the core beliefs that enable his liveaboard existence
Live the dream
for less
CRUISING