The Wayward Home Podcast
The Wayward Home Podcast
66: Van Life vs Sailboat Life - The Best of Both Worlds?
In this episode of The Wayward Home podcast, host Kristin Hanes interviews Eddie from the Vanabond Tales blog about his experience transitioning from van life to sailboat life.
Eddie and his wife Kelly started out in van life, traveling through South America in a van they purchased, then building out their own van to continue adventures in Mexico. When Covid hit, they got stuck in Australia and decided to check sailboat living off their bucket list.
They ended up falling in love with sail life, purchasing a 29-foot boat in Croatia. Eddie shares the learning curve of sailing as beginners, having to dock repeatedly for 10 days straight to get the hang of maneuvering their new boat.
Kristin and Eddie compare notes on the differences between van life and sail life - the sense of space, costs, finding community, and facing the elements. They agree both lifestyles have their pros and cons, and complement each other well.
Eddie has continued doing some van trips between sailing seasons. He offers advice for van lifers considering switching to sailboats - overcoming fears around storms, seasickness, and learning to sail.
Kristin and Eddie remark on how rewarding it is to be self-sufficient and explore beautiful, remote areas by wind power. Listen in and be inspired to explore the world, whether on the roads or on the waves.
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I'm currently part of the Wayward Home Podcast, where I work on my online business for my camper van and to bring you tips interviews and stories from the road and on the water. And just across the way is another couple with both a camper van and a sailboat.
Speaker 2:I found this common. There are many crossovers and similarities and differences between the two lifestyles. That's what we're chatting about today on the Wayward Home Podcast. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Wayward Home Podcast. All about van life, boat life and nomadic living. We'll bring you tips, interviews and stories from the road and on the water. Now here's your host, kristen Haynes. Hey there, I'm Kristen Haynes with the WaywardHomecom, and my partner, tom and I live half the year in our camper van and half on our sailboat in Mexico. We've been living tiny since 2016, and I hope to inspire you to try something different too.
Speaker 2:Well, the crossover between van life and boat life has a lot of similarities and differences. Many sailors have camper vans, truck campers or even RVs. They go travel on land when the weather is too hot or uncomfortable for the sailboat, and vice versa. Today I'm talking with Eddie, author and creator of the Vanna Bonn Tales blog. He and his wife Kelly spend time in both a camper van and on a sailboat, but they sail over in the Mediterranean while I stay here in Mexico. So let's get into it and learn about the differences and similarities between these two lifestyles. Who knows, maybe you'll decide to become a sailor one day too, right, eddie? Thanks so much for joining the Wayward Home Podcast. Super excited to have you here.
Speaker 1:Really excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Cool. So, yeah, I'm excited to meet yet another van lifer and sailor. You know this is something I'm seeing more and more often, but also I think there's a lot of curiosity and back and forth between these two lifestyles. So let's just go back to the beginning with you. You started out in vans, so just tell me a little bit about your whole experience with the van life.
Speaker 1:Sure, so we I mean, I met my wife in 2016 and a couple of years later we bought our first van and we flew from Europe to South America and we bought a van for our first van life adventure and we caught the bug. We did South America for seven months and then after that we built our own van and took that in Mexico and had planned to do the whole of Central and South America and that one. But in 2020, we parked that van in Mexico to fly home to my home in Australia, and when we did, in February, they closed the borders. So we were stuck in Australia and we bought another van there and we were driving around Australia for two years waiting for the borders to open, because Australia had pretty strict lockdown going on.
Speaker 1:And as we were doing that, we were sort of watching our I mean, in our own minds, we were watching our time run out on all these adventures or these things we'd planned to do, and one of the things on our bucket list had always been to buy a boat. So as soon as the borders opened, we took our opportunity to fly to Europe and buy a boat in Croatia, and we've just wrapped up our second season on the boat and since then I've actually gone back and done a couple of van life trips. So yeah, and I think I was thinking towards the end of our third van, I might be over this lifestyle. And then when we started the boat, I was like, oh well, this is fabulous, this is fantastic. It's so much better than van life in a lot of ways. And it's funny, having gone back into the van recently in the winter in Europe, I'm starting to come back around to van life again after a little break, so it's fun.
Speaker 2:Isn't that funny. That kind of describes my experience exactly, because we go in the sailboat for like five months sometimes and I'm like, oh, I just wanna I love it. And then I'm like I need a break, I wanna go do something else. I wanna be on land and have accessibility to bicycling and hiking and stuff. So I'm happy to be in the van. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to get back in the boat. So I think the two are just really compliment each other so wonderfully.
Speaker 1:So Absolutely yeah, I think that's what I just found out. I thought, yeah, how did you, when you first started sailing, did you think it was better or worse, or the same?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's interesting is I started out with the boat. I was laid off and got on the boat and it was a way to save money on rent in San Francisco, so I did the sailing thing, first and then was like oh it'd be really cool if we had a van. So it did kind of opposite of you.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So it was very different. But the sailboat, I feel like you just get to more remote, beautiful areas of nature and there's more aspects of self-reliance, so I'm curious, like what you thought about it, transitioning from the van to the boat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just the same. I mean, yeah, every day maybe not every day, but more often than in the van you're waking up in some beautiful isolated cove with nobody to share it with, rather than maybe a Walmart or a gas station. So that's a huge difference and initially it's very kind of captivating and, oh, this is amazing and unbeatable. And you're waking up on the water. I think that's another really special thing. And so, yeah, my initial feeling was like, oh, this is better than van life. I think I prefer this. And, yeah, it wasn't. Until I got back in the van, I was like, oh, that's right, boats can't go up mountains and boats can't go inland and boats can't see all these sort of and they can't travel as fast or as fast. So there are all these things you forget about that the van has advantages over. But yeah, as you say, that's those really remote places and waking up in a different cove every day. That's pretty special.
Speaker 2:It is and that's funny. You said that about the speed because our boat, you know it's a sailboat. It goes like if we're lucky it goes seven knots, and that's if we're lucky. It likes to ride around five knots and for people who don't understand that that's like as fast as someone can run really fast.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, so we're even swaller and slower. We're even swaller and slower. We're lucky to get five knots. So, yeah, I wear a fast walk. Some of our friends are asking us yesterday like, oh, if we were in this part of Europe and you're in that part of Europe, how long would it take you to get there? And we're like I know it's small enough, but it'd be like walking there, it'd be a really long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think people forget about that, that we're very slow and it's such a different feeling being on a boat and one cool thing about it is that you're more on the speed while the dolphins are faster, but they do come up in the whales and I'm curious, did you see that in where you were sailing as well, the sea life? Because I know we sail in really different parts of the world. You're in the sea of Cortez. You're in Europe. What did you see out there?
Speaker 1:The Adriatic is famously not super hospitable to marine life. It's not, I don't think it's very nutrient rich and it's been fished very heavily, but they're still dolphins, so you still get the dolphin swimming with you. But other than that, we didn't see so much. We saw a couple of turtles, a couple of larger fish jumping, but, yeah, maybe not as spectacular as Mexico, I'm guessing. But we haven't done Mexico yet, so I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very true. And another thing I was wondering because I noticed that when I'm on the boat, one of the things that makes me want to get back to the van is sometimes some of the motion and the weather and having to sail the overnights. I don't know if you guys had to do that, but sometimes when we're just being thrown around the sea of Cortez is known for some steep, chop sometimes and close together waves and it can be really nasty, and so I'm like I want to get in the van. Give me a stable bed. Did you experience that sort of rolly nature of your sailboat?
Speaker 1:Lately, yeah, so that I mean they're apart. Sometimes in van life it can be scary, especially driving somewhere in a dangerous area or a dangerous country. But I think, yeah, the getting caught out in a storm on anchor and being up all night worried that you're going to pull off your anchor and drift off into the rocks, you don't get that. Mainly, you don't get that level of sort of adrenaline in van life. So a couple of nights in that and you're sort of wondering why the hell you're doing this. But yeah, I think that's very true. It's a level of stress that doesn't usually come with van life. It often comes with a tail sail life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember one time we were sailing up the coast of Baja and there's a certain mountain range area that gets really high winds and unfortunately in the middle of the night, and they're called catabatic winds.
Speaker 2:So we're sailing and you know, tom is asleep and I'm on watch and suddenly the boat's being like blown over at this steep angle and he was sleeping on the cabinetry and he's like why am I asleep on the cabinetry? So he woke up and we're getting blasted by like 40 to 50 knot winds and it was like 2 am and it just went like all night and I was like, why am I doing this?
Speaker 2:But it's not like. That happens very often. But sailing, you know, you can get really hit by some weird stuff. That, you're right, doesn't happen in the van.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and so yeah, I think most sailors have spent many, much time at sea. No, no about the catabatics. So we get it. In Montenegro, they've got these the tall mountains as well, and they don't predict. It is sort of unpredictable, because it's just wind falling off the side of a mountain and yeah, it just blows, blows it's guts out for hours on end and that, yeah, and I think even now, as I'm saying it out loud, I've sort of become a little bit immune to it, because when I say it out loud that sounds like something pretty extreme, but for me it's like, oh, it's just part of just part of sailing now. But I think if you told someone that was thinking about going from van life to sail life, that might be a little bit off-putting.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's a reason I like to mention it, because I do get questions from van life as in they're like oh, I'm thinking about like going to the sailboat, and I think it often seems very romantic from what people see like on is like anything in life. You know, what you see in social media or what you might imagine is way different than how it is. And so I tell them like, yeah, it feels like it can be way more dangerous than being in the van. Although the van, you can have head on collisions which end up being very bad. So, yeah, that might be even worse.
Speaker 1:They're probably similar in terms of risk, but it's not the feeling you get when you're driving 100 kilometers down the highway. It's not the same as being up in the middle of the night trying to survive one of those gusts out of nowhere. I feel like it feels a lot worse yeah very true.
Speaker 2:And so how did you guys do in terms of like? So this is your first boat, so like learning to sail, learning the boat systems, what was all that like for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a good question because I think that's probably the other thing, isn't it? If you're coming from ends to the sailboats and you don't have a lot of experience, the learning curve is probably the next scariest thing, probably the scariest thing because I wasn't even thinking about, I didn't know enough to know about catabatic winds or storms to worry about. But the learning curve was certainly a worry I've actually had when I was a kid. I grew up sailing diggies, so I knew the principles of sailing and it was just about sort of scaling up, I guess, to a bigger boat. What we did is we hired a couple of guys, a couple of brothers in Croatia to.
Speaker 1:We bought the boat and then we hired these guys to come and board our boat and show us how it worked. And they said, oh, we could probably get you set up for sailing in about 10 days. And we said it would be great, we'll be sailing from island to island, having just an awesome time. And they're like listen, guys, I think we're mostly just going to be motoring in and out of the dock because it turns out, most of what you need to know to get going is just docking the boat. So for 10 days. We were just practicing being able to get in and off, on and off the dock and on and off the anchor and then sort of learn to hoist the sail and put down the sail. But that's essentially the stuff. You can slowly learn as you go. But knowing how to get the boat into harbor and out without damaging any other boats is a pretty essential skill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true and that's something I haven't personally learned, because my partner, tom, has had his first sailboat in like 2001 and he's the main helmsman and captain and he docks the boat. But that's something I feel like I need to learn. But it is like a 41 foot boat with like a six foot bow sprit that hangs way out, so it's 47 overall. And then so you have this long people who don't know what a bow sprit is, this long piece of wood that's like six feet off of the boat that you have to maneuver in Like a spear, almost waiting to punch us have someone else's boat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have fears like I can drive the boat when we're out at sea. You know, I know how to put the sails up and take them down, but the docking thing, man, that's scary. So did you both learn how to dock when you were doing these lessons?
Speaker 1:We yeah, we both learned. I've become the default docker at this stage, but we both learned at the time. But we have an advantage over your boat. We have a tiny weed 29 foot boat without a bow sprit so, and you know also, the previous owner had put a bow thruster on this little boat, so we're highly maneuverable. If we make a mistake, we can correct.
Speaker 2:yeah, Very true, ours does not like to pivot or turn its nose or back up pivot, it's just. It's a very it's like driving a gigantic private airplane where it's real slow to take any changes, so that's something people have to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's something you don't realize. Do you Like when you cut, when you it's very? Car is very responsive. A boat is very unresponsive. You have to learn about how long it takes to bring the front around using a rudder that's at the back, and it can be a little bit of a learning curve, I think.
Speaker 2:Totally so. Yeah, tell me a little more about the. You said it was the Adriatic Sea, correct? Like what does that look like? Where exactly is it for people over on this side of the pond that don't know geography very well like me, I would think maybe Croatia or Greece, but tell me a little more about the sailing grounds you were in.
Speaker 1:The Adriatic is that little arm of the Mediterranean that goes up in between Croatia and the inside of Italy, so it's this beautiful little protected sea. I love that you've got Montenegro, albania, a little bit of Greece and then, on the other side, italy. We're actually a little bit of Slovenia at the top as well but it's this very narrow, very protected stretch of water which in the middle of it, near Croatia especially, you have a lot of islands. So a lot of protection, very predictable wind patterned and almost zero tide and zero reef. So, as opposed to learn how to sail, it's up there with the best and obviously it's extremely beautiful.
Speaker 1:So you've got really like really lovely crystal clear water, no waves, nothing like that, and some amazing places to visit along Croatia all those old Asian towns, split and Shibonec, and Dubrovnik and everything like that. So it's perfect in that sense. The only downside would be the amount of sailors there, and especially the amount of sailors that are just there for a week or two. So it's a really popular place for people to come and rent a boat for a week or two. How good they are at sailing is an absolute. That could be great. It could be sailors that have sailed all their lives and just don't own their boat and they're coming for a week holiday or they could be begin, and so that's the biggest challenge being surrounded by people where you're not 100% sure how to use their boat.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting, and so when you go out to those islands, do you find like secluded coves, or are you always sharing coves with other people?
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. There's just so much coastline. I think if you added up all the coastline, including all the islands in Croatia, it's really remarkable how much space there is, and as somebody who has a lot of time to spend out there, you can pick and choose. Everybody else has to go to the number one beaches and the number one spots. So they're all going to va, they're all going to Split, they're all going to these really famous and the most beautiful places in Croatia, and we're fully aware that that's not necessarily. It's much more beautiful to keep going a couple of coves around and find somewhere completely to ourselves and fight over very crowded sailing grounds. So it's very easy to avoid the crowds, but you have to be prepared to avoid them, but it is very easy. There are lots of cool places to check out.
Speaker 2:Cool, that sounds like a really fun place to sail. I knew some other people that had a sailboat but they were sailing all around the med and they were saying that the winds and the weather patterns are kind of crazy in other areas. So that's good to know that that sea is a little more gentle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So if you keep going around and you get into the Cyclades, where you know Mekinos and Tantorini and all that it's, you can tell just by the geography. So the mountain, even the islands in the Ionian, on this, on the same side as the Adriatic, they're in Greece, they're all covered in pine trees and they're all lush and green. Get around in the Cyclades and it's all those very bare rocky islands, which gives you a bit of a clue that you know, it's very windy a lot of the time, so we haven't gone around there yet.
Speaker 1:We hope to in the future. But where we've been has been really nice to. It still gets windy, but more often than not it's predictable and you can find somewhere that's going to be a little bit protected and calm.
Speaker 2:Very cool, and was there anything that like surprised you when you first went to sailboat life after doing so many different vehicles on land?
Speaker 1:I guess I wasn't surprised because I didn't know what to expect. So I was sort of open to anything. But it's just. I mean, just the ample size of that sailboat is a nice change. So when you go from Vans to sailboats, that's sort of people were saying to me like, oh, how are we going to live on a tiny sailboat? I said this is an incredible amount of space. We have two bench sheets that face each other. We have a separate berth, we have, you know, a toilet. It was for me sort of that was a big change, the amount of space that we had.
Speaker 1:I mean something specific to the area we were sailing in was how incredibly difficult it was to get anyone to. I don't know if it's like this in Mexico probably not but if you need to get anything done in terms of mechanical work or fixing the boat, it's very slow uphill process to compel anyone to help you. In the part of the med we've been sailing in which was different to the van, I guess another difference would be the cost, which the cost of entry to the sailing was a little bit higher to get the same. I mean, obviously you can do van life extremely cheaply or van life in a very expensive fashion. You can do boat life in a similar way, but I feel like even the lower level starts a little bit higher in boat life. So we had a very entry level boat and we spent about 20,000 euro on it. And we had a very entry level van and we spent less than half of that on it.
Speaker 1:So that's what we noticed about the cost. And then, once you're actually sailing, some costs are higher while some costs are lower. Obviously, gas we spend nothing on gas maybe $25 a week on a bad week when there's been no wind, but then you spend a lot more money to stay in an arena than you would to stay in a campsite with the van. So the cost has just been sort of a redivision. I think we spent a little bit more on the boat, but not a huge amount more. And then, yeah, those are the big differences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can totally relate to all of those, which is interesting because when we spent a lot of time in the van and we go on the boat, it feels gigantic. I'm like wow. I have like rooms, I have the toilet and the shower, I have like an oven on my boat and I'm like, wow, an outdoor cockpit to sit in. It just feels gigantic and most people would not think that sailboat is gigantic.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably a unique perspective that you get if you go from van to boat. Most people would think you got your downsizing to get on the boat, whereas if you're coming from the van you're thinking, wow, this is fabulous.
Speaker 2:I know, I think that's so funny. And then another interesting part is during our interview. Right now we're actually in a boatyard in Mexico and it is hard to find people to work on your boat. This is actually a DIY boatyard and one of the only ones we've heard of in Mexico and in certain parts of the world. Actually, I heard that there's one couple here that they've been back and forth to the South Pacific many times and they intentionally came all the way up here so they could work on their boat at an affordable price, because you can do all your own work. It's only like 250 bucks a month and you can have like I have my van here, I have my boat here, you have electricity, bathrooms, showers I mean it has everything and you can walk to town and the beach. So people come here from everywhere just to work on their $250 a month to keep the boat there.
Speaker 1:Yes, amazing.
Speaker 2:They pull it out of the water, you store it on the hard when you're not here, and so it's very safe. It's out of the hurricane zone, and so that's why a lot of people come here, and so you meet a lot of interesting cruisers from around the world who've come here, and a lot of young people too, because it's really expensive to get someone to work on your boat. If you can find someone, If you can find.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so the best way to save money is to do your own stuff, and that's what everyone here is doing. So there's that camaraderie associated with it.
Speaker 1:So is there a nice community of liveaboard there in the off season or working on their boat.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, yeah, right now there's quite a few people here and we had a party last weekend for Christmas tamales and stuff, and so that sense of community is the only thing that keeps me sane around here, because otherwise being in a boat yard is not super fun. But it is neat to have the community around here and everyone's hanging out and we have the same goals, same mindset, and so it's really kind of a special, unique opportunity.
Speaker 1:Can I ask you what have you found the difference between community living in a van versus living in a boat? Do you find it easier or harder to meet people along the way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's interesting is I find the sailboat actually way easier to find community. I'll be curious what you'll say after this, because when we go out to these different coves and places in Mexico, there's just a few other boats there and you tend to meet people.
Speaker 2:Like you know, you're dinging around, you meet people and we've met so many people here in this boat yard that then go down into the sea of Cortez that we recognize them and see them out there and then we hang out with them and so we're always making friends hanging out with people and in the van life I have actually met like nobody, because we also go way out boondocking in the United States on the public lands, way far from people, and so we're not necessarily meeting people or attending gatherings. So we haven't really met anyone in the van life. So I'm curious, like what do you think about that? Have you noticed a difference?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not so much of a difference, because it turns out we're just loners in both life styles and it seems like I think we had this vision when we set off on our first van life that we would be sitting around campfires with people every night.
Speaker 1:And then on that first trip we actually found it pretty surprising how few people that we met along the way, like we certainly would meet people from time to time, but it wasn't the 10 van convoy we might have imagined at the start. And then in life has sort of followed that trajectory a little bit as well. So we've met a few people along the way and hung out with them for a night and then go our separate ways. But once again, in general we've been a little bit maybe slack in making friends along the way. But I wonder if it's Notice as well, in the place that we're sailing it's a lot of retirees, which is fine. We've spent time hanging out with retirees but we don't have as much in common with a lot of the people in the areas that we're sailing, which seems to be a different bit of a generational gap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's interesting. There are a lot of retirees here, but there's also a lot of young people here in the Sea of Cortez and in the boatyard, A lot of people like in their 30s and 40s, and there's even a guy here who was 26. I'm like 26, where'd that come from? That seemed really young, but he's working on his boat. He lives on his boat, and so you do have more of a wide age range here.
Speaker 2:And then the Sea of Cortez itself is a certain special area where kind of the same people go back every year, and a lot of them are permanent liveaboard, and so, season after season, you're running into these same people and then, you end up doing little sail convoys with them, which is fun, and a lot of them travel anchor to anchorage all year and they're really great friends and they're young, so it's really interesting to find those little pockets of people of varying ages here, so that's something that's kind of unique.
Speaker 1:Where it sounds like also in your area there's a lot of people on holiday coming through renting boats and you don't really see that here 100% Okay, yeah, probably a lot more people there on holidays, either short term because they already have a boat there, or red tools are very popular, which is, I guess, another thing. A lot of people are transient, so you're less likely to keep up with them. Do you feel that the lifestyle is growing and more people turning up at this boatyard year on year?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, this boatyard had their busiest year ever. This year I think they said they stored about 180 boats and just a few years when they were starting out. It was hardly any. I think we were last here almost three years ago and I've even noticed they're just packing them in. People are storing boats and there's even way more people in the sea, especially because of Starlink, the availability of internet.
Speaker 2:And so now you have more and more remote workers and people spending more time at sea instead of going back to the US to work, and so we are seeing those getting way more crowded here, and I don't know if that's the same for you guys with Starlink, because you said most people are retirees anyway, so it might not make a difference.
Speaker 1:No, but that's not. We can notice that there are people, more and more people, that are working from the road in general, especially post COVID, where more opportunities for remote work sort of came up and people started to do this sort of thing. We're definitely noticing it both in van life and in sail life more young people that are working, because I think that's a big difference, isn't it? In the past, your employment opportunities were severely limited if you decided to live permanently in the van or permanently on the boat, whereas now there's a lot of jobs that you can do on the go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very true. And there's another interesting part of sail life that we haven't talked about yet is just the fact that we can get propelled by the wind is just such a special feeling that we're just out there, we're in the elements.
Speaker 2:I feel like a sailboat is almost part of the elements. It's like we're just self-sustaining. It feels like a living being actually to me when we have the sails up and it's kind of dancing along and we can make our own water. We have a water maker, we have tons of food, we can catch fish. It just feels like a really self-sustainable lifestyle, which is something I love.
Speaker 1:Undoubtedly, I said before, you don't travel as far on the sailboat but in a way you do travel just as far. You're just seeing more. I mean just because you're only going 20 nautical miles along. If you take a whole day to do that, you see it and you're seeing a lot more than you would if you're just going from point A to point B on a highway to arrive somewhere different. So yeah, you don't cover as much ground but you just see so much more. You see you sort of exploring every inch of the coast at that really slow pace. It's definitely a very special way to travel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it feels good to not spend so much money on diesel because the van man it costs us a lot sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a big plus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, budget-wise, I love being in Mexico. I think my food prices go down, my diesel prices go down. The living expenses are so low, given that this is just $250 a month, which is way cheaper than if you spend money on campgrounds a few nights, it's way more expensive, so the affordable rate is also really good. So that's something that I love about this part of the year. But it gets too hot and then we leave.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so once it gets too warm, you have to be at sea, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, then we go back to the van and back north to the northern climate.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right. So this is like a, so you escape the winter to Mexico and then go back when it starts to get too hot in Mexico.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's our travel pattern. Yeah, so are you guys planning on any like bigger sailboat trips, or what does that look like for you guys?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, to be honest, when we first bought the boat, it was that last hurrah we had this idea that we would be moving back to Australia to settle down at some point and that, as COVID went on and on, we are sort of crossing things off the list. Oh well, now we can't go and do. You know, we wanted to go and do India and some Central Asia, and we sort of said, well, we might not have time for that, we might not have time to live in Portugal, we might not have time for this, we might not have time to do that. And the only thing left on the list that we thought well, we have to do before we go back and settle down in Australia is we have to just spend one season on a boat. You know, halfway to that season, I'd say to Kelly oh look, bad years.
Speaker 1:I think we might have to give this a little bit more time before we head back to Australia. And so now, yeah, the timeline's been extended a little bit and I don't know exactly when we'll wrap up sailing, but at the moment I've there's a lot more I want to do on the boat, so I want to be able to take it out of the Adriatic and out of the Mediterranean and sort of level up our skills and while we might never be ready to do a full ocean crossing, I'd like to travel a little bit further on it. So this season our plan is to upskill and do some sailing courses and become a little bit more proficient and then, looking for the next few years, maybe getting it out into different parts of Europe and then ultimately, either in this boat or another boat, maybe going into the Bahamas and that sort of area and exploring somewhere new. So yeah, we've got some, we've got some plans, and none of them involved selling, none of them involved hanging up the sails just yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the sailboat kind of derailed your settling down plans for a little longer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really did. Really, it's fatter in the works, a wrench in the works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sailboat can do that to you. There's something very special about it, even though sometimes I find it antagonizing with the wind and the weather and the motion. But then there's so many lovely parts that I think you well, I just tend to forget the bad parts and I'm like I want to do that more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. There's just one nice, you know one sunny, stale, with nice wind, which is hard to remember those, those catabatic winds here.
Speaker 2:I know it's hard to remember. I do love that sailing requires a certain level of skill and I feel like it's almost a sport, like more of a sport than just driving a van which can be, cumbersome and boring, but when you're sailing and you've got the boat going at that perfect heel and speed and it's just beautiful and I think there's nothing better than that.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, there's yeah. I think that's that's another big draw, isn't it? That there's always something to learn, and the more I mean where it's obviously just beginning this sort of journey and it's where. So, at the point where, like, the more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know and how much more we have to develop as sailors. So, you know, after two seasons, we're still, you know, building the confidence to even leave this little area of Europe, and there's just so much more that this has got such a big runway and a far horizon for us to learn and develop as sailors. I think that is a really exciting part, but we might have thought we were going to go out and conquer sailing in a season, but looking back, that was an insane idea.
Speaker 2:Totally, and do you guys have any more plans to continue doing the van life, or how does that fit into your overall plan?
Speaker 1:So yeah, I mean, as we spoke about a little bit at the start, finishing up the van in Australia is really getting a bit over it. I mean, australia is quite a difficult place, quite a challenging place to travel, and we were traveling in the least comfortable van we'd ever we'd ever had. It was a Land Cruiser troop carrier with a little pop-top tent, so it was really we were roughing it quite a lot and Australia is obviously a pretty fast place to travel. You know, you're spending a lot of time outside of cities, in you know, dusty places, and towards the end of that I was getting a little bit over it, I think. And then we got onto the boat and I thought, oh, this is it, this is. There's no going back from this. I loved it. I thought this. You know, this is way better than the van life ever could be.
Speaker 1:But having got back in the van for a couple of trips just recently, in the last couple of months, I've fallen back in love with van life all of a sudden. And so it's that swings around. You know, the grass is always greedy. You're doing one thing and it's wonderful, and after a little while you start to miss some of the good things about van life. So getting back and exploring Scotland by then and Slovenia by then and Italy by then in the last couple of months is just really, really reconnected with why are we, why are we fell in love with van life in the first place. So I've realized that neither one's now sale life nor van life are replaceable. Well after after finding ways for them to coexist.
Speaker 2:Yes, are you guys thinking?
Speaker 1:as you have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, there's a season for one, a season for another, and so many places to explore. It's really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Are you guys going to purchase another van, do you think? Or just continue with the rentals?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, someday it just we know we're never planning to do any rigid plans at. You know it's a constant state of flux. But before we left Australia I was sketching up my next van. I thought it might be a co-starter I don't know if you have them in the States like a bus type thing, not a big bus but a small bus. And then we got on the boat and those plans sort of evaporated or were put on hold for a while. So no immediate plans to buy a new van, but at some point there will be another van and I'm always thinking about ideas and what I need and donating in that next van.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool. Yeah, it sounds like we have a lot in common and experienced the same things, and hopefully more people will try saleboat living if it appeals to them, because it is phenomenal. It's really a way to get deep into nature, which I really love, so it's special.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's those things that are scary about it, but they're surmountable. Just by what you get through them a couple of times, you realize they're not so scary and they're no more risky than probably driving the van on the highways.
Speaker 2:Very true, Well cool. It's been so fun talking to you I know that you have a blog and you have ways for people to follow you guys, so just tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:We started a blog in 2018 when we first started Van Life, and at the time, we thought we'll always be doing Van Life, so we called it the Vanobond Tales instead of the Vagabond.
Speaker 1:We had to call the Vanobond Tales and then, of course, we transitioned to sale life, but we kept the Vanobond Tales blog alive and now it just covers a broader variety of things, so still got information where we've traveled and information on vans and Van Life and how to get started, and now we're starting to write a little bit of stuff about sale life, and certainly we don't pretend to be expert sailors, but we can certainly share something that we've learned the stuff we've been talking about today about getting started and overcoming some of those initial problems how much it costs and how to do it, sort of thing and most recently, we started a blog, so we've started recording some of our stuff at sea and, just like the blog was, that's a big learning curve in and of itself, and so we've been trying to figure it out and it's an ongoing project, but we're really enjoying it and I think we'll continue doing that as long as we have something to share.
Speaker 2:Very cool and that has the same name as your blog.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does. So. The channel is the Van Ibon Tiles YouTube at the Van Ibon Tiles.
Speaker 2:Very cool. I'll put everything in the show notes, of course, so people can just scroll down and click on stuff. But I'm on your email list and I enjoy the emails you write, so thanks for doing this. And yeah, super fun to chat with you about our lifestyles.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Yeah, cool, great to talk to you too.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of the Wayward Home Podcast. Just to let you know, I'm about to take a break from the podcast to focus on some other things in my business, such as getting traffic to my website. I'd love to stay in touch with you, though, so make sure you're signed up for my email list. That's thewaywardhomecom forward slash subscribe, and I'll also put that link in the show notes. I send out emails often and I love hearing from you, so I hope to see you over there. Thanks again for listening to this episode.