THE
KNOWLEDGE
Elena Manighetti is
a marketer, writer
and vlogger sailing
Western Europe with
partner Ryan aboard
a Heavenly Twins 26Elena Manighetti and Ryan Osborne earn an income from
their laptops while cruising their catamaran full time
Earn money
while you sail
We’d spent months soul searching, thinking
of ways to quit the rat race and live more
adventurous lives. In the summer of 2016,
on holiday, Ryan and I found ourselves on
a beautiful beach in Mallorca. Suddenly,
the answer to our questions was right in
front of us: a charming yacht anchored in
the bay. On that day, we promised each
other we’d look into the possibility of going
cruising and earning money while sailing.
We spent the next few months reading
cruising magazines, looking at boats for
sale and devouring sailing-related books.
Exactly a year later, in May 2017, we cast
off the lines and started living our dream.
LIVING THE NOMAD LIFESTYLE
We’d heard the buzzwords ‘digital nomad’
before but had never thought much of it.
As soon as we looked into the phenomenon,
we realised that any laptop-based freelance
job could be done remotely. We grew more
and more confident that cruising while
young, on a low budget, working along the
way ‘Pardey style’ was a very real possibility.
Lin and Larry Pardey led the very same
lifestyle from the 1970s onwards, sailing
around the world while earning a living in
different ports through writing. They didn’t
have it easy back then – they had to find
work in each country, fill in the paperwork,
wait months at a time to cash in their
cheques and post off hundreds of pages
of their precious work in foreign post offices.
This remarkable couple is just one
example of the working cruising community.
All over the world, there are average people
leading normal lives on the water while
making a livelihood – from delivery captains
and social media managers, to handymen
and accountants.
While sailing in Western Europe, Ryan
and I met other working cruisers. They
were either finding employment in new
countries for a few months a year on
shore as builders, acupuncturists and
dentists or they were working from their
boats as writers, beauticians and web
developers. Some lived frugally off passive
income, such as renting their home.
Today’s technological advancements
make this lifestyle even more achievable.
This means it’s possible to work on the
go, even while underway, rather than
having to stop in a specific port when
money runs low. It’s a huge advantage
and makes life on board much easier.One of the advantages of
owning a small catamaran is
being able to beach it to dry out