The Velvet Moose Survey & Sea Trial

Everyone raised their eyebrows a bit dumbfounded. Some thought our idea was adventurous.  A few thought we were delusional. Many thought our idea was risky. Most were supportive of our dream. Others, not so much. After all, neither Ellen or I had much experience with a boat and here we are telling people we were going to sell our house and move onto a trawler to travel the world. Oh yes, we agree, it does sound crazy, even to us when we say it outloud. So I guess we should back up a bit and examine where this screwy idea came from.

Back in 2023, post Covid, Ellen’s job as a physician and mine as an educator was taking its toll. Our stress levels in dealing with people hit an all time high, even to a point where it was affecting our health. Coming home to a nice quiet house was our sanctuary. I joked that I wanted a cabin in the woods on 5 secluded acres. In hindsight, I think I was less joking and more brainstorming. A few weeks later, Ellen came home and sighed, “we need at least 10 acres.” A few weeks later, I expanded our human buffer zone to 20 acres. As time went on, the less we wanted to deal with or be around the human race. Sad, I know. It wasn’t just our jobs causing our stress but the political, financial, and societal climate too. The polarization and hatred consuming our country, cities, airwaves, social media, friends, and families was overwhelming. Turning off the news and hiding from social media was just the start. Traveling and spending time in nature was our happy place. Over time, we bumped up our imaginary dream acreage to 50, 100, 500. When we absurdly reached 1000 acres, I said “we might as well buy a boat and live at sea.”  I was, after all, being totally sarcastic. My family had a small boat in Florida back in the 90’s. I mean, it wasn’t tiny, like a canoe, it was more in the 20 foot range. But it was nothing you could live on for more than an afternoon (or until you had to have a bowel movement). The Florida boat was fun for a minute, but after the novelty wore off, it was more work than fun. The saying “the best two days in a boat owner's life is the day he buys it and the day he sells it” was spot on for us.

Nevertheless, Ellen and I kept thinking about that inane, delusional idea about living aboard a boat full time. We started watching YouTube videos of folks that have made boats their home and realized our idea wasn’t as far-fetched as we first thought. I know what you’re thinking and no, we’re not totally clueless individuals. We recognized that we were starting at ground zero and that we had a huge learning curve ahead of us. We would fully admit that we knew absolutely nothing about boat life except that it was an exciting, harebrained idea. Figuring out how to make it happen couldn’t be that hard, right? Between Ellen and I, we have 12 years of post-graduate education, so we’re no slouches. We’ve done plenty of research projects throughout our years, so why not treat this as a research project? And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Starting mid 2023 we started doing our research. Taking classes, reading educational material, and watching training videos on everything from navigation, anchoring, engine maintenance and repair, fuel maintenance, weather and sea states, repairing fiberglass, electronics, communication, security, food prep and storage, water making, generators, solar, emergency medicine, and marine toilets. We’ve heard the horror stories. We understand the expenses. We have a grasp on all the things that could go wrong and the risk to our lives. However, we believe knowledge is power and so we stay determined to make this work.

We have no idea how long this adventure will last. Heck, it’s possible that we could jump ship (pun intended) after a few months and go back to being land owners. Our goal, however, is a bit longer than that…until it’s physically too difficult or when it doesn't make us happy any longer. So, we invite you to follow our journey through our blogs & vlogs. And with any luck, our wakes will cross in the near future! Until then, here’s to keeping the wet side down.