How we did it
I bought Marutji, a steel Van de Stadt 34
for £39,000, having sold everything I
owned on land. I moved to Australia’s east
coast and lived aboard while I took the
RYA Yachtmaster course. I met Jasna,
then we sailed to Queensland to pick up
stuff from storage and spent the next year
heading south against the wind via
extended stays in the Whitsunday Islands,
the Percy Islands and Tasmania.
We sailed inland up Clarence River and
Brisbane River. Heading north again, weproblem. The way nautical nomads make
their living is as varied as any other group.
In Mexico, we met a French baker who
delivers outrageously priced (and totally
amazing) delicacies to other yachtsmen
every morning. In the Marquesas Islands,
we met a masseur who pampers clients
on their yachts while her scuba-diving
husband cleans their hulls. And let’s not
forget the two Dutch boys who have a still
and produce weapons-grade gin. But
remember: lowering costs and generating
a small income go hand in hand.
Calypso is a fibreglass 1984 Hans Christian 36
Stop setting goals
Take the common cultural habit of
setting goals. While it might be a useful
technique in some instances, it can
often blind us to the fact that goals are
simply inventions of the human mind
and, unlike sea conditions or other
geographical realities, can be changed
in an instant. Wind blowing from an
inconvenient direction? Why not
change course and go somewhere
else? Or go back the way you came
and enjoy that place for a while longer?
It makes little sense to fixate on your
goals: if you do, you might just push
your boat and yourself into dangerous
situations to get ‘there’, which in reality
does not hold any more promise than
anywhere else. Some of the best
experiences are unplanned and this
becomes more common once you set
off on the largely unpredictable path of
the nautical nomad.Quick guide to ‘getting real’
Adjust your attitude
How many times have you read about
a yachting accident in which the story
begins something like: ‘The weather
looked ominous, but I had to be at
work on Monday, so we slipped our
lines...’ or, ‘We left Hamilton Island for
the mainland despite the rudder
problems as Freddie had a flight to
catch...’ or ‘We wanted to meet our
friends for dinner, so rather than wait
outside until morning, we decided to
enter the harbour at night...’
Quite often the cause of the events
that unfolded will be given as ‘heavy
weather’, ‘collision with reef’ or some
engineering or technical culprit, when
it should be listed as ‘attitude problem’.
The sea is indifferent to our plans. Put
your agenda ahead of the sea, go up
against it and see who wins. Getting
real is about learning to appreciate
what is actually happening around us.The original motivation for writing the
book Get Real, Get Gone: How to
Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail
Away Forever... was simply to provide
a long answer for kindred spirits who
asked ‘is it really possible to cruise
the world on a micro budget?’
We self-published and sent a copy
off to our all-time sailing hero Tom
Cunliffe (more out of fandom than
ambition) and were absolutely stoked
when he called it ‘brilliant and
subversive’ and added it to the
recommended reading list of his
magnum opus The Complete Ocean
Skipper. Much to our surprise, Get
Real, Get Gone
has been
Amazon’s
number one
best-selling
sailing book in
the UK, Canada,
Australia and, at
the time of
writing, the US
market.got stuck in the Whitsunday Islands
(because they are great) and sailed east
to the Soloman Islands and the
Louisiaides before selling Marutji for a
small profit.PRACTICAL CRUISING
➜SURPRISE SUCCESS