A Quest for Oceanic Nomadhood

In the next 4 years, I hope you will find us living on a catamaran, sailing around the world.

For our family, boating, and water in general, is a central focus of our lives. My husband is the navigator, mechanic and engineer. I am the scientist and web writer, the teacher and the curator of wonder for my 9- and 7-year-old boys. While we have big dreams, we are still saving for a boat and building a content product that we can create that narrates our journey by way of our biggest passions.

If you look at my husband’s YouTube subscriptions, you’ll see every sailing cruiser channel listed. He follows the cruiser forums religiously, looking for the latest tip on what to do as a liveaboard sailor. He can talk for 20 minutes without stopping on the pros and cons of different bottom paints.

My kids are familiar with the differences between the local seals and sea lions, most local seabirds, the tidepool community and three jellyfish species. We haunt the beach in the summer, picking up crabs and keying them out to species, giving them names and then setting them under rocks to see if they’ll stay until our return tomorrow.

My husband and I met long ago on a fishing boat, where I was tasked with collecting data and he was an active commercial fisherman. Banned from fraternizing with our respective jobs, we began dating when my job assignment switched and have been together ever since.

After we had our two youngest children, we began to make a plan to leave traditional life behind and live aboard a boat. We have started creating a passive income by purchasing and fixing up some rental properties. However, we really want to find a way to sail around the world and cover our bills by focusing on what we love best. We have a few more bills to pay and are saving for a boat, but we feel like we are getting closer. Here is a look at some of our focuses we would like to consider when we embark on our journey:

Science, Kids, Travel and Wonder

Our hope to create a sustainable income while we are gone is a blend of four elements. The first is science. We plan to offer ourselves as data collectors to anyone looking for sampling in the areas where we are spending time. Both my husband and I are experienced in data collection and documentation of our methods. We can share our participation (when we are permitted by the entities who need our help) online to help inspire others to participate in citizen science. We also want to start a project of posting microscope pictures of plankton wherever we travel. We see this as a combination of science, art and a mapping project that can be really fun when enough information is collected.

We will be homeschooling with our kids, and we see an opportunity to do some interactive homeschooling that is tied in with our science. We plan to partner with our current school, plus other schools who are interested, and put together videos answering some of the questions that the kids have about our lives and the world around us. While many cruisers are showing videos of their life on board, few create content that is geared toward kids and their excitement about a different way of life or the wonders that we will be seeing around the world. This will include allowing the kids to create their own forms of content to share with the world what they’re most passionate about.

Travel is wrapped in both of the previous elements, but we want to learn as much as we can about the cultures of where we are going. We believe in light footprints when traveling to the homes of others, and our experience cruising would reflect that; we are guests. It is my hope to get stories of life in different locales and look at how it reflects on the different locations we visit. This may be in the form of videos, voiceovers from local storytellers, or narrative blogs. When this is the focus, we will largely try to keep ourselves out of the spotlight and let the locations shine.

Wonder is a two-part element. It will show the best of what is in our natural and manmade worlds, but we also want to highlight the risks to places that we assume to be beautiful and untouched. This element will be photographic or videographic; we may include some infographics regarding risks and interesting facts, but the images should speak for themselves.

We Are Learning

For now, I am working on developing a daily writing habit that helps to build my skills and perhaps an audience. I am hesitant to start a topical site until we have a boat, but I am hoping that this will happen in the next couple years.

This summer, my 9-year-old and I will be taking a video editing class. We plan to take a class per season, to increase our skills in other marketing things like digital photography, GoPro tricks, drone operation, video animation and infographic digital art. In the meantime, we will also be learning other skills for our journey like celestial navigation, remote emergency medical care, small engine repair, offshore sailing and meteorology.

The details about our plans may shift some, but like any nomads, we hope to be open to any opportunity that comes our way, helps our goal and inspires our passions. If we can inspire others in the process, we will be even more grateful.