[ 2024-09-01 ]

Don’t do It

“The ocean doesn’t want me here, yet here I am.”

-Me

Nobody wants to hear the truth, but here it is:

However hard you think it is to sail around the world, it’s much harder than that.

Prologue

When I first had the idea to sail around the world, I was sitting in my Air Force enlisted dorm room in Montgomery, Alabama in 2009. It felt like a good time to sit down and really think about what direction I wanted my life to go. One of the things I jotted down in my notebook was the simple line:

Sail around the world

I had no idea what that sentence even meant and had no exposure to real travel or being on-the-water, but it felt like something I needed to do. That notebook sat idle with other, much simple goals that would be fulfilled in quick succession.

It was not until years later, in 2016 in the San Francisco Bay, when I woke up suddenly and had an epiphany – it was time to get started. I signed up for sailing lessons that weekend and bought Outrun in November of that year, in a bit of a sorry state.

“There is nothing more expensive than a cheap boat.”

Before even getting started, finding a place to keep the boat was a challenge. Marinas were numerous enough, but convincing them to take your money isn’t always so easy. If your boat is older than 30, add an extra layer of annoyance to the puzzle (especially in San Diego).

It seems logical to want to live aboard while fixing a boat up, but there are all sorts of regulations – municipal, state, and private that can prevent you from staying aboard more than n days in a given week. In the case of Berkeley, it took a year (two total after buying the boat) before I won an actual liveaboard lottery that allowed me to stay onboard full-time. After that, it was time to seriously spend time getting this thing ready for my ambitious goals.

My jobs in software engineering were the means to the end of buying boat parts that would hopefully stand the test of time, which, spoiler for later, was not the case (everything breaks). I would spend every penny I made on getting the highest-end electrical, anchor, autopilot, rigging, sail, etc systems.

We can skip all the way past the first trip and talk about what it’s like in foreign countries.

The Problem(s)

It’s not my style to complain, but the following should be said in opposition to the Instagram or TikTok (I don’t use either of these) posts most people that would find this have inevitably seen depicting glorious vistas showing featured supermodels without an apparent care in the world.

It’s Crowded

No matter where I go, I have a tough time fitting in.

In Mexico, there are plenty of places with marinas, but they are all full (except for Santa Rosalia). Enterprising companies in the country have started consolidating ownership, similar to how Safe Harbor has been buying up all the marinas they can get their hands on.

After crossing the Pacific Ocean from La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, I arrived at a small rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – Hive Oa, in Atuona Bay. A sad mistake was made in not anticipating the absolute firehose of boats that would be coming in from Panama and the Galapagos. On arrival at the first land I’d seen in three weeks, I had to anchor seven times before being relatively confident that I would not swing into other boats while on the hook. It took eleven days of rolling in the unprotected anchorage before getting the confidence to move behind the breakwater, where other new boats would anchor fewer than a boat length away, forcing me (who was there first) to move constantly when they refused to.

Even in the remote atoll of Fakarava, in the southeastern area called Hirifa, I shared the anchorage with 47 other sailboats. There just happened to be plenty room there, but it’s still always surprising that so many people have made the decision to go so far away from their origins, despite the challenges involved.

You can use this site to estimate a roundabout number of boats that are in any given area. This embed will also be available on the location page:

It’s Expensive

While it’s already been made clear how dense the floating population is, the spots “available” (there aren’t any) are now even more pricey than the US, often double the rates for the same-sized slip. Even the mooring fields are completely packed, requiring advanced reservations and high CHARISMA and LUCK scores to sneak your way onto the reservation list.

My liveaboard fees, including electricity in Berkeley were $880 USD a month. In La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, in one year, it went from $900 USD a month to $1200 USD a month for the same exact slip.

Other expenses did their best to ruin my trip, too. In Hiva Oa, the less-than-two-year-old folding wooden Seahopper Scamp Row dinghy sprang a leak that was completely unpatchable (per the local boatyard and more than one woodworker), so I had to get a new dinghy. Well, it’s not easy to get something that can fold up and be stored below deck in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, I was able to get something from New Zealand delivered in about three weeks for about $4,000 USD, air freighted to the local airport, where I picked it up directly from the plane. It gets to the point where it’s not “how much does it cost,” but it’s “can it even be gotten?”

On the island of Tahiti, it’s certainly closer to civilization, but I have spent more than $40 USD for individual USB cables and $170 USD on replacement bicycle chain-like chain for my steering system.

It’s Difficult

The hardest part about sailing around the world is leaving the dock.

-Someone that hasn’t left the dock

It’s not like in Richmond, California, where I can just go to West Marine or Whale Point to get any part I could imagine, or even order them if it’s not in stock. Even screws can be a difficult prospect. The Pacific islands only have metric fasteners, and finding them in stainless is not as common as one would hope. Everything requires lots of groundwork, requiring walking to individual businesses and asking locals if they’ve heard about a place that may have some spare stainless tubing with a 1” diameter.

Well known to sailors is the idea that when making significant repairs, all of your parts should be some variant of 316 stainless or aluminum to prevent corrosion, but that’s still no guarantee. If you think it can be used as a spare, bring it, just in case. It’s not hoarding if it’s a spare. The simple truth is you have no idea what will break out there, and it will be up to you to figure it out without backup. There is no “I can’t;” only “I must.”

Consider an example where a simple small piece of stainless steel fatigue breaking off the coast of Fatu Hiva caused a series of cascading breakages that forced redundant systems to fail in kind, eventually forcing me to hand steer in heavy swell for days. A permanent repair would not be possible for two months and required someone flying from the US with a replacement piece, finding a welder, and waiting for it and a new spare to be reinforced. However, that same steering system was already rigged from the anchorage in Hiva Oa, when the stainless cable snapped, so I had to get that repaired, as well.

I have to work full time to be able to afford this, and that comes with its own share of issues, but that will be a discussion all on its own. One anecdote I’ll share is being in a work meeting, hove-to, while hanging off the stern of the boat rigging the previously-mentioned steering failures with a portion of the Dyneema spools that I brought with me for this kind of scenario. I was bobbing up and down, getting soaked, tying knots to places that had no business having knots tied. I was clipped in, but it was still sketchy. Oh yeah, and the meeting was in French, which I don’t speak.

“It’s always something.”

The Solution

Truly, it might be worth finding something else to do with your life. A compromise could involve doing what some seemingly-happy folks have done:

Just get your boat somewhere scenic, miracle yourself into a permanent slip, and live on it without doing any further travel. That will be an easy, peaceful life, with far fewer urgent timelines and way less maintenance.

Is it your Destiny?

The only reason I can recommend someone do what I am doing is if there is something absolutely driving you to continue; an inner-monologue that completely insists that you press onward, no matter how tough it gets. I meet people doing this, and they are completely miserable – chained to their floating sunk cost fallacy. Perhaps I am among them, often. Maybe you’re rich and have a catamaran. In that case, ignore everything I’ve said.

It may cross someone’s mind to ask me “why” I actually do it. Well, if it has to be explained, they’re not likely to be capable of understanding what I mean, but I guess it can be summed up as:

“I don’t want to; I have to.”

Epilogue

It’s been a while since my previous post, and maybe it’s a bit clearer why that is, now. Motivation to write something is hard to find when there are so many more high-priority things going on around you.

The lifestyle I am experiencing now was falsely advertised to me, and I would just like the equal and opposite stance to be available. There are certainly good parts, but you’ve already seen that propaganda.

This is what I am meant to do, at least for now. If you currently “plan” (a word with very little value in the grand scheme) on coming out here to join in on the fun, consider this a taste of strong discouragement, because nobody else will tell you not to. I am not an influencer and have no incentive to sell this lifestyle. The only people that should do it are the ones that will call my opinion “stupid” and doing it, anyway, even if they secretly know all the negative points are true, which they are.

TLDR

Sorry, but don’t come. It’s probably not worth it.

‘See ya out there, anyway, I’ll bet. :wave:

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