How to drop everything and go sailing around the world for several years
Miscellaneous / / October 12, 2023
We had almost no money, but there was a great desire to make the sea our way of life.
Alexey Egorov
Andrey Kipyatkov
34 years. Previously, he implemented IT projects in large businesses. Now a yacht captain and the author of the YouTube channel “Round the World”.
Idea
Around the same time, 6 years ago, we started to get involved in yachting, decided to get our licenses and went study at "Power of Wind" - a company that organizes yacht expeditions and teaches management yacht.
We became captains and began to sail the seas. We saw a lot: almost the entire Mediterranean Sea, all of Scandinavia, we were in the Seychelles, in Thailand. From Portugal through Ireland, Andrey transported a yacht across the Atlantic Ocean, Alexey delivered boats from Norway to Germany, from Gibraltar to Madeira.
The idea to sail around the world came after watching the movie Chasing Bubbles, in which a broker gives up everything, takes a yacht and sets off on a trip around the Earth. This idea attracted me with a feeling of endless freedom, and I wanted to finally make the sea a way of life.
But at first it was still a little scary to think seriously about traveling. The idea that it was worth going was finally strengthened while sailing around the Faroe Islands in 2019. It was very atmospheric there; for a long part of the journey there was not a single yacht around, and it seemed that this is not just a week-long trip, but part of a circumnavigation - I wanted to make this feeling a reality. And everything was decided.
Preparation
Planning took us several years. At the same time, we did not invent anything. They just took a book of routes and chose the one that is considered simple - the “Velvet Round the World” along the equator. Now we would not say that it is so easy. For a trip around the world, perhaps yes, but you need to understand that traveling around the Earth is difficult in itself.
The plan was as follows: Antilles - Puerto Rico - Dominican Republic - Colombia - Panama - Galapagos - Marquesas Islands - Tamotu - Tahiti - Cook Islands - Tonga - Fiji - Port Vila - Vanuatu - Papua New Guinea - Indonesia - Bali - Java - Sumatra - Sri Lanka - Maldives - Socotra - Egypt - Mediterranean sea. This is more than 35,000 km, three oceans and more than 30 countries that we planned to cover in 1.5 years.
It was clear that the route would have to be adapted to the circumstances. For example, we might not be allowed to go somewhere, we might miss some countries, and we might be delayed somewhere.
Before leaving, we read about visas, about some nuances in different countries. This is all on the Internet, and it was this preparation that was not deep - we did not spend very much time, and Now every time we look at what visas we will need in the next few countries that lie ahead of us.
With documents everything is quite simple. In almost all the countries where we planned to enter, for the Russian passports no visas needed. The exception was the overseas territories of France. For example, Martinique requires a visa, but if you enter by sea, you can do so without it. Or French Polynesia is waiting for us in the Pacific Ocean - we received visas there while in Panama, they got them for us in a month without any problems.
Budget
In general, we did not have any clear budget frameworks or expectations before departure.
Despite the fact that we earned good money, we did not have any impressive savings.
We initially set the budget only for the yacht. As we now understand, funny - 30 thousand euros. The three of us were planning to go on a trip around the world and thought that we would put together a million rubles each, buy a yacht with this money and get ready.
But the closer the trip got, the more clear it became that this money could not buy a yacht - the budget was inflated. In addition, during Covid, our partner changed his mind about sailing, so we were left alone.
We are not rich guys, and at the time of our round-the-world trip we became even poorer, because we quit our jobs before the trip, and the start had to be postponed due to Covid.
Another great article expenses - boat repair. We, of course, assumed that it would have to be repaired. But you can never predict how much you will spend on these repairs.
Then we roughly estimated how much we would spend on food per month. We figured it would be about $500.
Otherwise, we didn’t have any financial expectations; we decided that we would improvise on the fly and understand what we had with money.
Search for a boat
He took the most time. First, you had to decide: are you going to buy a boat, build it yourself, or rent it. We chose the first one, but finding a suitable vessel is difficult.
There are different ways to find a boat, we tried them all. Starting from the fact that you walk into the marina and ask what is on sale here, ending with old inconvenient websites with yachts. We looked for ours for almost 1.5 years.
As a result, we found a yellow yacht in Spain - just like we wanted. This is a classic Jeanneau single mast yacht made in France in 1986. By the standards of car enthusiasts, it is old, but by the standards of those who understand yachts, it is the very best, because they made very good hulls back then. It is just designed for long trips. It has three cabins and can accommodate nine people if you try hard enough.
We bought the boat for 62,500 euros. This is critically expensive for us. We saved up as much as possible on our own to buy the boat, took out a loan to help, and borrowed from friends. They planned to recoup this money through advertising on YouTube in our travel series, as well as through partner projects.
There was a lot to fix on the yacht. We had to go through almost every system of the purchased boat: we replaced many parts, updated power supply, repaired the water system, running and standing rigging, tried to achieve maximum autonomy of the yacht.
The final touch was to provide some kind of everyday comfort: buy dishes, bed linen, sleeping bags, pillows, tools, deliver our personal belongings by cargo.
Out to sea
We went to sea on December 23, 2021. From a city near Valencia, Spain, we headed west. And we immediately encountered difficult weather conditions: our trip around the world began with a small storm. Frequent waves did not allow the yacht to accelerate, the gusty wind constantly kept the list, carefully packed things flew out of their places.
Within a week we passed our first strength test.
Already on the second night the engine failed. We had to go only under sail and contact all the nearest marinas in search of shelter and people who would agree to tow our yacht to the parking lot. We received help only the next day. At the same time, we had to enter the marina under sail (which is usually strictly prohibited), and we almost ran into rocks when the wind suddenly stopped and the boat began to drift onto the breakwater.
Even despite the difficulties, the delight was indescribable. We went to the West, left the Mediterranean Sea, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, crossed a small piece of the Atlantic, reached Madeira and the Canary Islands, then walked along the Atlantic again.
We crossed the ocean for 21 days. Despite the fact that many yachtsmen dream about this, it turned out that this is a rather monotonous, almost meditative process. Not much happens around, the landscape remains virtually unchanged. The boat is constantly rocking, and any everyday processes become much more complicated. It’s hard to read or watch anything, there is no Internet, the routine is changing. All that remains is to contemplate and think a lot.
Suddenly a huge amount of time to reflection and thoughts that had no place in everyday life - you get such a journey within yourself. You are silent a lot because the crew members are assigned to shifts and you meet in short shifts. You just sit, think, take some notes and look at the horizon. The landscape changes slightly depending on the waves, the sky, the sunset, the stars.
On March 1, 2022, we reached Barbados, and then through the chain of Caribbean islands to Panama.
We visited some places in passing, and sometimes we stopped unexpectedly for a long time. So, we spent more than six months in Martinique and about eight months in Panama.
Impression
We are in constantly changing conditions, and things that two years ago seemed exotic and fragments of adventure books have become everyday life and our everyday life. Right now we are standing in Costa Rica, and there are crocodiles swimming around. On the first day this information frightened me, after a week it amused me, now it’s just a given.
The romance of travel has dulled a little. Firstly, we have already seen a lot. We landed on uninhabited islands, heard whales talking, met wild monkeys, drowned, burned, found sunken yachts, caught abandoned boats from the sea, celebrated the New Year at sea, and birthdays in the jungle. All this dulls your perception a little and pushes the boundaries of what you can truly be surprised by.
Secondly, when you read some books about sailors, you imagine traveling on your own yacht as somehow more romantic. But it turns out that this is not only adventure and delightful islands with white sand, but also constant work accumulated fatigue, fussing with documents, repairs, the desire to move when you cannot do this due to a breakdown or weather. And the romance is somewhat diluted by the truth of life.
At the same time, you still try to absorb your surroundings: endless sunsets and sunrises, flickering jellyfish, dolphins frolicking around, fishermen in colorful clothes. Even the names of the islands where we sail are more reminiscent of words from books about travelers.
We are so accustomed to whales that we no longer even always turn our heads to look at them. It happened once that a whale next to the boat was breathing so loudly that we even woke up. We looked out and saw that a whale and a baby whale were spinning near our anchorage.
It’s also very intoxicating to walk through the jungle. On the mainland in Panama they are very large-scale, massive, rich. We were recently in a national park and watched turtles spawn at night because it was the season. And when they go to spawn, they are hunted by jaguars, with whom you can meet nose to nose. We hadn't met, but we were worried that we might. It was a strong impression.
The worst thing is thunderstorms in Panama and Costa Rica. It’s very beautiful when 5-6 huge thunderstorms are walking around you with lightning, which strike every second. We stood on the Pearl Islands and went out to watch it like watching TV. It is an impressive and eerie sight.
Mood
When we are at sea, every 4 hours each of us must stand watch and look around so as not to accidentally bump into something like a floating container or another boat. Because of this shifted schedule, you don’t understand where is day and where is night. You don't know how much time has passed.
It's not scary. We were not afraid, even when the boat broke down - these are work moments. Usually these are some ordinary breakdowns that occur because the boat is still middle-aged, even though the previous owners took good care of it. Andrey is excellent at dealing with such technical problems.
We are not afraid even in a storm - in a storm we just get a little more tired.
But the feeling loneliness and we have been overwhelmed with loss for several months now because we miss home. But still, despite this feeling of melancholy, we enjoy the journey. This is a difficult but interesting adventure in which you get tired both physically and mentally.
Besides the fact that we have to go ahead and control the boat, we are trying to make a cool YouTube series about circumnavigating the world, which takes a lot of time. Approximately 40 hours a week are spent on editing a new episode - we release them every week. It’s quite unpleasant to do this when pitching.
The biggest question on such a journey is not the difficulties that arise, but working with yourself when you no longer want to do anything. Then you look for small joys that restore your spirit.
The most seemingly insignificant things make us happy. Ride on bicycle along the roads of the area where we are standing. Reflect through creativity: music, drawing, stories.
We also love to cook: sometimes it’s something very simple, and sometimes it’s something unusual. For example, a month ago we made khinkali - not the most typical dish for a yacht. This is where we get distracted.
Of course, each of us is in a different mood. But we don’t quarrel, there is no such thing that limited space has a bad effect on our relationship. For the last three years before our trip around the world, we walked a lot together. They towed each other, made sails, the winds and waves passed through. And now, when we travel, we don’t bother each other.
Life
Life on a boat is, of course, different from how it is on land. There are several mandatory tasks on the ship: watch, cooking, cleaning and maintaining all systems in working order. There is always something to repair, something to sort through some engine or electronics. We learn to repair as we go, we had some basic knowledge, but everything is learned in the process - YouTube and books help.
The rest of the time you can fish, sleep, read, watch something - in general, live in pleasure.
When you go on a yacht, you usually get inspired to write, draw, and create. And it seems that on a trip around the world there will definitely be a lot of free time to implement all this. But no.
There is always something to do: carry water, pull ropes, repair something. And sometimes there is not even time left for rest and there is barely any strength for any hobbies - all this has to be planned. And the day may not go at all according to plan: you don’t sleep well because of the waves, the wind starts in the morning, it’s damp, you need to sail urgently, and the day immediately turns out to be crumpled.
The feeling of home here is a little blurred. It seems to you that since you live on a boat, it will become your home, but in fact there is not always your personal corner that you can tidy up and decorate the way you want. This often happens because fellow travelers sail with us - anyone can submit an application and sail part of the route with us for money. And so fellow travelers periodically have to give up their cabin.
Sometimes fellow travelers bring their own atmosphere to the yacht and improve life. Someone brings flowers to the table in the morning, someone buys more beautiful dishes or small interior items, someone hangs a disco ball from the ceiling, or lays a tablecloth on the table.
Now, even two years later, I can’t say that life is completely settled. There is always something missing, and the necessary things are not always available in local stores. We spent a long time looking for a common rolling pin or couldn’t find a melamine sponge on several islands, which perfectly brings the deck into perfect condition.
In general, you wouldn’t expect that it would be difficult to maintain basic order. Things are constantly accumulating on the chart table, and tools are scattered around the boat. You tidy it up, but still things spontaneously appear out of place.
The Internet is not always available for obvious reasons. If something happens, there are special devices with built-in satellite communications to send an SOS signal. A friend gave us a satellite device, and during long passages we try to keep in touch, receive weather forecasts from friends on land and write that we are fine.
Income and expenses
You can travel more expensively, you can travel cheaper than us. The boat costs 62,500, so far we have spent about 35,000 euros on its repair. We spend about $500 a week on food. And this is perhaps our main expense.
We went on a trip with almost no money and several million debts, which we still have. But we are trying to pay them off.
Travel companions, as we said, are one of our sources of income. Now becoming a travel companion costs 600 euros for a place in a cabin or 1000 euros for an entire cabin. In addition, we share the costs of food, fuel, parking in marinas, and if there is some kind of state duty, we split that too.
Taking strangers on board is scary, of course, but it's part of our economy. We conduct preliminary calls and small interviews, and so far we haven’t made any major mistakes.
In addition to fellow travelers, we rely on our content, advertising and all sorts of affiliate integrations. That is why we try to make the series high-quality, interesting and regular. It seemed to us that our financial model would develop faster and YouTube would shoot and trample, but this was first prevented by Covid, and then by the geopolitical situation. Money from advertising on YouTube channel they just started to arrive. But the channel is gaining an audience that helps us.
For example, we have surprisingly strong support for donations, although we have never openly asked for them. Only once did they purposefully raise about $2,000 in a few hours to pay for the passage of the Panama Canal.
Even before the circumnavigation of the world, we created a small clothing brand “Parus” (now we have renamed it “Crugosvetchiki”), because we really wanted to try ourselves in something new. We made sweatshirts and T-shirts, and now we’ve added raincoats to them and we want to produce overalls as well.
While we were on the move, we came up with the idea of making homemade postcards, which were enjoyed by those who follow us.
We are incredibly grateful to the people who, even without knowing us personally, support us so much.
Dry residue
In December it will be two years since we have been traveling, although we planned to complete our round the world trip in 18 months. We don’t think about when we will complete it now. But it will probably take a couple of years. We have no goal of stopping and sailing at some appointed time. Therefore more deadlines We don’t set ourselves.
One of the reasons why our timing has spread is our curiosity and thirst for discovery. We stop in some places that are incredibly interesting to us and spend time exploring them. To do this, staying in the country for a week is not enough.
We have now passed about a quarter of the planned route.
Every time we move from country to country, we feel glad that we have taken another step in this adventure. Before us is the Pacific Ocean, which is much larger, more dangerous and less familiar to us than the Atlantic, and we are entering it with a good attitude.
Thoughts of giving up everything, taking a ticket to airplane and there was never a chance to fly home, despite the trials. There's too much in the balance to continue.
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