We saved up for 7 years and bought a 44′ sailing catamaran. I quit my job, and we moved aboard having never sailed before.
The boat was in Grenada when we found her. We lived on her for about 6 weeks before the captain arrived to help us sail her to the US. We never left the dock because we had no idea how to sail her.
When we got to Puerto Rico, we found out that we could import her there, and so we didn’t need to sail all the way back to the United States. We chose instead to go back to Grenada – the long way.
We island hopped our way back to Grenada over several months, learning how to dual handle her with no captain on board to guide us. It was scary at times, and exhilarating at others. We had some failures, but mostly successes, and arrived back in Grenada in one piece.
Boat life was a lot more expensive than we thought. Boats are expensive in general. They need constant maintenance, and that costs money. So our adventure did not last as long as we would have liked.
We learned so much, and will be wiser the next time around. We will give ourselves more time to stay at places we really enjoyed, and not be in a rush to beat hurricane season.
Next time, our children will be older and will enjoy the experience more fully.
When I started saving for our adventure, I wasn’t even married and didn’t have the two youngest kids. I had a terrible credit score, debt, and was living paycheck to paycheck. The dream of sailing away literally changed my life. For that, I will always be grateful.
Over time, I will discuss how I cleaned up my credit score, raised my income significantly, and how we made money by selling our primary residence a couple of times over 4 years to make big chunks of money.
I will also discuss our financial plan for the next 5 years. We don’t have it all mapped out yet, but I will share with you my idea and thoughts about how we will save up enough to buy an even bigger, newer boat next time around.
Please follow along to learn tidbits about our adventure, our plans for the next round, and our plans to save up money for the next sailing sabbatical.
