How My MIDLIFE CRISIS Got Us Here! // A Tour of Our Floating Home (Ep 113)

who knew we'd ever be sailing what's it been like four years now i remember years ago used to say i want to sail around the world remember saying that yeah i was like right when we first got our place in dallas and i thought that's stupid here we are now [Music] four years later we failed around the world one and i mean not all the way around the world we haven't got the indian ocean yet over 35 000 nautical miles of sailing raising children out here on the boat letting one child go oh yeah people ask us you know they ask us all the time what what drove you to do this what what why did you do this why did you change your life and and we were just uninspired and living our lives back chasing money we were so uninspired we were miserable and our family were miserable with the kids we were miserable with how the kids were growing was miserable with each other and it was just it's just everything compounded over the course from about 42 to 46 that that time period there about four years where we were just sick and tired of the rat race and all that goes along with it we needed to have a purpose and there was really no purpose except for making money um and keith became really good at making money but that didn't make us happier it didn't make our family closer it didn't make our marriage stronger the challenge with our kids it seemed like the only challenge we had was you know they need to make it to the next level in their video game or you know they need to get a thousand followers on instagram or whatever the the you know petty things were for for us and for our kids um it was just we'd had enough we're like this is not what we're living for this is this is not uh this is not the mission there's got to be more to life than just this yeah renee booked us on a sailing trip on our local lake right there in lake grapevine texas and she charted this little boat with captain and i didn't know anything about sailing none of us knew anything about sailing and the minute we got off that boat i went home and looked up on youtube sailing around the world and i came across la vagabonde riley and elena i watched what he did and i thought well if he can do it i can do it and i really liked their journey in the beginning because it was about him just risking it all going buying this this beneteau over in europe and and sight unseen getting that done and then going sailing and then it was just a neat journey and it inspired me to do the same within about um what six weeks after that that three hour sailing family three hour trip uh we had he had decided he wanted to buy a boat and we put our house up for sale and and made the decision that we were gonna go live on a boat and sail around the world we got the kids involved together we all made the decision to live on a boat we've wanted to live a life where we're self sustaining a lot a lot more than we were we just wanted to have smaller interaction with our children and and be right there with them in the formative years of their life and be away from people and so we we got out of there and we decided we're going to change our lives and but it's up to us out here on the water it's up to us we're responsible for each other and that's it that's our circle of influence that's what we do and that is when you know it's on you and there's nobody coming to your rescue that drives me i like being in that position so that being said we're going to show you the boat today we're going to show you the systems on the boat of what it's like to live off the grid on a boat racing a family on the water [Music] [Music] flown away [Music] our 2006 privilege 585 catamaran was built in france by aliara marine but we found it in greece in 2018 after living and sailing on a monohull for a year and a half we said goodbye to the mona hall in australia and searched through dozens of boats to finally find this one we chose this boat because it was one of the few with the six cabin layout like we needed for our big family and it was obviously a very well built and sturdy machine so this is our cockpit where you see us filming a lot we've put new cushions and shades and canvas in here and it's really made it we've got the flexi-teak deck on here now that which made a whole big difference on the comfort livability of our boat here we're at the helm station and up here we've got uh just going through the electronics of what we have on the boat i've got a bng 12 12-inch chart plotter here zeus 12-inch chart plotter i've got the b g little screens instrument screens over here in the autopilot and then i've got my engine controls over here to the two volvo engines which we'll show you in a minute and then these are just bilge pump switches to the villages and these are the engine controls to start the engine and i've got my maxwell anchor uh controller here and that's that's the helm station and my compass right here and that's all there is to this all this stuff is tied to the inside and you can watch the video to see where we installed all this if you're interested in that and that's what we have up here we'll go down here to the uh we'll do the port side first i'll show you what's in the port sugar scoop we call it the sugar scoop and you can see what we have down there so this is one of the main pieces of equipment that's a must have on a boat this is our water maker it's made by hro it's a safari 1400 it produces 60 gallons an hour of water we run this thing about every two days because we use about 60 to 80 gallons every every two days now one of the main power plants on our boat is this onion generator it's a 13 and a half kw generator and this produces all the power that'll run every system on this boat it maxes out at 52 amps and we run this quite a bit and and we do have to have diesel for that so that's making us rely on getting to land and get diesel so we're not totally off grid with the generators that we have to run but that's the that's the port side and now we'll go on over to the starboard side and i'll show you what we have over there this is our northern lights generator it's a 7kw generator so it's a backup to the other one if all we need to do is charge our batteries we'll run this and this will run several of the systems on the boat but not all of them together right here is our scuba compressor that's a must-have for if you're an underwater enthusiast like we are we love scuba diving so having your own ability to fill up scuba tanks is very important this thing will fill up a tank in about 20 minutes so uh it'll fill up 80s size 80 aluminum tanks in about 20 minutes and that's our hot water heater right here this is how we get our hot water and that works off of electricity or it works off the diesel engine the volvo diesel engine running water through the cooling system and it heats the water up as well and that's all there is to uh our power plant so we have two power plants on each side and we've got uh water maker scuba compressor and hot water heater hot water heater a water a water heater that's my redneck hot water heater what i'm gonna show you now is our some of our hatches out here on the boat this is where we store all our stuff so right in here people have asked where's your life raft and there's a big old hatch right here so down here that's our life raft and this is where we also carry jerry jugs for diesel and gasoline and then in this hatch right here there's two uh air conditioning units we have a total of seven air conditioning units on this boat if we want to run them we don't run them very often unless we're in a marina or something like that or it's just hot outside or we're on passage and it's hot it sure makes it more comfortable but that's uh so that's our live raft and there's a hatch on the bottom side so if the if the yacht was to flip over upside down we could access the life raft from the tops from the bottom side of the boat upside down we could get it out that's how that works and here is our scuba locker this is where we keep all our scuba tanks and there's plenty of room on each side and the big passer rail you see hanging off the boat on there it'll also fit down in here so we can put the pasta rail down here but we use it for cleaning fish so i've never taken it off even though it's a nice one on the back it's just too good a fish cleaning table but that's where we keep the scuba tanks and it works out pretty good there from there we've got our this is our scuba locker it's where we keep all our bcs and regulators it's really deep down in there and we also keep spare parts and everything huge huge uh lockers on these privileges our scooter and different things like that down there right here under this table is where we keep our propane for the stove top the actual oven is electric so up here is where we keep all our weight our kite boarding boards my fishing gear all our fishing rods and stuff and all our kite boards people ask where we keep all our trash on the boat and we keep it right here when we're on passage this is where it all goes nice little hold right here [Music] so that'll hold a lot of trash so as we move into the house we got uh this is our nav station and this all our electric boards over here all the switches and breakers and everything to the boat where everything comes in this is all dc volt stuff this over here is all ac volt stuff is an ac means it comes from the generator inverters and this is where run ac's water makers all the 220 outlets and all this dc stuff which comes directly off the battery bank so it's powered by solar we have our generator controls here that starts the onan generator right here this starts the northern lights generator these are waste water tanks black water tanks tells you how much black water you got then we got a 16 inch b g chart plotter zeus right here and a triton display right there we also have a radio here and another one on the outside so from right here in the in on the nav station you jump right here to the step coming in and right under this rug right here there are 12 8 d batteries that run that's the battery bank of the the house we have 750 amp hours of batteries and that's what powers that's kind of with the generators and the batteries that's what powers the boat and then we have the solar powers up there we have 1450 watts of solar power which is not near enough to do everything i want to do to truly be off the grid living but we're going to get those upgrades hopefully when we get to australia this next season and get more solar panels and get lithium-ion batteries on those upgrades walking from there these two four panels here there's one here and one here and these hold all of my tools my sewing machine my cell right sewing machine all my tools that i work on the boat spare parts and all that kind of stuff they're big holes there and there's another one in here saying it looks just the same and it holds all my tools and parts all of these chairs have complete storage in them you got you know i got more parts and pieces and all the chairs and pieces and stuff all around here there's storage and manuals all the manuals to the boater over there so when the kids know they go to this chair right here and they grab my red tool bag and that's got basically my essential tools that i need to work on anything if i need to work on it real quickly the table raises up and lowers down for a movie night we lay low this down throw some blankets on it we can sit here and watch tv watch the movies here on the back we have our printer station and our our nas right back here that's where we watch movies all our movies are on this nas system right here it's our printer and our network wireless stuff and that's where we kind of charge all our batteries and create a fire hazard right back there so if you want to know how to get a fire hazard you look back here and you say that's not what we're going to do that's basically all the systems that i deal with from navigation to engines i hadn't showed you the engines but i'll show you those when we do a tour of the bedrooms where the actual volvo engines are now we're going to hand it over to renee she's going to show you the refrigerators the ice machines and all the stuff that is the domestic side of life instead of the technical engine side of life so one of my favorite things on the boat and very important is having a dometic freezer for uh storage for all the fish the guys catch and just meats this is a dc powered freezer so it doesn't pull a lot of power but it freezes a lot of stuff so this is our bar area a lot of boats have the galley up we have the galley down you'll see it in a minute but i really like this because it's a little spot to wash your hands we also have a small refrigerator right here and we also have an ice maker here over here we have the seating area which as keith mentioned each chair everything we have has storage in it and there's food and all these chairs and batteries in there so let's go downstairs into the galley and i'll show you our galley okay so this is my galley or kitchen and it uh it is a down in this privilege which i absolutely love a lot of people ask me if it gets really hot or stinky when we're making fish which it doesn't there's plenty of ventilation and i like having it down here because everybody just hangs out up there so people aren't getting in my way i have a full-size freezer down here and a full-size fridge up here i have another full-size refrigerator which can also be turned into a freezer lots and lots of storage i do have a dishwasher on here a full-size dishwasher which i do like very much so but i wouldn't call it a necessity on a boat we have kids and we don't mind hand washing dishes anyway but it came with the boat so we kept it so i'm not complaining plenty of storage here for pots and pans and everything like you would have in your house our oven is electric and runs off of the generator the stove is gas and runs off of propane we have lots of storage up here for more food condiments as you can see it's getting kind of empty we need to go to the store spice cabinets baking cabinets and everything has a lock on it obviously for boats so whenever you get to rocking and rolling things don't fall out on your head back here used to be finn's bedroom now it is keith's storage room or actually just storage that's the kite room it's the kite room and everything else that we can think of to put in here this is uh the master i would say the master head it's got a big wide toilet keith is the only one that uses it in the big giant shower each floor locker in the galley is also storage for food again we don't have a whole lot of food right now this gives you an idea of how deep these storage lockers are we can stuff lots of food for passages i mean if we fill this whole boat up with every locker full of food dry goods cokes of course we could sail for gosh i don't know a year so there's a automatic bilge down in all the floor lockers just in case something were to um overflow the dishwasher overflowed not too long ago into here which drains out into the ocean so it doesn't ruin everything and we don't sink so there's a locker right here that's just as deep as this one for storage but also is empty we have two 175 gallon water tanks on this boat one is right here and the other is on the other side in the same position in the other hole our black water tank is right here in this floor locker right there and more storage and more storage which we should probably utilize yeah some of that junk could go down here now we'll move aft to the starboard this is the master berth and this is my bathroom where no one else goes this is my own little private sanctuary mine and kate shower we both use this one and this is where me and keith sleep at night we have a king-size bed in here which we required when we were boat shopping and plenty of storage for clothes i have a little closet right here this is all of my my clothes my swimsuits keith has his own closet on the other side of the boat more storage there's another closet right here more storage right here so last but not least this is where our main engines are the 200 there's 110 horsepower global diesel engine in here and that's one of the engines it's a little tight getting in there to work on them but that's where our engines are there's one on the exact same side on the other side so if the boat was to flip upside down and we were trapped inside how would we get out with everything being underwater and only the holes so on most catamarans they have escape patches and ours there's one on the port side and one on the starboard side this is the starboard side next to the kitchen coming down the stairs you pull these stairs out just like this and right there is a hatch you go right through there and out into the water well no you'd go out or out on top of the boat yeah and then you would go back to the hatch where the life raft is and you could deploy the life drive from the hatchet we showed you earlier so that's how we get in and out of the boat if there's a problem now we'll move back up to the salon and forward to kate's birth we're going into my room this is the hobbit hole it's pretty small pretty unique most catamarans don't have this room normally it's just jack's room and finn's old room cut across directly in in the middle but this this privilege chad marin has a nice wall in between so there's multiple rooms and there's bathroom which is really nice cool and light you've got light hatches tell us about the negative of this room um the negative of this room is that it's pretty short and like i'm squatting right now yeah do not hit my head but what about the anchor oh the anchor okay so the anchor is obviously going to be the loudest thing in my room besides my shouting um it's a very thin wall to the anchor that's the only downer and the shortness of it so yeah i like my room so we're on the port side and instead of a galley being down over here there's jack shower and jack's head then on this side there's storage for you know we put all our toilet papers and stuff and these cabinets we've got towels and and all the different things and all this so it's just all over more storage the other thing that's neat about this particular boat that you don't see on a lot of boats is the previous owner the only owner that had it before me he had this door put in here where this passageway put in here which goes to the captain's peak now this is one i think this is the only one they did this on so it gives you access to the head for the captain's peak and then you can get to the captain's speak which is just more storage of our stuff junk so we're on the port side aft quarters this is finn's quarters it is the exact same layout as ours on the other side it has the same bed same size bed king size bed here king size bed over there and uh desk storage engines right here below finn's got his own bathroom like renee and kate use and shower as well and the same storage and everything they have here another one of the main things we believe you need to have on a boat is the essentials to have to travel whether it's just two of you or with a family we believe it's essential because we're lazy but is uh you know not only the water maker a big water maker that can produce 60 gallons a minute or more but having a washing machine and this is where our washing machine is on the port side coming down the steps and it's not a dryer it's just a washing machine the dryer the small dryers don't work very well so this works excellent and we wash all our clothes in there it doesn't use a lot of water and wouldn't have a boat without one we also have all our pharmaceutical stuff surgery if i got to prep somebody for surgery take a gall bladder out take off a leg this is where i go this is the go-to i got my stethoscope from the years when i was at harvard med and then i used that skill in the navy seal teams and so this is their our medical military kit now we'll move outside to the top deck so now we're up at the front of the boat we're on the starboard side this is our cell locker right here and if we carry all our sails in here i carry three cells in there i carry two asyms and a spare genoa and that's our that's ourselves right there as we're walking across here this is our line locker this is where all of our our dock lines are any kind of dock lines we may need anything like that that's where we keep those going on across we have our chain locker for our windlass isn't that pretty nice maxwell windlass right there just a plug for maxwell so there's a huge chain locker on each side here there's a divider there and it's just as much room on the other side as they're in the is in this side we have 110 meters of 14 millimeter chain and believe me when it's all out this boat ain't going nowhere and then now we're on the port side and here's our fender locker this is where we keep all our fenders and i want to get some blow up fenders i want to get rid of these kind of fenders and go to the blow up fenders because these take up so much space and i can store so much more stuff down there have so much more activity room for activity we could have so much more room for activities from there we go right here this is the hatch that goes down into the captain's peak which i showed you earlier where we come through the captain's peak this is our solar panel array up here we have 1450 watts of solar up here and that's not near enough to power this boat and to do what we want what we really need to do and what we're going to do to truly have off-grid living where we don't have as much because it's all about power and we need to have more batteries and i need to have about 1500 to 2000 amp hours of lithium batteries at 24 volts and i need to have another 2 000 amp hours or 2 000 watts of solar 2 2500 watts of solar and so i need to build a solar arch behind this plus add the batteries and this boat will truly be a sustainable boat at 24 volts with all the huge systems that we have on this boat we'll be able to live off the grid for a long time run all the systems with the master volt inverters that we have to install and we'll be able to run the whole boat without running the diesel generators as long as we're in the tropics and we're not in a cloudy area we should be able to sustain long-term livability out there on the water i want to thank you guys for watching the show hope you enjoyed the tour hope you enjoyed the video if there's any questions yet please email us once again we look forward to seeing you guys out there on the water

Channel: Sailing Zatara

Views: 1,168,205

Rating: 4.9477963 out of 5

Keywords: sailing, travel, family, travel family, liveaboard, sail the world, alternative lifestyle, off grid, homeschool, parenting, deep sea fishing, travel video, family videos, travel videos, family youtube videos, sailing video, family friendly videos, youtube travel channel, homeschool family, off grid lifestyle, catamaran tour, midlife crisis, mid life crisis, escape suburbia, rat race, escape the rat race, boat tour, privilege 585, privilege catamarans, catamaran walk through

Id: -jyWfH1p1M0

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020