So we're tacking right now.
Here we go.
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We're actually sailing our house.
We live on our sailboat.
It's a 1979 Cal 31 and we bought it last year.
I feel like it's something that can take you anywhere in the world.
And you can explore and see new places.
You get to go to places where a lot of tourists don't get to go.
And it's just great.
It's just the coolest way to travel, I feel like.
Especially here in Southeast Alaska there's so many places to check out.
All the islands, inlets, the fjords, the glaciers.
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We have been living on the boat for just over a year now.
Just over a year, yeah.
We got it in April 2015 and we didn't know how to sail.
We did not know anything about sailing.
Last year was all about learning, and it still is but we're a little bit more comfortable.
We are docked most of the time.
We usually go out on the weekends and anchor.
We dock in Juneau, Alaska.
I work downtown.
I'm a dental hygienist.
And I work for a soil and water testing company, and I work remotely for them.
But right now we're just strapped to Juneau for Megan's work.
Yeah, paying off student loans and then paying off the boat, too.
First we'll show you our lovely cockpit.
I made this canvas covering which is awesome cause right now it's 80 degrees outside.
We have the wind turbine and solar panels on top of it.
You can lift these up and it's more storage for us.
We have a 2.5 gallon water heater in there.
Inside, we have our sink.
You can't really see right now but there's these little cubbies that extend back a little
bit.
Open this up.
Really nice storage in there.
It's all over here.
And then this slides on both sides and we just put miscellaneous things.
And then we have our alcohol stove.
And it just comes apart like this, and you put the alcohol in, and then open it up and
light it.
And you can adjust it a bit.
And it even has a little oven that's on a gimbal which is pretty awesome.
And then back behind here we made this netting for all of these cubbies.
This is shrimp netting, and that is on all the cubbies so nothing comes flying out.
A little bit more storage where we can put bags and stuff.
And these can latch, and then you can pull it up from here or you can lock it all in
for sailing.
This table, gotta show this off.
Because we kind of redid the table in here.
It used to be in the middle with a bar coming down right here.
Anyway the leg comes down and we have a table for two right next to each other.
We have our fridge on this side.
Lots of good stuff in it.
Rob and I just recently redid it so we could hold a little bit more stuff.
We really like having a fridge.
Before we had an ice box and we just got sick of buying ice every couple of days.
We re-insulated the fridge, got these little drawers that are meant for fridge drawers,
and we just fit them in.
They fit perfectly actually.
And it's still a pretty nice roomy fridge.
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We had to get rid of, I'd say, like a lot of furniture, my bass amp.
I don't know, just stuff like that.
Bulky items that you just don't really need.
I wouldn't consider ourselves minimalists but it is nice to have fewer things, or to
have only what you really need.
It's the last day, I have to move all of my stuff out for the sailboat.
It's going to be right down there.
So excited!
Giving all these books away or selling them.
And more.
I was up here a few months before Rob and so I lived in an apartment and tried to save
up some money to put a downpayment on the boat.
Yeah, the apartment life is okay but it's very expensive up here and actually, living
on a sailboat is a lot cheaper.
So much cheaper.
And we just love it so much more.
It's definitely a lot different.
You don't have a lot of the comforts that you normally have in an apartment such as
instant hot water, or a flushing toilet, or even heat.
Heat's another big one to think about too.
It's actually a lot harder to sail up here than it is down in the Caribbean or something
like that.
Down there, it's like you don't need a heater.
You don't have to deal with the boat constantly being moist and wet.
Like up here we're in a rainforest so it's always damp.
You're always having to deal with drying out the boat.
That's why we have our Kimberly wood stove.
It really helps keep it warm and dry.
Especially spending the winter up here on the boat.
It was a little tough.
This is our charge controller for our solar panels and wind turbine.
It feels good to make your own power.
This area just tends to be miscellaneous stuff.
Our maps, charting, extra maps.
These stairs come off.
You unlatch this here.
It comes off and then you can get to the engine.
Just down off of the stairs is a radiator heater that we put in.
And same thing over here.
We tend to put our shoes there for now, Kai's carry case (the cat), and maps there.
Over here is the big addition that we did in January.
We were just dying to have this Kimberly wood stove.
It's treated us well.
Super awesome.
But we took out part of the settee, and put in...this is tile here and just did all this
work around it.
We made this so we could have wood around the fire and then we can put wood clear back
here where it extends back.
So it takes some room but we enjoy it.
We didn't want diesel, we wanted wood.
If you look over here we have our carbon monoxide and smoke detector.
Now we'll go into the bathroom and we've got our lovely little shower.
And this came with Kai.
His litter box is right in that door.
And he just jumps in there.
Jumps in his litter box.
We have a closet.
What you're going to notice is that everything just seems like a lot on our boat because
we have to deal with a lot of cold weather so we have to have a lot more stuff on board.
We use all of this stuff during the winter, a lot.
We live in all of this.
This is my side, this is Rob's side.
And then our wetsuits are in here.
Ok, jumping into the V-berth.
We made this netting once again like you saw up there, to hold our clothes against the
V-berth.
Rob's side, and of course, my side.
We put this new carpet in.
It's actually outdoor carpet.
We tore out the old stuff, put some insulation against the walls and put that carpet up.
So now we're going to go back up on the boat.
We've got our kayaks, our shrimp pot, storm jib, extra water, genoa.
And then our bikes.
Usually when we are sailing, our bikes aren't like this.
They'll be...they'll have the pedals and front wheels off, and they'll be covered.
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We actually just got back from one full month of exploring parts of Southeast Alaska including
Glacier Bay, Skagway, the Chilkoot Trail, and even out to the coast.
We've been keeping a really good video log of everything.
We plan to spend a couple of years up here and then either head to Hawaii or go to Baja.
We just want to explore.
Use our boat and take it to where it can take us.
And just follow the winds.
We hope to just travel, make films of our adventures, and our exploration, and just
kind of
showcase it, and inspire others to get out and follow their dreams
just kind of like what we're doing.
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