Over the last six months, I've become somewhat addicted to YouTube sailing videos. There are lots of channels created by people who gave up the rat race, bought a boat, and started the "cruising life" full time. I'm not going to abandon my own life for the Bahamas anytime soon, but I've noticed some things about the videos I admire most -- how the people live their lives -- that I can probably duplicate in Kansas.
• They do a lot of yoga. There's not a lot of room on a small boat for a workout program. Lots of the video people do yoga pretty regularly. As I get older, I increasingly realize a stretching routine saves me pain, increases flexibility, and generally gets me through the day with a better attitude. No reason I can't do this on dry land.
• They read a lot. If you're on a long passage, there isn't a lot to do -- most people don't have wifi in the middle of the ocean, only connecting when they get near land in a marina or while at anchor. So. Lots of shots of people reading instead of staring at screens. I've become a little too screen-dependent lately. I need some book time to feel human.
• They spend a lot of time outside. Duh.
• They tend to be active explorers of whatever environment they're in, on land or under water. As a freelancer, it's easy for me to get stuck at home, both working and living. It's time to get out more.
Five of my favorite sailing channels:
Sailing Soulianis: A young Midwestern couple buys a boat, pilots it from the Great Lakes down the river to the Gulf, and begins -- after much work -- cruising.
Sailing Uma: Another young couple, two architects -- one from Canada, the other from Haiti. They spent a couple of years cruising the Bahamas and environs. Now they're about to make the North Atlantic passage to Europe.
Sailing La Vagabonde: Possibly the most famous channel -- they have 1 million subscribers. I didn't get into this for awhile, because it looked like another of the million or so sailing channels that exist to show off young women in bikinis, which I don't find interesting. But then the Australian couple at the center of this channel had a baby and kept cruising. And that made them much more interesting.
The Adventures of Tarka: This one is about to end, because the young man at the center of things has a family to return to. Still. Interesting because he started out as a solo sailor in a relatively small boat. It's charming and I'll miss it.
Sailing Zatara: I have a love-hate relationship with this channel, but it was the first one I started watching with my son. A family of six abandoned their life to cruise around the world, first in a monohull and then a catamaran. There are occasional whiffs of ugly Americanism that sometimes spill over into full-blown MAGAism, so the bloom is off the rose for me, but it's the series that pulled me in.
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