The sailors dream is to wake up in paradise, raise the anchor and go on a beautiful sail. That is precisely what we got the chance to do in the waters around St. Thomas and St. John in the USVI.
Sailing Single Handed?
We all want to go sailing but sometimes you might find yourself doing it alone. Can you solo sail and single hand a bigger sailboat?
How to make money while cruising
Cruising is a very cost effective way to live and travel the world. The wind is free, and it will carry you to distant shores well beyond the horizon; all you need is the patience to wait for it to get you there.
Expenses can be very low, just the food you need to eat and the parts you need to replace on your boat as they go wearing out. While you will have the time and knowhow to fix everything on your boat, you will still be faced by the hurdle that you will need to purchase the raw materials needed to carry out the repairs to keep your vessel sailing safely. So, how do you make money while sailing around?
There are a few options that we have seen over and over again by other cruisers. The first is to work on other peoples boats. Lots of people own boats but few people actually cruise on them and have the time to do the work themselves. This means that the majority of boats are owned by people who work a paying job and need maintenance/repairs carried out on their boat and simply don’t have the time to go do the work themselves.
Imagine if you work a full week and only have the weekend to go enjoy your boat. Do you want to get to your broken boat and begin working on it, or would you rather get to your boat and just go sailing? Everyone would rather the latter which is why people with money are willing to pay someone else to do the work for them. As a cruiser, you know how to fix everything on a boat and have loads of time on your hands. Working on someone else’s boat is a great way to make money without having to travel very far! You can also do work as you go, arriving in a new anchorage and taking on new jobs until you are finished with all the jobs available or tire of living in that anchorage and want to sail to somewhere new. Boat work pays very well and since you have very low expenses, this money will last you a very long time while you cruise!
Our monthly budget is still only $500 per month (even after 5 years of cruising). When I do a quick job and earn $100-$300, that represents 20%-60% of our entire months budget. With a couple of jobs a month, we can easily sustain ourselves while cruising and any additional money simply gives us more freedom until we need to find work again.
Another option, if you are tired of working on boats because it feels like that is all you ever do is to get a land based job in the town you are anchored near. We know a lot of people who get a quick low paying job like working at a grocery store or restaurant. This makes them some money to buy food and once they have enough, they set off again for a bit of freedom. When their funds wear down to the point that they need to find work again, they just find another grocery store or restaurant to work in.
While these jobs pay a respectable income while you are sailing around, they are not very glamourous jobs. Boat work is hard and dirty work, and minimum wage jobs are also hard work. What about the idea of filming yourself and becoming YouTube famous? Bust out a camera from time to time and record your self living an awesome life, upload it to the internet and have the money pour into your bank account! That’s the dream, right?
Well, it does help out but it isn’t a sure thing. It seems that everyone wants to become YouTube famous these days and they think that whatever they film is going to go viral and make them millions of dollars while they sleep at anchor. Making YouTube videos is a full time job that does not come without sacrifice.
While the cost of entry is pretty low, as the camera in the phone that you already have will seem like enough to make a video; there is a huge gap between those who are just filming for fun and those who are filming as a job.
When we started our YouTube Channel, we were filming with the GoPro Hero 5. This camera is a work horse and we used it constantly for about 2 years straight. It films really well in 1080p and the audio is Ok, but not great. The camera is water proof which is very important for a sailing channel, as the camera will get splashed!
This camera is a huge step up from a cell phone camera, but it pales in comparison to a “real” camera; and as a result, the video quality just isn’t there.
After 2 years of making YouTube videos, we decided to upgrade our equipment and make this our primary job. We decided to stop making videos that were for “memories” of our little voyage and instead work really hard to make really good videos. I took courses offered by YouTube that go very in depth into how to make a proper video, as well as studying videography courses and pretty much devoting myself to learning how to make every episode better than the last.
To improve or videos, we had to improve our equipment and our GoPro Hero 5 was replaced by an assortment of cameras that have their specific purposes. It’s like having a “screwdriver” versus having a “Phillips Screwdriver and a Blade Screwdriver”. Specialized tools work better but only in their intended task.
Our camera armamentarium grew from a GoPro Hero 5 to a GoPro Hero 8, a Nikon D7500 with an assortment of lenses, and DJI Osmo.
The GoPro Hero 8 was simply an improved and updated version of the GoPro Hero 5 that we were very accustomed to. It had more features than the Hero 5, and it could film (with stabilization) in 4K.
4K footage was the biggest jump in quality that we could make and it set up apart from all the other channels that were “filming for fun”. 4K files are massive and as a result we needed to upgrade the iPad we were using to edit on to get one with a bigger drive, as well as buy a boatload of SD cards to hold all this additional footage. Our SD cards would hold about 8 hours of 1080p footage or around 2 hours of 4K footage.
With prettier footage we were then more motivated to make a prettier video and push ourselves further with the cameras to get cooler and cooler shots. The DJI Osmo was very handy at getting shots where the gymbal was needed to steady the image, but nothing compares to the footage that could be captured by a proper camera.
The Nikon D7500 is our “pretty camera”. It can look at a turd and make the footage glow with beauty! This expensive camera also has interchangeable lenses and each lens costs a small fortune!
We have one automatic focus zoom lens that we use the majority of the time because it is very versatile, but we also have a collection of prime manual focus lenses that are absolutely stunning to look through. The footage we get with these lenses go beyond YouTube video and become art.
With all this added effort and work, our channel began to grow even faster and we started to make some actual money from it, enough that we decided to upgrade our primary camera, the GoPro Hero 8, to something a little better. Enter the Sony a6600.
The Sony a6600 is a glorified GoPro. It takes better video, has a zoom lens, and has pretty good stabilization in 4K, but it isn’t water proof.
Water proof is a massive requirement on a sailboat, especially if you want to get awesome storm footage. The camera will get splashed so you need to be able to afford to replace it when it gets splashed and dies a corroded death.
As you can see, the jump from “YouTube for fun” to “YouTube Career” is a pretty big one, one that we are just beginning to take as we improve our camera gear and upgrade our skills to create better and better videos.
If you are just picking up your phone and want to become YouTube famous, you will probably become frustrated when the big bucks don’t instantly arrive at your bank account.
It seems that the cost of making good YouTube videos pretty much outweighs the profits from making YouTube videos, so how does it all work out? How do people make a living from filming themselves as they sail around from one tropical paradise to another?
Well, YouTube isn’t the entire story. In fact, YouTube is only a tiny portion of the “passive income” generated by videos. YouTube is a place to cast your voice upon the masses so that you can then drive earnings from other revenue streams.
Patreon is a common platform that creators use to help them on this path. At first, we felt odd about “asking people for money” through Patreon, but then we realized (after being told by one of our Patrons) that they were supporting us on Patreon so that we could continue to bring them videos. We all have a finite amount of time available to us, and the best way to ensure that we spent our time making videos about our adventures was to give us the financial independence to go make the videos. If we didn’t have that dependable income, we would probably have to stop making videos from time to time to go work a regular job.
Patreon was just the beginning of the income stream, as it was a very nice and dependable base that we could budget around. Our Patreon family grew and remains filled with people who want to see us grow and succeed instead of people who “want stuff” from us. There are times when we are sailing across and ocean and have absolutely no internet access for almost an entire month. Our Patrons understand that we are out there gathering tons of amazing footage that they will get to see as soon as we can get it to them, and they wait patiently. There are other times when we have plenty of internet access and we all chat on a Patreon only group chat.
This base and security helps a lot to provide a dependable income as you begin to explore other revenue streams that could be much more profitable as you grow.
These other revenue streams are selling branded swag and gear to your viewers. It is very easy to design a T-shirt that will connect with your viewers. This can be something as simple as a running joke that you have on your channel or an awesome design that everyone would want to wear. There are companies that will sell, print, and ship your designs for you; handling everything for you (for a fee) and then sending you a portion of the sale price to you at the end of each month. This is awesome because you can also design the shirts that you wish to wear yourself rather than being forced into the social norms of wearing something that a professional designer came up with.
We sell our shirts through TeeSpring, but there are other companies out there that will provide a similar service.
Beyond selling stuff that you create, there is also the opportunity to sell stuff that other people create, and stuff that you use on a daily basis! This is the world of Affiliate Marketing.
Basically, you contact a company and ask to become an affiliate. They will give you a code or link and every time someone buys said product using your link or code, you will get a percentage as a “finders fee”. The buyer pays nothing and the seller pays you, as your part comes out of their profit margin.
This comes in handy when it’s stuff that you use all the time, as people will see it in your videos and want to buy the item that you are using. Having the links in your description help make it even easier for this to all work out.
I have a few affiliate accounts, and they are all with companies that I feel make a good product. For years, I was simply free advertising for these companies as they are products that I have purchased and was then displaying over and over again in our videos. Now I found a way to earn a bit of income from this exposure.
Our current affiliate links are:
Mantus Anchors: https://www.mantusmarine.com/?affiliates=119
Overkill Solar: https://overkillsolar.com/?myboi=187478592
Battery Hookup: https://www.batteryhookup.com [Code: RIGGING5]
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/riggingdoctor
Aquos Electric Motors: https://www.aquospro.com?sca_ref=1008159.oxyRUafA2y
Amazon is an interesting one, as Amazon sells most everything these days. If someone clicks on your Amazon link and then buys anything, literally anything, you get a finders fee for the sale. You could put a link for your favorite anchor and someone clicks on that link and then decides not to buy the anchor but instead buy a nail clipper. You will get a finders fee for the nail clipper.
Naturally, as your channel grows, so does your audience and as a result you will generate more sales through your affiliate links. As your sales increase, you will begin to make more and more revenue from these sales until it eventually becomes your biggest revenue stream and affords you the ability to continue sailing indefinitely.
The trick to it all is to stick with your original budget as it will become very tempting to spend more as you make more. If you earn more money but continue to spend the same meager amount that you always did, you will find yourself with more financial independence and freedom to cruise without worrying about when you will need to pull into a port to find a job.
In summary. the way to earn money while cruising is:
Work a paying job, be it on someone else’s boat or on land.
Work a YouTube job, because it is a job when you really get down to it. It’s an awesome job that lets you live your best life; but it is a job and it takes a lot of work!
From your YouTube channel, you can expand to have a Patreon account which will help you with the costs of all the camera equipment needed to create your YouTube videos. You can then expand to sell merchandise for the channel and eventually create revenue streams from affiliate marketing.
Radar on a sailboat
Do you need to have radar on your cruising boat? The short answer is: “No” but the long answer is: “Maybe”.
It really depends on where you plan to cruise. Are you aiming your bow for warm tropical waters? In that case you won’t need radar. If you are going to more “unique” destinations where fog is a normal part of life, then suddenly radar becomes a very valuable tool.
Radar has many uses on a boat, many of which I do not find to justify the cost of the unit.
Weather
The most proclaimed reason is to “watch the weather so storms don’t sneak up on you”. The reason is radar will pick up dense clouds in your surroundings and that will alert you to the presence of a storm. Do you know what else detects the presence of dense clouds in your surroundings? Your eyes! You already have them and you don’t have to shell out any boat bucks to buy them.
The classic rebuttal to this statement is: “but what about at night when you can’t see the clouds because it’s dark?” I have found this to be a false argument because at night, the clear blue sky is replaced by a black sky filled with stars. If there is a moon, suddenly it becomes less dark, but still filled with stars! When clouds roll in, patches of the sky lose their stars and become just black patches.
As you spend time out there, you will become very familiar with the different constellations and will quickly notice when you can’t see Orion or Scorpio or Gemini or Pegasus. When you can’t see parts of the sky and the stars are quickly disappearing, you also know that clouds are rolling in and a squall is going to hit soon. Once again, you don’t need radar to alert you to weather changes.
detecting shOres
The idea is if you are entering a harbor in the dark or if you are sailing near land in the dark, the coastline will be drawn on the radar screen. This is useful for identifying rocks that are above water and cliff faces.
I have two major problems with this idea. First, you should never sail into a harbor or near land in the dark. There are so many things that could happen that you just won’t see. Minor things like fishing traps that will foul your propeller to more dangerous things like a submerged log just beneath the surface. If your travels have you arriving after nightfall, either heave to offshore and wait for daybreak or drop anchor outside and enter the harbor at dawn.
My second major issue with this is electronic charts do this exact function and are a fraction of the price! I have Navionics on my phone and it draws all the coasts in perfect detail. It goes one further and also shows me the bathymetry of the sea floor which is something radar still can’t do. Why pay thousands of dollars to have a thing draw the coast when you could have the same thing on your phone for about $20 a year?
If it’s dark out and you can’t see, Navionics will show you the way, if you get hit by offshore fog, Navionics again will show you where land is so you can avoid hitting it.
Land and rocks don’t move. They are also well charted, which means that the electronic chart will help you avoid hitting a shore that you can’t see.
Other Boats
This one has some validity to it. The idea is that if a boat doesn’t have lights on (because they are an idiot) and their speeding around you in the dark, you will be able to detect them on your radar. This also applies to non-idiot boaters who do have their lights on and are simply approaching you. You can set certain parameters so that if someone comes within a certain range of you, an alarm goes off to notify you of their approach.
The reason this is somewhat of a valid point is because AIS does this exact same thing. You can set your AIS to do these same functions but it only works if the other boat is transmitting AIS.
As of right now, all commercial boats have to transmit AIS (Class A signal) while recreational boats don’t have to; and if they do they transmit Class B signal. If you are crossing an ocean, you will have over night passages and you will be sailing downwind (or you are going the wrong way and want to reconsider your route). All other private vessels that are sailing across the ocean will be going in the same direction, so an approaching vessel has to be going faster than you to come from behind or you have to be going faster to approach someone else’s stern. In other words, a head on collision with another sailboat is very unlikely!
The only boats that will not be going downwind will be power boats. These will consist of massive commercial cargo ships that will be transmitting Class A AIS and massive private motorboats which will most likely be transmitting Class B AIS. The reason it’s safe to assume that only massive and expensive power boats will be out there is these boats have to carry enough fuel to cross an ocean! Unlike sailboats which rely on the wind to power them across the great blue sea, power boats need diesel to move, and lots of it! The fuel cost for an ocean crossing will eliminate all possibility of a person with limited financial means being out there on a motorboat. If they can afford the fuel, then they can also afford the electronics that make those boats fancy, and one of the first electronics they will install will be AIS.
Think about how many times you see a derelict sailboat cruising around and enjoying life as the captain gets to freely sail to new destinations and explore the world. Now think about how many derelict power boats you see doing the same thing? Wind is free and food can be found. Sailors can live a happy life on barely no money where a power boat needs to have money to purchase fuel. No fuel, no moving, no exploring, and no living an awesome life! In other words, a powerboat in the middle of the ocean going against the wind belongs to someone who can afford AIS and therefore would show up on your AIS display. A sailboat in the middle of the ocean may belong to a happy boat person who is traveling the world on a tiny budget (much like we have been doing for the past 5 years) and doesn’t have AIS but will be going the same direction that you are!
To summarize, AIS is wonderful but only works if the other boat also transmits AIS. Out in the middle of the ocean, everyone is going to be moving the same direction so if someone isn’t transmitting AIS, they will not approach too quickly. Where this becomes a big problem is sailing through island chains where boats will be traveling in all directions and may not be transmitting AIS! Here is where radar becomes very helpful as an adjunct to AIS. If anything approaches, transmitting or not, it will be detected by one of the two systems and you will be notified of their approach!
fog
This is the real reason to have radar! Storms can be seen with your eyes, day or night, other boats can be seen by keeping a proper watch and using AIS, but fog is blinding! Thankfully, when fog rolls in, the winds are also light or nonexistent, so if you are sailing you will stop moving. This means that if you are purely sailing out in the ocean to destinations that are not routinely covered in fog, and fog appears; you will come to a stop and if you do bump into anything it will be slowly and hopefully less damaging.
What if you are sailing the foggy coast of Maine or near England? The wind can die as the fog rolls in but that doesn’t mean the tidal currents will slow. Suddenly, you might find yourself with no wind in your sails, no visibility, and being swept away with the tide.
Rocks and shorelines are still visible on your phone with Navionics, but what about all the anchored boats or small craft that might also be caught in the same situation? You are blind and suddenly surrounded by a lot to hit while moving quickly!
This is where radar shines. To answer the earlier question of “Do you need radar to go cruising?” The answer is “No” because you can go cruising in places that are not plagued with fog. Head to the tropics where the water and air are both warm and fog is a rare sight to see.
We have been sailing around successfully for 5 years without a radar unit and we have done our best to avoid sailing in fog. We have had a few instances in the middle of the ocean where we came upon fog (it looks like a big grey wall in the moonlight) but it burns away as soon as the sun comes out.
One instance that radar would have been very helpful in was when we were sailing out of the Bay of Cadiz in Spain. We were anchored and a dense fog rolled in while we were preparing to sail to Morocco. We continued to prepare the boat as we waited for the fog to lift, and once it did, the world was clear and visible once more. We raised anchor and as we were sailing out of the channel, the fog came back onto us! With Navionics, I was able to overlay the AIS display on the chart on my phone’s screen; this made me feel safe sailing blind as we made our way out into the open ocean.
AIS shows me where all the boats that are transmitting AIS are located and the electronic charts show me where land, rocks, and all the buoys are located. So far, so good! But what about someone else sailing in that area who is not transmitting AIS? They would only show up on radar and I was not privy to that information.
Instead of sailing around in constant fear of crashing into an unknown vessel in the fog, I radioed the nearest commercial cargo ship (whose name I was able to get off the AIS screen) and asked if they had anything showing up on their radar that wasn’t showing up on their AIS display. The captain confirmed that everyone on his radar screen was also transmitting AIS. This meant that I could safely follow the chart on Navionics as we sailed out of the fog and into the ocean. Would I have liked to have radar in that moment? Yes. Did I need to have my own radar to sail out of that harbor? No.
Sailing in warm waters where fog is seldom seen is a nice way to avoid the need for your own personal radar, but what if you are longing to sail in high latitudes where the water temperatures are cold and any moisture in the warm air coming off the land will instantly condense into a thick cloud of fog. What are your options when it comes to radars?
Potato
The cheapest option is to have someone stand on the bow throwing potatoes as far as they can. As long as the person on the bow hears a splash, it is safe to proceed moving forward. If the person on the bow hears a thud, STOP!
Halo24
The Halo24 is a powerful radar unit that can see things up to 48 nautical miles away! As you can imagine from it’s name, it is 24 inches in diameter which makes it “compact” as far as radars go, yet big enough to give you a lot of usable information.
“Real” radars have a really REALLY wide antenna which spins around. These are called Open Array antennas and while they give you incredible detail at really long distances, they have one massive problem on a sailboat: Rigging. Open array radar antennas will get fouled in your rigging, be it a halyard, or a part of the sail. At some point, it’s going to get tangled and that will make a mess. Radar manufacturers know this and in an effort to find more ways to sell more stuff to sailors, they figured out how to put all the moving parts inside a small dome shaped container, cleverly called a Radome (or Radar Dome).
While this unit is compact and will give you lots of information about your surroundings it does come at a cost. This radar unit will cost you about $3,600 and also consume about 17 to 25 amps per night (over a 10 hour night). Your wallet will take a little bit of time to recover as you wait for the sun to come out and charge up your batteries through your solar panels.
Halo 20
Going a little smaller, this radar unit is only 20 inches in diameter. While less might seem better on a sailboat, the range is also restricted (as the antenna is smaller to fit inside the smaller container). The range on this unit drops along with the price tag. This 20 inch radar can see a whopping 36 nautical miles and will cost you about $2,300!
While it is smaller, the power consumption is still around the same as the Halo24.
An important thing to note when it comes to various brands, they all have about the same power consumption, range, and size because these limitations are controlled by the laws of physics. Radar needs power to work, and the range is dependent on the size of the radar. Making the radar bigger does increase its range but this also increases its usable area. If you can see something farther away, you will have more time to react to it and this will make close encounters at sea a rare occurrence as you can steer clear of obstacles long before they come into visual range.
Open Array
Not that you could actually put one of these on your sailboat, but this is the ideal radar antenna. It is very big, very wide, and very powerful. This unit uses a ton of power and costs a fortune but will provide you unparalleled detail of everything around you. The largest and most powerful antennas can spot and distinguish between birds in a flock over 70 nautical miles away!
Why? Well, flocks of birds are useful to identify where fish are because a flock of birds will collect over a school of fish, so if you are trying to find fish in the big empty sea, then finding birds in the sky is going to be a good starting point. While power boaters are interested in identifying what and how many items there are in the distance, sail boaters don’t really care about such detail. A fisherman wants to know where the birds are in the distant sky and how many there are, as well as how they are moving. A sailor wants to know where something in the water is so that they can steer clear of the obstruction and avoid a collision. It doesn’t matter how many items there are in the distance because a sailor will avoid the entire area!
If you had your heart set on having the best most precise radar antenna on the market, and wanted to mount it on your sailboat, you would have to fit a very narrow set of rules to make it work. First you would need a ketch rig that way you would have a mizzen mast. Second, you would need internal halyards so that no halyards are flapping around and getting fouled on the long antenna. Third, you would need in mast furling so that when the sail is stowed, there would still be no halyard around. Fourth, you would need a rigid vang so that you wouldn’t have a topping lift on the main boom.
In other words, you would need to have a powerboat with two masts on it to have this kind of radar antenna. That is why the smaller Radar Domes or Radomes exist and are so popular on sailboats. The entire assembly is crammed into the small plastic case, protected from impact and fouling of lines high above the deck of the boat.
In conclusion, radar is not a mandatory piece of equipment standing in your way of cruising freedom. It is a tool that is useful in a fog. All other applications for this tool are superfluous as they can easily and more cheaply be accomplished by other pieces of equipment on your boat. If you have a small budget and don’t think you can afford radar, simply go cruising in the warmer waters of the tropics. If you feel the need to punish yourself repeatedly by sailing into the frigid high latitudes where wicked tidal ranges predominate and fog is a regular part of the landscape (it helps hide the sharp rocks so that it looks prettier), then radar will be a very important piece of gear to add to your cruising yacht.
When looking at the different units, consider where you will mount it, how much it will drain your wallet, and how you will power the device. There is no point in buying a unit that will tether you to shore as you make monthly payments on it and continue to work a land based job instead of cruising, or buying a power hungry monster that will drain your batteries so fast that you can’t afford to run it. Choose a unit that will augment your freedom and grant you access to a broader world instead of one that will cripple your dreams of sailing the world.
Atlantic Crossing #2 Completed (Part 3)
And now for the last bit of days from our passage across the Atlantic Ocean.
