Logan and Taryn Pickard live on a 40-foot sailboat off Vancouver Island, BC, some of the most challenging cruising grounds in the world. And they decided on sailboat life when they had no sailing experience at all.
In this episode, you'll learn why this couple chose a liveaboard boat, how they manage the crazy wind and current conditions, and how they learned how to forage to become as sustainable as possible on water.
You can find Logan and Taryn below:
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
Logan and Taryn Pickard live on a 40-foot sailboat off Vancouver Island, BC, some of the most challenging cruising grounds in the world. And they decided on sailboat life when they had no sailing experience at all.
In this episode, you'll learn why this couple chose a liveaboard boat, how they manage the crazy wind and current conditions, and how they learned how to forage to become as sustainable as possible on water.
You can find Logan and Taryn below:
Connect with Kristin Hanes and The Wayward Home!
Hey there, I'm Kristin Hayes, publisher over@thewaywardhome.com. I spend half the year in my camper van in the US, and half on my sailboat in Mexico. And I hope to inspire you to try Nomadic living too. So today we're talking to Terran and Logan Picker from the Wayward Life and the Wayward Life Sailing. They have a YouTube channel documenting their life on the water, and they've been living on their 40 foot boat in the Pacific Northwest for three years now. I'm so excited you guys are here. Thanks so much for for coming on the podcast. Hi, we're
Taryn:happy to be here.
Kristin:Great. So, yeah, so tell us a little bit about like why you chose to live on a, a boat in the first place.
Taryn:So we were living in a very large house, um, kind of in the country, and it was taking up most of our money and pretty much all of our time, and both of us prefer to be outdoors, doing fun activities like mountain biking, spending time on the water. pretty much anything outside of just regular, um, life, I guess, And so we spent quite a few years trying to figure out what we wanted to do. We knew that we wanted to do some kind of alternative lifestyle, and we looked into tiny home living. But building costs have gone up a lot in the last few years, and the idea of having to still be dependent on fossil fuels and like having. Spend a lot of money, not only on building a tiny home, but also like building a truck or something for buying a truck. Not necessarily building, but something so that we could actually move around and be known at life. We wanted to. It seemed like it still didn't make much sense, so we just kind of sat on the idea for a while. Um, and we actually decided, To rent out our house and move to Ireland for a bit. And right before we decided to move to Ireland, we discovered that people were living on their sailboats, which we didn't really realize people were doing a lot despite living next to the ocean like we do. Um, and we just fell in love with that idea. It checked all of our boxes. It was like brought you closer to nature, you could live off the land.
Logan:We were really looking for a new challenge at the. So, um, and neither of us had set foot on a sailboat before so it was, uh, it was just a new, completely new lifestyle that we, we decided to try and yeah,
Taryn:we loved it from day one, but
Logan:yeah, it's hooked right
Taryn:away. Yeah.
Kristin:That's really cool and inspiring that you guys hadn't been on a sailboat before. Cause I think a lot of people want to do it, but they're scared because maybe they don't know how to sail or they don't know. Manage a boat. So what was that learning curve, uh, like for you guys?
Taryn:Well, we both had experience on the water already, luckily, but we didn't have any experience on sailboats specifically. So we'd had, we'd spent some time on Powerboats out on the ocean and we knew that we liked that at least. So we knew that we liked being on the water. We knew that we enjoyed boating, but. Yeah, sailing was a whole other ballgame, so we decided that the best way to take care of learning how to sail was actually to take a course instead of just learning on our own, because it is very daunting. And here we're dealing with cold water. We're dealing with a lot more danger than we would be if we were like in the Caribbean. Yeah,
Logan:we have crazy tides and currents and just lots of random things. The weather for the weather here is not nearly as stable.
Taryn:No. And like most of the people that actually, uh, die while out boating, they die because of hypothermia. They don't die because just of doing, like, just falling in the water is cold enough that it, people usually don't survive. So we really wanted to be very smart. Learning to sail so that we knew we weren't putting each other or ourselves in danger. So we took a five day liverboard course right off the bat and that really did a lot for kind of cementing into our brains how to safely be on a sailboat and what the basics were for learning to sail.
Logan:Yeah, it was good to get great those, um, those like good habits in place. Before we had to, before we had bad habits that we had to relearn
Taryn:Yeah,
Kristin:for sure. And just, just so people know, you guys were in, uh, Vancouver, BC right? Is that where you learned?
Taryn:Yeah. On Vancouver Island. So there's like the city of Vancouver and then the big Long Island right across from it. And we're on that big Long Island. Oh, cool. So,
Kristin:yeah, so, um, this is just a side note, but we actually got our sail ball on Vancouver Island as well. So now that boat is down in Mexico, but yeah. So tell us a little more about the conditions out there for sailing. Like you were saying, the tides are crazy, it's cold. Um, how's the wind and what's it like to, to sail in that area?
Taryn:so most people that own sailboats actually just motor their boats around here because. The, the saying is that there's either too much wind or not enough wind, and that's fairly true. Um, most of the winds that we get are from like low pressure or high pressure systems. So it's usually 15 to 20 plus knots. Well, not even 15 to 20. It's usually 20 to 25 to 35 knots. You don't get like the nice trade wind, calm winds, or medium calm winds that make for good. and they're very variable. So like you'll go out on the water and you'll be like, sweet, I got 15 knots. And then half an hour later you have 30 knots, or half an hour later you have 10 knots and you, yeah, it's just not predictable. You don't get very, like even nice long sales. You can't just set a course and sett and go, you're constantly on the sales changing things. Um, and the other thing is too, that we have so many inlets and high mountains that there's a lot of very localized weather. So you can be sailing along nicely at 50 knots on attack and all of a sudden a gust will come down at like 30, 35 knots and hit you on the beam and knock you down. And you can be dealing with that while you're also dealing with like five knots of current underg your keel. So it's a lot of, a lot of variables all at once. Um, and a lot to think about on top of like being in a narrow channel where if you go one way or the other, you can actually hit land pretty. Wow.
Kristin:You learned in one of the hardest areas
Taryn:probably, huh? Yeah. And that, that's one of the things that people will say too. If you can learn how to sail well up here, you can sail pretty much anywhere in the world without a problem because there are so many variables. So,
Logan:yeah, and we have, like where we were this, or two summers ago, there was, uh, like the tides are 17 feet. and the current through some of the passes and stuff like that runs up to 16 knots. So you really have to plan and be aware of everything that you're gonna see because like when you're going up Johnstone Street, for instance, half of your day you're gonna be battling against occurring. So you might have. Find a be to pull into or somewhere to anchor up for the, for the afternoon or the morning or whatever it
Taryn:is. Yeah. And it's very common to, in the morning there have like five knots of wind, and then by like 2:00 PM you have 35 knots of wind and it's like you can watch it build on the water. And this is the most dangerous area in like where we sail not only for wind, but also for current. So you'll have 35 knots blown, one direction, and then again, like the gusts coming. while you're in like six or seven knots. So
Logan:current though, but even, and it's like just tied against current or, uh, sorry, current against, uh, a wind. 15 knots sometimes can be pretty, pretty sketchy because this is the wave stack up and like we've been in a situation where we've. Our 40 foot boat has been in three separate waves. Like that's how close together they are and it's very
Taryn:uncomfortable. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that
Kristin:sounds like the wild stuff.
Taryn:Yeah. So it's been, it's been a steep learning curve fe
Logan:I hope it only gives easier for me to Yeah.
Kristin:wow. So yeah. So interspersed with that, there's beautiful days and beautiful coasts. Tell us a little bit about like, the scenery up there, where, what you guys have seen and explored around Vancouver.
Taryn:Um, okay, so this is honestly one of the most beautiful places in the world. We've done quite a bit of traveling, and this was the place that we wanted to cruise the most, I think because you can go like for days without seeing other people or a house or any civilization at all, and you can find these crystal clear, calm bays that are surrounded by these incredible, huge mountains that just go from the sky directly into the. and you can just sit in one of these bathes for days and days. No cell service. No sounds from humanity at all. Just the animals and yeah, there won't even be a ripple on the water for most of the day. It's just, it's absolutely incredible.
Logan:You'd be lucky to see a plane some days. Like it's pretty, once you get up onto the coast, like there's no real air traffic that goes over other than float planes going out to remote communities and whatnot.
Taryn:Yeah. So it's like, it's incredibly peaceful and, um, a dream come true, I guess is the best way to describe it, really. Yeah,
Logan:the wildlife is incredible. Like, uh, both above and below the water. The diving is unbelievable. Uh, if you can tell the cold water
Kristin:Well, I had no idea there was, there was diving around there. what, what do you see when you go diving around? Uh, Vancouver
Taryn:Island. Um, lots of
Logan:fish. Tons. Tons of fish. Yeah.
Taryn:Um, there's like soft coral reefs, a lot of them around. Yeah. Canada and this part of Canada specifically actually has some of the best coldwater diving in the world. People come from all over the world to come dive here, especially in the wintertime, cuz well people don't come here a lot in the wintertime, but they should cuz that's doing the best diving.
Logan:The water gets, it really clears up when it gets cold. like five degrees and it's like, visibility
Taryn:is awesome. Yeah, it's like glass calm. You forget that you're underwater because it's so clear. It's really cool. And yeah, the wildlife's incredible. There's like wolf eagle that will come out and come and kind of snuggle with you. People come and dive with sea lions, so you can go and dive with a sea lion colony and just be surrounded by sea lions under. which is both cool and terrifying. We haven't done that yet, but yeah. Wow. That's
Logan:pretty close to where we live. Um, called Hornby Island and there's a dive charter out of there. Like you have to charter a boat to go because of the current, and, and it's just, it's better It's definitely worth it. And, um, you have the chance of seeing. Like a sixgills shark I think it's called. So like they're a big, um, like a filter feeding shark and that's pretty cool cuz they're pretty much not around anymore. They're pretty endangered so much to see the, the macro life is unbelievable. A lot of people do night dives here, just so they can focus on the macro life,
Kristin:that sounds like amazing and remote and really a stunning place to, to go sailing and to have your live aboard life. That's really cool. yeah, I was wondering, since you guys went, you know, from a big house to a small boat, did you have a adjustment or did you just immediately love being on the boat or what was that transition?
Taryn:so when we first moved out of the house, we actually moved onto a 32 foot boat with us and our 85 pound dog. So he's a lab Husky, Wolf Cross. He's a big dog, and it was kind of like having three people in like a 32 foot boat. And we loved it, but it was also really tight. Um, so we pretty quickly decided that 32 feet wasn't gonna be big enough for three of us to live Uncomfort. So we moved up to a 45 foot boat, um, which was actually more space than we needed. and then we ended up partially rebuilding that boat and selling it after discovering some things that made it not really feasible for what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. And then we ended up on a 40 foot. Um, and the 40 foot boat is great, especially, I especially love living in small spaces because it's less to clean and it's just, you're more, you have like a, a more intimate relationship with your space, and I really like that. So 40 feet has been perfect for us. It hasn't been nearly as difficult as I thought it was to kind of get rid of stuff and to live in a small space, but we don't, we don't really bought a lot. We don't, we don't have a, we don't care about a lot of stuff, I guess. Yeah,
Logan:you definitely don't miss. Stuff that, anything that we haven't used or needed within like a year or so, it's gone.
Taryn:yeah, we have, we also have a C can on Logan's Paris property that we've used for quite a bit of storage. We got rid of like all of our furniture, but I don't know, like keepsakes tools, stuff that we weren't sure whether or not we were gonna want in a year. we kind of put a lot of that in the C can and. every year or so. Since then, we've gone kind of through it and gotten rid of stuff that we clearly didn't miss. So that was kind of a nice way to transition from living in a big house to living on the water, cuz it wasn't, we didn't have to say goodbye right away to everything. We had the choice of whether or not to say goodbye.
Kristin:Yeah, that's, that's, that's really cool. And what's a sea can, I've never heard that word. so you
Taryn:know like the shipping containers? Yeah. They go on the big ships. Yeah. So we bought one of those and put it on a piece of property. Oh,
Kristin:very cool. Yeah, we had one of those for years as well and finally got rid of it. But we really, we had it for, that was last year we got rid of it, so we had that for a long time. you know, we have a utility trailer, so. Another thing I love about your YouTube videos is you guys talk a lot about sustainability and finding your old food. I would love to hear more about how you forage and what kinds of things you find, uh, around there.
Taryn:Yeah. So that was one of the things that I was most excited about when we moved on to the boat. Um, because we're in these like really remote areas. There's so much nature and there's so much ability to go out into these places and find. which is what's growing around in picket and you're not really interrupting anybody else's life and you don't have to worry about a lot of pollutants and stuff like that. the first year that we were, that we spent all summer out, we pickled bulk kelp. So went and picked seaweed, essentially and pickled it as well as dried it. we did the same thing with sea asparagus. and we've used that, all that kind of stuff in soups and stews and a bunch of other stuff. And we have spent quite a bit of time fishing. Logan's gotten really good at catching, catching fish, and let's get it there. that's, that's made for some really good like fish tacos and stuff like that. And um, then on top of that, Logan was actually making sourdough bread, so he had like a really nice starter in the fridge and we'd do. Sourdough, whatever with fish. and we did that a lot. Yeah.
Logan:And then you end up using bits of it every day for just general baking and making stuff it's easier than carrying around a bunch of stuff that can be damaged by the moisture.
Taryn:Yeah. And then we found, we found too, that like doing that, especially with the sourdough, was we were getting so much more nutritional value than getting stuff from the grocery. that we were full a lot more and we ended up eating a lot less. Um, like in Canada, I think it's like 80% of our food or something comes from out of the country. So a lot of it is shipped all the way from California and it's picked when it's really not even close to rife. So we don't get the nutritional value in our food that we do. If you pick at Riper from the garden or what. Um, so yeah, it just, it's been a way healthier option for us being able to do that. We've picked, we learned a lot more about the plants around us, like learned what nodding onions were, we picked a ton of berries. Yeah. And so our plan is to continue that as much as we can. like we're back on the boat, cuz right now we're actually in the middle of a refit. Yeah. Yeah. All of us know what
Kristin:that's like. Refitting sailboats. How did you learn what plants you could eat? Do you have a book or how did you
Taryn:learn that? Um, yeah, from a couple of books as well as friends. Like we've got a couple of friends who are also living on their sailboat who have been amazing. They have been doing this for a long time. They've been living on their boat for 15 years and we're like fishing and canyon and doing all that stuff long time before that. So they've been really good kind of mentors to us and taught us a lot of their ways for preserving. which has been incredible and they've shared a lot of their food with us too, I guess. Yeah, we canned crab and prawns and a bunch of other stuff too. So We have a lot of more canning plans as well. Like since doing all of that the first summer, I've got a long list of things that I plan on canning and learning how to do. we wanna be as close to self-sufficient as we can be on the boat. So yeah, it's gonna take a bit, but that's our plan is to get pretty close to that. I plan on actually like setting up a small garden on the back of the boat as well for like herbs and cilantro and things like that, that you just want fresh all the time so that we don't have to go back to town as much.
Kristin:Totally. I was thinking of doing that as well, creating like a little garden cuz there's certain things you can't really get in Mexico, like arugula, which I love. And I heard you can grow very easily, so I was thinking of a little garden on the boat. How are, what's your plan for that? Like, what's your setup going to be for, for the garden?
Taryn:there's a couple of people that I know on their boats have like little hanging baskets that they kind of have on the side, on the, um, the push. So I'm thinking of having one of those on like our, yeah, the aft end of the boat. Well, so we have really big windows in our boat and I was very excited because I was like, sweet, I can grow food inside. But it turns out that they have a UV filter on them, which makes a lot of sense, but it's really difficult for growing things inside the boat. So that plan quickly went out the window because all of my indoor plants died within, in like a few weeks of having them. even though there was a ton of light, there was no UV coming through. So yeah, it'll have to be outside probably on, on the back of the boat.
Logan:Yeah. We're rebuilding part of the boat and I think, um, we're gonna put a big, not a massive, but like a fairly substantial solar arch on it. um, cuz we just don't get the sunlight like you would in Mexico, Yeah. So we have to put some more panels on and I think maybe putting some baskets on the outside of that Well, where they'll be kind of out of the way of everything.
Kristin:That's a good idea. And then when you're sailing, do the baskets just move with the boat or do you have to put everything.
Taryn:sounds like when people have done it, they just move with the boat. Yeah, like whatever way you're healed, they kind of heal with you so they're just gonna be able to withstand the salt water. I guess that's the main thing. So it'll be interesting to kind of experiment and see what's okay with being that close to the ocean.
Logan:I'm sure we'll have
Taryn:casualties, but yeah, trial and error.
Kristin:Yeah, that'll be fun to see how that works out for you guys and, and learn from you as well. Cuz we definitely wanna start doing more foraging and finding, uh, different plants you can eat. Even in the desert there's tons of plants you can eat, which is amazing. So,
Taryn:yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that
Logan:we've started to do, uh, a couple years ago actually was mushrooms, like picking wild mushrooms. yeah. And we've been able to, we got really lucky one year. We had a lot, like every week we were having full meals with, of mushrooms and then, uh, last year was
Taryn:not very good. Yeah, it's been very hit or miss with the weather changing. It's made mushroom picky more difficult because they want like a very specific weather pattern, I guess throughout the year in order to kind of sprout up in the fall and winter. So last two years have not been great, but three years ago was awesome.
Logan:Yeah. It's um, it's been too dry here and it's not normally this dry, so,
Taryn:But it's very interesting, like, especially when you're foraging and stuff like that, you learn so much more about the environment and the world around you and how it works, and that's been really interest. You don't realize how out of tune you are with the natural environment and the world around you until you need to be in tune with it in order to survive and not end up in dangerous situations. So yeah, that's been pretty, pretty interesting to learn, I think.
Kristin:Yeah, so it brought you kind of closer. I've, I've noticed that too in the van and on the sailboat. You're really in touch with the elements and what's happening outside and, um, and that sounds like that happened to you guys. Where, and, and how's it feel being in a, in a house now that your boat is being worked on?
Taryn:we really missed the boat.
Logan:Yeah. It's, uh, it's been a long, a long project and, yeah, living back in the house is kind of making it feel
Taryn:longer. Yeah, it's been, we've been, it's been more than a year now actually that we've been working on the boat trying to get it back. We've rebuilt almost a quarter of the boat or will have rebuilt it, a quarter of it by the time it's back in the water. So, I mean, if anything has cemented in our world that we really wanna be on the water and that we chose the right lifestyle, it's definitely been this experience. Yeah.
Kristin:That's great. Um, yeah. Do you guys have, like what would you say to people considering sailboat life and they're just not sure, or they're like worried about it? What do you have advice for
Taryn:people? I would say jump on a boat. Join like a yacht club or something where you can go out and you can learn to sail and you can really kind of see what it's like, especially on the not so great days. Yeah. Get experience in the wide range of stuff because like it's really easy to go out on a nice summer day and it. Incredibly relaxing and beautiful, and it is a hundred percent, and those are the days that definitely make living on a sailboat worth it. But you also have to make sure that you should withstand the not so great days. Um, and as I'm sure you know, there's a lot to, there's a lot of different kinds of boats. There's a lot of different kinds of sailing and it's, I think getting out on some boats and experiencing different things is probably the best way. Figure out if you like being on the water and if it's a good lifestyle for you, because it is like very, very different from living in a house
Logan:it's continual learning. if you don't learn something every day, you're on the water, like you're probably not doing it right. Yeah, there's, there's way more to know than anybody, any single person can even,
Taryn:aspire to do, like, you'll talk to people who've spent most of their lives on the water and they'll, they'll tell you they learn every day still in their seventies or eighties or whatever. So yeah, it's a pretty cool lifestyle, especially if you enjoy learning, but it's definitely different,
Logan:we did a five day liveaboard course. and that really, like if you're not close to the water and you can't go and bug people at the dock every day to get on a boat that is a really good thing to do
Taryn:not risking your life savings on your own boat. Trying to figure out how to do it.
Kristin:And so your boat is probably ready in the spring, you're hoping? Yeah. And what are your plans uh, after
Taryn:that? our plans are to head up north, like northern BC and then into Alaska. And then we're hoping within a few years to go through the Northwest passage and over to Europe. But that's hinging on a few things. So before we do that, we're planning on exploring like northern bc, central BC, and Alaska as much as we can for a couple of years.
Kristin:That sounds phenomenal. And so you guys have a YouTube channel where you'll be documenting all, all this.
Taryn:so our YouTube channel's called Wayward Life Sailing, and we're putting out like weekly videos Right now it's pretty much all project videos, but in the near future we'll be back to adventure videos. There's, I don't know how many videos of us sailing in, around Vancouver Island, like on the inside of Vancouver Island, and you can see a lot of the really cool, beautiful bay that we're talking about as well as about videos of like how to, how we canned bulk. Foraging for bulk kelp fishing. We've got lots of different videos about all the stuff we've talked about today. Pretty much except for the diving. We don't have any diving videos yet, but we will. That's coming.
Kristin:It's a great place for people to go learn about what you're up to and even foraging. I'm gonna have to go check out some of those videos and canning. I'd like to try that. So it sounds like you have a lot of good stuff on your channel for people to go learn about, don't like, so that's exciting. Yeah. Is there anything else you wanted to share or want people to know about your lifestyle?
Taryn:The other thing about our YouTube channel is we try to be really like open and honest about the entire experience. We're not. There just to entertain and show you the good things. Really, we show you the wide range of everything that we experience, even when we mess up, like when we forget to fill our tanks with fuel and realize we're 30 knots, 30 nautical miles away from the next fuel station. yeah, because like we've said, it's like, it's a lot of, especially up here, there's a lot of times where you, like, you can get into dangerous situations really quickly, so. obviously, it's also very amazing and we like to show the incredible beauty that's around us and why we have chosen this lifestyle, but we don't sugarcoat things. We tell you the honest truth about what we're going through, and Yeah.
Kristin:Sail sailboat life definitely has its ups and downs and a lot of excitement. Yeah. Fingers crossed for you guys. I know boat projects are a drag and can take a really long time. We know that firsthand. So I wish you got getting back on the water and back in your home. Yeah,
Taryn:no,
Logan:thank you,
Kristin:Cool. Well, thanks you guys for coming on. I think your story is great and people will learn a lot and go subscribe to your YouTube channel and I'll put links down below the show notes. Of course. So yeah, thanks
Taryn:so much. Thanks so much for having us.