Funding your cruising

One of the most common questions we get from people is how they can fund their cruising. Since a vast majority of cruisers are of retirement age they are depending on fixed income, usually investments they made while they were gainfully employed. Those who are young have usually worked for some time and set aside enough funds to cruise for a specified time, maybe a year or two, before they settle down to raise a family, with plans to cruise once again whenever the kids are on their own. A good many cruisers across the age spectrum are working part-time jobs, taking mostly seasonal retail positions in whatever port they happen to land for awhile, making enough money in four months' work to fund the other eight months. A small minority of cruisers is working full-time from their boat. Most of these are in an IT capacity like a friend of ours who is a software developer, but some are start-up businesses that sell anything from canvas work to home-crafted jewelery. An even smaller minority is depending on contract writing jobs, writing for sailing and cruising magazines and blogs.

We've had many of our blog readers tell us that they enjoy our writing and that we should write a book. We do both enjoy writing and are fairly good at it, thanks in part to being avid and voracious readers and thanks in part to genetics, but with all the distractions of the first year of cruising and the debacle that was The Bear, we haven't had much time to do anything other than concentrating on blog posts.

Writing is hard. Ask anyone who has published and they'll sigh deeply and tell you that the agony of producing a written work is always more difficult than the compensation received for it. I can echo this without any doubt. The first thing I published was a short article for Cruising World in the 35th anniversary edition October 2009. It was part of a special tribute section to Murray Davis, the founder of Cruising World Magazine who had recently died. For my troubles I received a Cruising World hat and duffle bag. I still have the hat, but the duffle only lasted about as long as the magazine issue. It was still slightly more profitable than my next article, an article for the May 2012 issue of Latitudes & Attitudes which was supposed to yield a whopping $75 of which I was entirely and unceremoniously stiffed due to the immediate demise of the publication shortly after my issue was printed. So far Tim holds the dollar value winner in the form of an article he wrote for Flying magazine which brought a mind-boggling $100. So I'm sure you can understand our hesitance in pursuing a writing career to support Kintala.

That being said...a few years ago while working my last aviation marketing job I became quite proficient in an open source graphics design program called Gimp. After being unceremoniously dumped from the job and being short on funds, I began to fiddle with the beginnings of a children's book that I hoped to print out for my grandchildren for an inexpensive Christmas present. The story evolved, I got better at the illustration and design, and before long the idea that it might be publishable began to enter my mind. The story had lain dormant for some time during our frantic, last- minute cruising preparations but after the financial drain of the three months on the dock I found some motivation to pick it back up. I finished the book while we were anchored here in Middle River and began the final editing and formatting process by showing it to Tim for the first time. He was impressed, and it's pretty hard to impress him with a children's book. My art critic and editor son-in-law was next with positive feedback.  I was buoyed, and submitted it to createspace.com, Amazon's self-publishing company, for approval. After 3 weeks and as many revisions, the book has been published and is ready for your perusal. If you have any children on your holiday gift list in the toddler to third grade range,  this book makes a great holiday gift. You can either get it on amazon.com or on createspace.com. I get more profit from the latter, but if you're shopping on the former and just want to add it to your cart, go for it.

A little background on the story and the main character is in order I think. The book is the first in a series of books with the main character, Maryssa Mayberry, who is a young sailor who feels very passionately about the ocean and is sailing around the world to educate kids about the problems with the oceans and how they can help. This first book introduces her and is a fun story about working together to accomplish things. The next book will begin to deal with the pollution of the ocean with trash.  There is also a companion blog for the character, 

www.maryssamayberry.blogspot.com

which has more in-depth information on the issues and resources for both kids and parents on how to get involved in helping. There are also some coloring pages, puzzles and games there to entertain the kids. If you happen to notice the author name and wonder about it, it's DeMa, the nickname my grandchildren fondly call me.

I can assure you that you won't be disappointed with the quality of the book. I have one in my hands right now and I have to tell you that I've been extremely impressed with the quality of printing done through Create Space. It's a print-on-demand service which I was leery about at first, but the book I ordered was printed the same day and I had it a few days later. It was a user-friendly interface and I look forward to working again with them in the near future with the second book. By the way...rumor has it that there will be a co-authored book for our adult blog readers coming up in the near future as well so stay tuned.

I'd love to have your feedback on this book, so please feel free to leave comments. Please try to be kind and constructive in your criticisms if you can. One of the other things that makes writing for pay so difficult is that you lay yourself bare out there. You tend to get attached to your characters since you spend so much time with them, and publishing a book leaves you feeling very vulnerable. But then, like cruising, any venture without risk is a venture without reward.

I hope you enjoy.

An unexpected anniversary muse ...

The cruising life enshrined in the glossy pages of sailing magazines and boat show halls usually involve nights on the hook in some of the world's most beautiful places. They are “near the edge” or “off the grid”, and it is grand living indeed. What they don't mention is that those are usually short visits made by people living something other than the life that, many of us who are cruising, live.

A large portion of those living here in long term, no-fee anchorages don't live near the edge. They are sitting on the edge with their feet dangling over the abyss. Many are over the edge, barely hanging on with bloodied fingernails. The crew of Kintala, by comparison, is sitting comfortably within view of the edge, hoping no more earthquakes trouble our world for a while.

Sailors take pride in “well founded boats”. There are not many of those around these anchored parts. Faded paint, decrepit teak, and torn canvas are the norm. Scavenged solar panels supplement noisy generators to keep the lights on and the food from spoiling. Decks are buried under cast off items that may prove useful in the future. There is very little money out here. That bit of dock line lying around cluttering up the place may look ratty and ready for discard, but next year it may be the best bit of line on the boat. Tossing it now may mean having to dig up the bucks to replace it later, and by later that hole might already be empty. Take a picture of a common "cruising boat".  Compare it to a picture of a shack in the poverty stricken Appalachian mountains.  The two will look remarkably similar.

To put it bluntly, the “This Old Boat” cruising community is a community largely trapped in poverty. This seems particularly true of two sub-groups of the cruising clan; veterans of America's never-ending love of wars, and young people.

Young people are especially vulnerable. Those who spend their 20s and early 30s “living the dream” are likely to find themselves locked in. For all of their worldly experience and independence, they have no solid footing. There are few skills the water dweller can trade to the land living for income. Some itinerant boat work in a yard, stray contract work here and there, maybe a few weeks of a minimum wage - part time schedule at a little place within walking distance of a dink landing sight, are what pass for “work” in the cruising world.  It isn't much, and there isn't much of it.  In addition the young cruiser likely has no social network that is “home” and lives outside the reach of America's expensive and limited version of health care. Unless very carefully considered, the choice to go cruising while young can easily become a permanent life of poverty.

Many dream of writing for pay to fund their lifestyle - the reason for all of these blogs perhaps.   Alas, even living modestly off of a keyboard is less likely than making the bush leagues in almost any big name sport, let alone the Big Show.  One must be an excellent word-smith and have access to good editing, with entertaining stories to tell or a keen eye for commentary. Even then one will be most likely have to remain content with writing for the love of art, not for the money.

Cruising is a simple lifestyle that doesn't take much to sustain. But food, boat parts, maintenance, health care, fuel, and travel expenses are mostly non-negotiable. Going from having little money to having no money is a small step financially, one that means going from a simple life to an impoverished one. Floating or fixed, living poor is living hard.

On land, poverty is institutionalized. The poor are born into poor neighborhoods, attend poor schools, suffer the indignities and harm of poor law enforcement, and only have access to poor food and even poorer health care. It is a social problem Americans simply don't care about enough to address. But poor people don't move onto cruising boats to escape poverty.

People living on a boat usually think they were making the choice to live modest and light. Cruisers don't start out living poor on a boat, they end up living poor on a boat, often the result of a string of bad personal decisions and/or unexpected personal or family responsibilities or tragedies. It is a risk of choosing this life that simply isn't mentioned very often. But it needs to be.

Some will insist that living poor is not, itself, a bad thing. They are welcome to their opinion.  But I doubt many of them are living poor, and by choice. Come “out here”, run out of funds, be anchored somewhere for months because there is no money to move, have no way back to land, and no options. Pick up a cruising magazine.  Look at the pictures.  See if that makes it any better.

That may sound like I am down on the “cruising life”.  That isn't true, though I am a bit down on the cruising media.  We love living this way. It is simple. It is modest. It takes very little from the planet but offers a lot for the heart in return.  If one wants to live well while living modestly, this is a good choice to make.  But we have been out here for a year now. Those living well outnumber those living hard, but there are more living hard then I ever expected. It is far easier to move from a good life to a difficult one than most will admit, and it can happen very, very, quickly.  No one will be out here long before they anchor next to someone struggling to get through each day.

Though this must be said as well: even those struggling, who wish it was easier, would still rather be struggling on the water than struggling on land.  If they would rather be living easier on land than struggling on the water, is a question no one asks ... and no one answers.  The fact is, once one is living hard on the water, it is damned difficult to get back to land without help.

Coming out here without thinking of how easily this good life can turn into a hard one, is a good way to find one's own story changing into something much different than what was expected.