WHAT IF ONE OR TWO YEARS OF ADVENTURE JUST ISN’T ENOUGH? MEET THE CRUISERS WHO’VE BEEN ON BOARD FOR A DECADE OR MORE, AND FIND OUT HOW TO MAKE LONG-HAUL CRUISING WORK FOR YOU
“I probably wouldn’t even recognise the person that I was when I first started,” admits Brian Trautman, skipper of the Amel Super Maramu Delos (and eponymous YouTube channel). In 2009 Trautman cast off his life in corporate America, hustling to make his own tech business a success, and set off on what he thought would be an 18-month-long cruising adventure. Fourteen years later he’s still sailing the world on Delos, now with his wife and young daughter. But if you have no idea where the future will take you, how can you plan to keep your cruising options open?
We spoke to cruisers who have spent between eight and 40-plus years cruising and living aboard. Some set out with a rough deadline, others had no stopping point in mind, but the common theme is that all were able to keep their plans flexible and had made the life changes necessary to stay afloat.
“When Jill and I moved aboard our 1984 Grand Soleil 39 Yahtzee in Seattle in 2012, we had no time frame,” explains Andy Cross. “It was, and still is, open ended with the caveat that if the lifestyle isn’t working for one of us we’d reassess and make changes. We always intended for the boat to be our home, not just for cruising, and it wasn’t a ‘one, two or three years and we’re done’ plan.
“We both had jobs, but we weren’t tied down to the trappings of a house and cars, so it was relatively straightforward moving aboard, beginning to learn the boat, and starting a family. Our goal was to take it slow, not sail to a schedule too often, and hopefully share the dream with our children. I’m happy to say, we’re still doing that over 10 years later.”
Trautman initially thought his cruising adventure would be for less than two years, having sold all his possessions and taken out a mortgage to pay for the boat.
“When I left, the time frame was 18 months. The reason is when I ran my budget and my monthly expenditures, I only had enough money for 18 months. So my plan was to just go, get somewhere cool – my intention was to try and make it to New Zealand – and then figure something else out.
“I didn’t know if I was going to stop and work when I got there, or if I was going to leave the boat and fly home. Or if I was going to sell the boat and go back to work. All I knew was that I was going to go now and figure out the rest at some later point. I ended up stretching that 18-month budget to about two and a half years getting from Seattle to Australia. When I stopped in Australia, we hauled Delos out of the water for about a year. I actually di
