This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed interview with Brian Trautman, a 47-year-old sailor and content creator who lives aboard a sailboat with his wife and daughter. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I had some experience sailing. I'd owned a small boat that I took out on a lake many afternoons — but that wasn't much to prepare me for crossing an ocean.I bought SV Delos, a 53-foot Amel Super Maramu sailboat, for $390,000 in 2008. I sold my house in Redmond to make a down payment and got a marine mortgage to cover the rest. The boat was eight years old at the time, so it was cheaper than buying new.
Auckland is a big refit center for yachts based in the South Pacific, so it was a great place to make several hundred dollars a day working on engines and troubleshooting electrical problems.Four months into my time in New Zealand, I met Karin, my future wife, who eventually joined me sailing full-time. I've now traveled to 46 countries on the boat.
If you exclude boat maintenance, I work three to four hours a day, as does Karin. We have plenty of time to spend afternoons enjoying the beach.We also now have a remote team of seven employees who help produce videos. They also ship Delos merch.We're paying $10,000 a year to insure the boat. Fuel costs vary widely from year to year depending on how far we travel. On average, fuel costs us $3,000 a year.Our monthly costs for food and living run about $3,500 to $4,000.
We met a local who gifted us bananas and grapefruits. His generosity was so touching. We then went swimming under a waterfall — it was a perfect day.Sailing can also be dangerous. Our boat has been boarded illegally three times — in the Solomon Islands, western Papua New Guinea, and Madagascar — always at about 3 a.m. It's terrifying when this happens, but we scream bloody murder and the thieves flee.