How To Start Sailing Around The World 🌎(10 Step Guide + 5 Tips)

have you ever wanted to sail around the world living each day on the high seas in new exotic countries or best of all anchored in solitude by an untouched tropical island you're super excited and want to go but you don't really know how or where to start well in this video I'm going to break down the 10 steps necessary to start your dream of sailing around the world as well as a few bonus sailing life hacks so stay tuned to the very end each of these categories could be a whole video by themselves so enough of you comment on a specific topic I'll be happy to make a video in the future beyond that let's dive on in for the past decade I've been solo traveling around the world facing all of life's adventures headon locking horns and creating harmony with nature and disrupting the mold to help others experience life in its richest Rost form welcome to my life of adventure let's dive on on in number one find your why you'll need it the reason I put this as number one is because things are going to get tough on the boat things are going to break in fact things are always going to be broken at all times I can't think of any time I've owned my boat even after 7 months in a Boatyard that everything just worked it didn't you need to have a strong why that's going to Anchor you to your cause to keep you sailing my wide takes me all the way back to where I first started sailing in the first place I was up in Alaska Speer fishing by myself with a kayak paddling every day countless miles in a wet suit freezing my butt off and I knew there just had to be a better way so I eventually decided it had to be a sailboat it' be my home it would carry me I'd be able to cook on it be able to keep my fish safe on there ability to explore far further than I could with a kayak for me that why still keeps me going but I've also added on a few other things that I love as well kiteboarding has since then become a huge passion of mine and being able to take my home to place I can kiteboard and then even come right onto the boat is amazing there's many reasons other people have chosen a life of adventure Supreme Independence getting away from other people and the nonsense and noise of society or my personal favorite you know you're just waiting for the zombie apocalypse and you know this is the best plan no matter what it is find your why okay now that you have your why what is your specific goal and keep in mind this will probably change a little bit once you start sailing where and how do you want to sail do you want to go to the tropics do you want to go to cold weather places do you want to be in familiar country of your own or do you want to go to a foreign country you've never been before do you plan to be off grid or at a marina do you want to cruise for one or two months straight and then take the rest of the year off or do you want to cruise 24/7 365 and really go for it do you prefer to do fast long Sals covering great distances or would you rather go Island to Island and get to enjoy the Little Steps along the way do you want to go alone with friends or maybe you have a life partner couples do seem to be the most common Dynamic on boats that I've seen anywhere I've been for me my own goals have shifted a bit I want to keep sailing and I want to keep exploring but I've also realized for me personally that sailing 247 365 prevents me from exploring further Inland where there is a lot more Adventure going on so as I've cruised I've realized that things do change a bit as well as picking up other things like kiteboarding slack lining subwinging now my goals are a little bit different than they've ever been I don't plan on sing in full time I plan on sailing hard for 6 months and then taking a break for 6 months and coming back to with a renewed perspective I've only gotten that after I've been doing this for a while but I still started with a goal of I wanted to be off grid and away from the rest of civilization spear fishing every day and eventually I learned kiteboarding as well that goal is really important so you know which boat to get in which area of the world okay so now you know why you want to go sailing and you've got a general goal now you need to start saving money the boat life is not cheap a lot of people ask me how do I afford to do this lifestyle in particular they ask me how do I make money and I really try to emphasize to people it's not so much about how much money you make is about how much money you spend if you make $100,000 a year but you have $90,000 worth of bills to pay well it only gives you a savings of $10,000 a year and at that rate it's going to be hard to get a good boat I've never made nearly six figures but obviously I afforded a pretty decent boat because I saved hard that means not going out to eat you can cook food at home and to be honest you want be a good Chef because often times if you're sailing remote places you can't even pay to get food personally I've never smoked I've never drank and I've never done drugs that right there has saved me so much money I don't go out to clubs I just find that to be kind of a waste of time I've never owned a new car I've never lived in a big house in fact I've been homeless more often than not living in a van or whatever other place I can I found ways to reduce my expenses as much as possible and that's what I highly recommend you do learn how to fix everything on your own cuz you're going to have to do that anyways on a boat I also recommend picking cheap things to entertain yourself with I love playing video games steam account on my laptop gives me tons of video games for super cheap and that's endless hours of fun when I'm not going off doing surfing snorkeling slack lining other things like that and that sort of self-entertainment will really pay dividends when you're on the sailboat and you need to provide everything for yourself when you're out here so for this category how I was able to complete this was I lived in an RV on the top of a mountain in the middle of the Redwood Forest I paid about $20 per month for some electricity meanwhile I worked 12-hour shifts and then during the day I went and got sailing lessons and found a sailing Mentor at a nearby Yacht Club I saved so much money that I was easily able to buy this boat in less than a year and that's what it should be about those times in my life when I have to work towards a very specific goal I call that the grind and I love the grind and you'll have to learn to love it too if you want to get to this place okay so you found your why you've made a specific goal you've saved some money now you actually need to learn how to sale there's a ton of different ways you can go about this my personal favorite and I didn't do this but my personal favorite are the people that just bought a boat and just kind of went for it I don't actually recommend that I just think that's a baller way to go about it but if I had to recommend it to you guys I would say first off watch a bunch of YouTube videos there's a great bunch of them out there with really good instructions you can buy books on it it's a really great way to do it another way that most people probably go through is they take a course usually an ASA American Sailing Association you could do single or multi-day courses and a lot of those courses will teach you a little bit about living aboard which is really important and I do want to stress that to you although this chapter here number four is about learning to sail you will eventually need to learn how to cruise personally I went down to a yacht club became a member and then sailed anywhere I could this was mostly during ratas and races which is very different than how you would sail when you're actually cruising around the world you're not in that big of a hurry so it's a little bit different but learning how to sail as a racer made me a much better sailor because you have to really f focus on every little detail and that is good to know as well being there gave me access to many contacts and that's where I found my sailing Mentor sailing Mentor is the number one way I recommend for you guys to learn how to sail number five and really this the best way to learn here is becoming cruising crew becoming orata crew is really good as well you're going to learn about sailing extremely well but learning how to crew on a cruising boat for day after day week after week even that will teach you so many more things about fixing the boat sailing really isn't that hard I thought that's what this would all be about it's not it it's actually all about fixing your boat getting good groceries and staying somewhat sane sometimes that's that's pretty much the the nut and potatoes of what makes sailing around the world more difficult so there's a few places you could look to start to become sailing crew I recommend crew bay.com findac crew.com and there's a few other websites you can look at as well as there's a bunch of Facebook groups out there the Facebook groups can be a little bit annoying to navigate because it's Facebook you're going to have a lot of people on there that are really not serious but if you're patient with it you'll find people that are going on some golden trips in some great locations for example if someone's doing a delivery say from Miami to Newport Rhode Island during the summertime o that's a great sale you're going with the Gulf Stream the southernly winds are going to push you right up that'll be a good time say somebody's offering to go from Newport Rhode Island to Miami Florida in the winter time that's not as nice of a sale so pick and choose who you can go with but I really recommend more than focusing on where you're going with the boat the type of boat that it is and really most important is what is the captain like are they humble are they going to take the time to explain things to you are they going to teach you things are they going to be someone who's fun to be around I really recommend you watch out for a captain who likes to drink a captain who likes to party a little bit too much it can be a lot of fun it can be a lot of good times but I've heard a lot of horror stories that start out that way because some abuse normally in life you can just walk away from the person on a boat you don't have that option and that can get extremely dangerous so do be careful but once you get into the cruiser Community it is a super tight-knit one and once you know one sailor you really can know many I also would recommend that if you come to places that are known for cruising like Georgetown in the Bahamas or right now I'm anchored off of Martinique in Laren if you were to come here you could find so many Cruisers so quickly and if you put the word out that you want to crew and you want to learn I think you find a lot lot of people very open to helping you otherwise I recommend taking those tough deliveries I just talked about because that's how I got started and that's how you earn your stripes number six finding a sailing Mentor is so important it's kind of on here twice it's really what gave me all the knowledge because there's always going to be some piece that you're going to be missing learning for instance that 5200 is a permanent solution and a permanent problem in the future is really good to know and there's no amount of sailing YouTube channels or sailing books that you can read They're going to tell you these little things that a mentor Mentor Ken somebody who's been on the ocean and who's done it for a while now really what I want to focus on here is how to get a mentor and cultivate that relationship I found mine at a Sailing yach Club during some moradas but you could also find one if you crewing for someone or also if you really want to develop a good relationship go to a working boat yard yep a Boatyard go there find someone who looks like they have a boat that's really been out there really going far strike up a conversation with them tell them flat out hey I'm looking for a mentor would you let me help you with your boat learn some of the projects and when you Splash go sailing there's so many avenues that you could take on this and it really doesn't cost you anything you can take the courses you can take an ASA course or other ones and those will be great but those will cost you thousands of dollars I've been able to do everything I've been able to do because I didn't spend money for I didn't go to any professional course same thing with kiteboarding I didn't learn kiteboarding through an instructor prettyy much just put the kite up and got yanked and for sailing it was really no different I went out there I sailed where I could I got yelled at for not doing the right thing eventually I learned the right thing and now I'm out here sailing so don't be afraid to make mistakes but find someone who can help you number seven which boat is best for you all right now we're getting into the good stuff here so you can break it down this way effectively I see there as being four options number one is a motorboat a big motorboat it's technically cruising if you do that however the fuel cost will be pretty substantial if you plan on doing any large distances however if you are not planning on doing significant distances a motor yacht might not be a bad idea for you there's plenty of them out there that are just kind of big ugly things that don't go super fast but you know what you could live on those I've cruised with other people in the Bahamas that were on motor yachts and honestly they said they didn't spend that much money cuz they weren't trying to go around the world or anything beyond that let's look at some sailboats you have monoh holes catamarans and traran one hole two hole and three hole basically uh I'll break it down like this monoh holes really are the cheapest uh they're probably going to have the least problems because they're just one long hole instead of multi- holes that can kind of I don't want to say break apart but they do flex and try to get apart on each other catamarans and trar are both great options as well catamarans are extremely popular but they are not cheap they are the most expensive and to be honest with you I would say probably half the boats I see out here are catamarans reason for that I believe is this they're super stable I'll be honest I wish I had a catamaran I just don't have the money for one my sailboat cost me $23,000 and it was good to go and I went far on that you will not get a catamaran of any you know my my sale boat is 37 ft you won't get a catamaran you know 37 ft that can actually go for less than I don't know $230,000 like good luck and then you look at some of the Fon P some of the Lepard some of the lagoons looking at half a million dollars now they're great you have a lot of space on there and really is the stability that stability means you're going to be super comfortable at anchor and usually but not always more comfortable out in the ocean last but not least try traran uh traran usually can go the fastest but it's not like a huge deal I would say I see a traran once every month or two they're not very common unless you really just want some speed you'll notice also that there's not many of them for sale so back to it monoh hole and catamaran I personally obviously recommend a monoh hole it's going to be a simpler boat the rigging is going to be simpler it's easier to find parts for it things are going to be much cheaper for it um they can take a pounding they can take a beating they're very very easy to singleand they're going to back up to a dock like a pig however catamaran has two engines so it can swivel on them see what I'm getting at there's all these pros and cons and you need to figure out what works best for you the last thing I will say is price a catamaran initial cost is somewhere around I don't know seven to 10 times that actually no more than 10 times jeez anyway a lot more than a monoh hole trar usually sit closer to monoh holes in price they're just not that common is honestly they're just not as practical for cruising they're just not as practical altogether you really you get the room of a monoh hole with all this extra space and you can't go into docks with it basically with a TR Marina you can't really go into any good Marina slip so if I had to say it dollar per dollar a monole camp be beat and that's why I'm on a mono ho whole sailboat it sails so it's cheap and it's one hole so I can go into any slip I want to has a fairly shallow draft so I don't get caught on sandb bars it's an allaround great boat I'd highly recommend you look at my boat tour video where I go into more detail on this all right number eight where and how to find your boat so you know why you want to sail you know what your goal is you know kind of where you want to go you know about sailing now you know what type of boat you want and that's very important I had a full list of what I wanted my boat to have this boat had everything except for a swim platform and guess what I built a swim platform so now where are you going to find this dream boat well like I was kind of just saying a second ago you're probably going to have to let one or two things go it's pretty tough to find the perfect boat boat prices and boat availability is generally getting a little bit better for buyers Co drove prices through the roof and scarcity of saleboats was immense cuz everybody wanted to be out on the water and away from civilization but now that that's getting a little bit easier let's look at a few places you can go to to find boats number one I'd recommend honestly would Yacht World uh it's the biggest website for boats they do a great job listing them out uh you do need to be a broker to post the boat on there so you don't get an owner which I will say being able to deal directly with an owner as a pro and a con I'll go into that in a minute Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are other good websites to look at you can just kind of go from Marina to Marina which is good to find other Sailors and talk to the Cruis and Community I highly recommend though you expand to the largest area possible when looking at buying a boat I was living in Santa Cruz California when I was ready to buy a boat I pretty much didn't bother with the whole west coast of the United States I went over to the east coast of the US there's got to be 10 times the amount of boats and more than 10 times the amount of places that you can put a boat at and thanks mostly to the Atlantic inter Coastal waterway that lays almost entirely along the east coast of the US and gives you unlimited places to Anchor pretty much if you do get a sailboat and you get one on the east coast you're going to learn about it quick and again I'll say check out some of the sailing Facebook groups there's some there for cruising for crewing and also for boats for sale it's a great resource just check out Facebook and search through there number nine how to get the best deal I am pretty proud of how I got my boat actually and I'll summ the story as quickly as I can I was prepared to look in the entire of the United States particularly though the east coast of the us cuz I knew it' be easier to cruise there I started in Maine was prepared to work my way down to Florida that's a lot of boats to go by I started a bit late though uh to be that far north but that ended up being an upside to me me it ended up actually being the first boat that I saw this boat that I'm on right now Adventure born was actually at a Boatyard and had been there for 2 years two or three I did a lot of research on it I learned about the owner I learned about the state that he was in how long he had had the boat for how long he had been trying to sell it for and I used all of that to my advantage I knew that they were going to have to basically winterize the boat again and it would have been another year that they didn't sell the boat soon as winter hits nobody's buying a boat in Cape Cod in the winter and that's where I was Cape Cod in massachus so I worked with the selling broker and I had a pretty low offer or I was just going to go down to Florida if you buy a boat in Florida you don't really have to move it anywhere I mean yeah you have the risk a hurricane season but that's just is what it is I mean you could also get hit by a hurricane all the way up in Cape Cod so I use that to my advantage the broker really pressed me to put in an offer and I put in a very low offer of 23,000 pending survey and SE trial or 16,000 as is where is I'm actually really happy happy that they didn't take the 16,000 as is where is uh cuz I would have had to do a lot of work then the selling broker as well as the owner did not like that offer at all they rejected it at first and then I politely told them okay my offer stands and I have cash I'm ready to go and that's always a big if you can hold that cash there and I said I'm going to keep heading down to Florida cuz I was in Virginia by then and I said we both know that I'm not going to come back from Florida he called me back I think the next day and said okay he'll accept your offer and I said great I'll be there in like 48 hours and I was there in 48 hours I had to deposit for the boat and then I began the survey on it do not avoid getting a survey do not get emotional be logical I had my mentor Don Radcliffe in my ear we would talk every morning and he was really good at telling me that this was a good boat for these reasons and that I didn't get these other boats I looked at was extremely helpful this Mentor that I had was extremely helpful and that's why I recommend it so much during the survey they really didn't find anything wrong a few things were a little bit you know not quite perfect but it's a used boat and you have to understand that I was willing to neglect a few things but I wasn't willing to have anything be broken flat out the toilet on the boat was actually broken when we first launched it and the owner was already kind of a little bit upset with me for getting such a big deal on the boat and he didn't want to come back to the boat install a toilet so instead he offered hey I'll buy the toilet if you install it and I said done beyond that everything else worked on the boat I will also say on this that while I was looking at boats I found a couple free boats do not buy a free boat you're like oh it's free yeah like yeah but there goes 2 years of your life maybe more working on it you're never going to get that time back there's only so much time you should spend in a Boatyard it should just be a small investment and then you should get back out and enjoying it I spent 7 months at one point in a Boatyard really refitting this boat to everything I want it to be I took a lot of breaks during that time for kiteboarding but it still was absolute hell in misery I don't recommend it so if for had to get the best deal I would sum it up by saying this be be willing to look all over including other countries be willing to work with them as in know exactly what you want and know when you need to walk away knowing the market is highly important I got the boat just before winter came that was huge the last one I would say is Cash talks is saying like hey I'm ready right now I can put a deposit down people that are selling their boats it's a nightmare I dread the day that I have to actually do it hopefully having a YouTube channel will help me but probably not so being there ready to buy the boat and no BS I really recommend it and number 10 go small go simple go now that is a quote by Larry parting by the way an absolutely brilliant sailing writer and I love this quote so much because it encompasses exactly what I'm doing so to break down those simple brilliant words there go simple what does that mean you don't need every Bell and whistle on your boat the reason why I spend so much time out on adventures and so little time fixing stuff is I don't have an electric wind list I pull my anchor up by hand I don't have an air conditioner I adapt to the climate or right now while I'm recording this with my fan off I sweat you don't need all the bells and whistles if you live life simpler it's going to be a simpler life like kind of basic go small don't get the biggest boat you can possibly afford don't go with the biggest plan you can possibly do go with just what you need I didn't need a 45- ft boat but I was prepared to buy one Now 37 foot it's certainly not huge but I added the swim platform makes it more a little bit more like 40 and it's everything that I need I can sail the ocean I can do everything that any other boat can do and you know what more often than not I have the same view as somebody who spent a half a million dollars as me with my quarter of $100,000 and last but not least go now don't delay things will never be perfect on your boat things have never been perfect on my boat heck my engine right now is spilling out coolant through the exhaust every hour I have to put a hose to my engine to keep it running I don't care cuz I'm out here living it and I love this life my sailing Mentor Don rag gave me me some advice that I will forever keep relaying to any other potential sailor every boat is a compromise if there was one type of boat out there that was the best type we would see it now catamaran have certainly grown in popularity but there's still plenty of monoh holes and traran certainly have never been like the most common boat but they'll always exist every boat has a specific use specific function every boat has some pros and some cons this boat honestly does every single thing I could hope it would do I wish it was bigger just because it'd be cool to have more space but I don't need it so understand that that the boat you're looking at might not be perfect but no boat is there actually is a definition though for the best boat the best boat is the one that you actually use the most the worst boat is the one that you use the least sort of keep that in mind and lastly I want to say a boat is meant to be sailed it's meant to be out sailing and cruising it's not meant to be at a marina it's certainly not meant to be at a Boatyard spend as little time there as possible get out go do Little Adventures I do remember thinking back on it that after 7 months in a Boatyard or after multiple months I spent at a marina doing my first refit I was nervous to go back out again it is it's scary to look at the open ocean uh I'd recommend watching the movie Captain Ron for some inspiration or water world two of my favorites you don't have to go far I know that when I was very Rusty I would go anchor I mean just a couple hundred feet outside the marina where it was technically an Anchorage and that for me was good just to get used to being back out on anchor again but the bottom line is a boat rots when you keep it in the same place for too long and neglect it it's meant to be out moving and grooving everything all the winches all the sails everything bring raise the sails up tighten the winch in scrub the bottom of your boat don't make it look like I've made mine sometimes but get out there and be sailing all right thank you for making it to the end now let's get to some sailing Life cheats uh first I'm going to say is maybe don't buy a boat at all maybe instead just go crew on other boats around the world I have seriously pondered this while I've been going through boat problems on my own thinking why don't I just go sail other places I'm not going to do that because I have way too many cool Hobbies on my boat I don't want to give it up but if you just want to go sailing this is a really good option not only that you could sail you know one year just for a couple months in the Caribbean work the rest of the Year have a normal life on land and then the next year go sailing in the Pacific on someone else's boat if you get good at crewing on other boats you have a good reputation you could go very very far on this and in fact I'd love to see some sailing YouTuber do this sailing YouTuber with no boat but that just goes on other people's boats I think that be fantastic another option to not buying a sailboat and going through all the shanans is marry somebody with a boat so I'll be honest there's not many solo sailing women out there but there is a lot of solo sailing men third little life hack is this life is not for everyone I've seriously considered not sailing multiple times I've seriously considered selling my boat in fact on somewhat of a regular basis because it can get kind of frustrating you definitely miss all the conveniences of the modern world and let's be honest a sailing life looks amazing but why doesn't everybody do it if it's so amazing that's kind of why you get sick of it so if you can don't go all in with your own boat take a course crew on other people's boats decide if it's something you really want to do and then pursue it if you do pursue it and you decide you don't like it and just decide it is what it is and also don't expect to get full price for your boat again last sailing hack I want to tell you guys which is the most important besides the mentor is the Sailing Community itself Sailors are such a tight-knit bunch yesterday I was cruising around the Martin unque Bays here looking for a new place to Anchor my boat I saw one boat anchored out by itself in an extremely remote but very calm place I went over started a quick conversation and within 5 minutes they said hey come up on the boat do you want to drink do you want to hang out for a bit we started talking for like 2 hours I remember times when I was in Marathon Florida which is a great cruising Community asking for help on the morning VHF and I had to tell people I I already had enough people helping me the Sailing Community is absolutely fantastic you can also connect with a lot of great Sailors on Facebook although I'll be honest I think there probably more nitpickers and annoying people on Facebook than actually helpful Sailors more keyboard Warriors but still if you sort through them you'll find some really great positive people there I'll soon release a part two to this video that will break down how to continue sailing around the world so stay tuned for that one thanks for joining me on this adventure I hope you feel inspired to begin Adventures of your own don't forget to like comment and subscribe for an exclusive in-depth look at this adventure lifestyle and to further support my channel become a member of my patreon crew Link in the description I'll see you on the next [Music] adventure

Channel: Adventureman Dan

Views: 91,486

Keywords: how to, sailing, sailboat, sailor, sailing around the world, world sailor, how to start

Id: 3ZTKezyYnEs

Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023