Yacht Life I: Crew Houses are a way of Life

It feels like a hostel - but no one’s goal is just travel. 

Everyone seems to have money - but no one seems to have jobs. 

Fort Lauderdale, full of wanna-be yachties lurking around for the beginning of the season, is where we found ourselves early in this adventure. The secret underbelly population that neither travelers nor yachties will claim as their own; the crew housemates are the frat brothers you never had. 

The first house we stayed in had up to 32 people living, eating, drinking, partying and hustling for work at any one time. It was insane. It was overwhelming. It was great.

But, despite all the craziness, it was an amazing learning experience. Here are some things I learned...

How to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 32. Canadian thanksgiving, not that weirdly scheduled American version. With turkey and a teapot full of gravy. I had to call my mom for an apple pie recipe after Juliano made a fuss over the exclusivity of pumpkin. Moms are the best at pie recipes. And a rum punch helps everything.

How to do laundry in a sketchy laundromat. Answer: lots of quarters, bring friends, don’t talk to the guy who works there, don’t open the dryer before it’s finished. Bring your own soap.

How to party. I though I knew, I was wrong.

How to party in costume. Everything is better in costume. Especially drinking.

How to not have a job. Here’s a weird one. I’ve had a job steadily since I was 14 and worked in a Korean Bakery. Most of my life I’ve had two jobs. I’ve never had zero jobs. Turns out: It’s fun in the short term. Go to the beach in the middle of the day on a Tuesday? Of course I will.

How easy it is to sneak into fancy hotels and use their pools. From Ft Lauderdale to Miami.... just wear your bikini under your clothes, and order a drink if there’s a bar. Enjoy acting fancy.

How to do shit for free. When you’re broke, free shit is the best. 
Work out in a park. Go to free drinking days at restaurants (they exist!). Go to the beach. Download movies from the internet. Rent a SUP with a whole group of people, they all take a turn. Ride a crappy bike.

How to make awesome friends. 

1. Do something life changing that is hard to relate to.
2. Meet other people that can relate to that/you and live with them.
3. Get drunk with them, better if in costume.
4. New friends!

Okay, so thats not exactly the golden rule for making new friends. Nor do I really recommend jobless binge drinking as a long term choice.  But, when you put yourself out there, when you’re open to new experiences in life - you attract new people and new experiences. It’s amazing how many people are really out there, disrupting their lives for new goals and adventures. 

Meet them, learn from them, befriend them. Soak in their luminosity and lust for life - it can fuel yours.

Good Day for Goodwill!

In a mixture of staging the house and downsizing our stuff - I finally went through all of my clothes. Holy Shit - I have WAY TOO MUCH stuff! I'll be glad to give away some great things to someone in need.

I made 4 categories and all my clothes had to fit into one of them:

1. Bring to Florida - this is still a work in progress... Not sure what I'm going to bring.
2. Wear for the next 4 months  - mostly work clothes, work out gear, casual stuff
3. Donate - good quality items that don't fit 1 or 2
4. Garbage - worn out/torn/paint clothes etc.

This is what I ended up with:

It's a mountain of clothes! Lots of it went to my sister-in-law/friends and the rest will be donated. I can't believe I even owned this much clothes. [In a futile defense, I will say that we have VERY distinct seasons in Calgary! You have to dress for them all!]

It's such a good feeling to downsize and get rid of excess stuff - and now my closets are so tidy and organized, getting ready in the morning is already faster.

House photos are coming soon - the photographer is coming this Thursday! I'll keep you posted :)

Staging our House for Sale

 It's finally time! We're staging our house for sale! I'm so excited because this is a really fun process - and it will force us to get packing... Staging is 'the art of designing your house for sale' and its a big deal now  - There's even a show about it!

Check out this slide show of staged homes sold by our Realtor Anne:

 

Our stager came over last night and left us with a looong list of things to do, pictures to hang, and mostly - stuff to get rid of! We're cleaning out our stuff and re-organizing furniture like mad!

Also - despite all of our selling posts, she wants us to BUY STUFF! Yep, we need some additional decorations, and touches to make our house look like a show home!

We even had to buy RUGS! I know it sounds counter-intuitive to buy things to sell a house but it makes such an impression on the buyers - you'll more than make your money back (and you can Kijiji everything in the end - making it worth EVEN MORE!).

Here's the guys getting dragged through Costco to buy rugs:

We've got lots of work ahead of us before the house gets photographed - we'll let you know how it goes!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - and trash?

Stuff Stuff Stuff! What to do with all our Stuff?! We have a lot of stuff in our house - and we have to start paring it all down now if we want a compact and well organized storage solution while we're gone. I admit that I'm not a naturally organized person, so this comes with a bit of hesitation on my part...

Our real question is what to do with our excess stuff that we neither want to pack and bring, nor save at home.
I don't want to send perfectly good things to the DUMP! So our solutions have started to become a mixture of recycling unusable things, and donating the rest! Charity organizations like Salvation Army accept donation of clothing and household items in good condition.

This may be a bit boring, but we'll keep you posted on how we deal with getting rid of our stuff!

Exciting News: Our home Stager is coming today to make everything pretty!

Early NY Resolutions?

In looking forward to our trip {should I call it a trip? A move? not sure} there are a few things that I want to do, personally... In addition to leaving our lives behind, I want to be as prepared as possible so we can 'hit the ground running' in our new life. This might be a bullshit waste of time. Maybe not. I guess we'll see.

Here are some goals that I want to do/see/learn before I leave:

• Swim Like the Sharks! aka. Learn to Scuba dive ~ at least the classroom/pool portion, not the open water. Kudos to people who've done their open-water here. Sounds like the worst idea ever, sorry Jon.
• See Like an Owl! aka. Get my vision corrected ~ contacts are such-a-pain-in-the-ass. I have a consult at Gimble booked... Hopefully it will cost less than a million dollars.
• Remember like and Elephant? Bad analogy. Learn some shit about taking pictures. I am admittedly an awful photographer. I would like to take a mini-class to learn what an Fstop is. Or how to zoom. You know, the basics.

I don't have an ongoing list of goals for after the Great Dana Shift (ha ha.. Linguistics nerd joke) because the horizon is pretty grey now, and populated by the general consensus of... don't screw it all up. Here's one thing that's always been on my bucket list:

• Surf like Slater. Well.. I probably won't be giving Kelly a run for his $$, but standing up would be a good start.

I don't have any pictures for this post. So here's a picture of when I got attacked - and BIT - by a fish. I was snorkeling in Cuba.... It was actually a really great day. Minus the fish bite.

THE BIG IDEA

So, we're travel junkies - who never seem to travel enough. We're also people with the full list of things that people 'should have'. So... pretty much not enough adventure, and too much debt. 

We've been tossing around ideas about what to do. Have babies and stay here? Get different jobs in our fields? Take on more debt and just travel? In the end, we decided that we want two main things:
1. More adventure. Travel. See the world we live in.
2. More money. Pay off debts, minimize expenses, seriously save for future plans.

I have an amazing friend who inspired us to the idea of working in the Yachting Industry. She was brave first and got a job on a yacht paying well! We decided that we found our solution. After some 'wouldn't it be crazy if...' back and forth, we decided to do it. 

CRAZY PANTS!! THESE PANTS ARE SO CRAZY!! 

I know.

Have you ever thought about what you have to do to leave your ENTIRE LIFE behind? It's a long list, and includes things like:

• sell the house
• quit our jobs
• get certified to work on a yacht (so many courses!)
• save money to pay for these courses
• save money to leave in our account - some bills don't stop even if you move!
• organize our rental property
• cancel all of our services/utilities/cell phones
• set up international banking
• tell our family and friends ~ eek!
• buy a one way plane ticket
• find a place to stay in a yacht port
• Think of the rest of the things you're forgetting...

We've picked Fort Lauderdale, FL as our starting point. It's a huge port, and all the courses we'd need to take are offered there. It's a good starting place, and not too far away.

Although all of the ideas I have about Florida are these:

Should be a good time...