September 4, 2015:
The recent days and weeks have been filled with lots of discussions, thinking and stress trying to figure out exactly how we should pursue our goal of wandering the globe. For the most part, we have decided that sailing would the most sustainable long-term option where we can keep our costs fairly low and have a large degree of flexibility and options. But how do we go about it… Just pick up and go buy a boat and figure it out? Are we ready for that? Or do we need more experience and more money? It’s incredibly stressful and difficult trying to figure out how to go about this endeavor.
Right now, we are debating between a few options…
Option A: Sell or rent the condo, get rid of most of our stuff, pack up, and go buy a boat in the Mediterranean. Obviously we we would have a lot more cash to buy a boat if the condo was sold, but renting it out could also provide a fairly reliable source of income each month, so it’s debatable which choice would be better here. Either way, the plan would be to pick up and go. We are thinking that the Mediterranean would be the best spot to go due to the favorable weather and large availability of sailboats. We wouldn’t have to worry about big storms, and it would be easy sailing for a few months or a few years until we felt comfortable to head out to the deep blue sea. Looking online, there also seems to be a quite a few boats available for sale in places like Greece, Italy and Croatia for very good prices.
Option B: Try to get as much experience as we can, then eventually set a point where we feel ready and pack up and go wherever to buy a boat and start our journey. Being that I have only ever been on sailboat during our classes on the Columbia River, this might make a bit less scary to actually go out, get a boat, and sail in the ocean. But it also delays our ultimate goal. We began looking up sailing crew opportunities in online forums. There were a lot of options – from sailboat deliveries, to short passages, to multi-year expeditions. Any of these would be awesome to give us some actual cruising experience!
So right now we are leaning towards Option B. We have been scanning and reading through all sorts of posts on a variety of online forums with people from all over the world looking for all different types of crew. We have been sending messages to any that sounds like a good match. A few leads so far, but nothing concrete. Our real goal here is to find a long-term crew opportunity for next year, or two, or three… Cruising around the world, gaining experience and knowledge, getting ready to do it on our own. So if you know of any opportunities, let us know!