If you have plenty of time to spare, google ‘Sailing Video Blogs’ or search for the same thing on YouTube and you will be blown away by what you find. It seems that it is inconceivable to not share every moment of your sailing with the world when you head off cruising. There are literally tens of thousands of people, having thrown off the shackles of life and gone cruising, now wish to share every intimate detail of their lives afloat with millions of people. Yes folks just grab your smartphone, buy an ex charter boat and head off, capturing each sunset, moment of sea sickness and every fish you catch as you go. Everyone is doing it and these blogs range everywhere from dry, highly technical video essays on calibrating instruments to what is virtually pornography. Some are deliberately entertaining, whilst others are gaining a cult following for all the wrong reasons. One I won’t mention is like watching a train smash – you can’t look away! These people appear to be trying to commit suicide by yacht. I expect that series will come to an abrupt and unexpected end.

One of the common genres is ‘Good looking girl and boyfriend buy boat and go cruising’. These people seem to prefer warmer climates for their sailing, allowing the afore mentioned girl to wear very little and most of the scenes involve her either swimming around the boat in her bikini, cooking in the galley (still in her bikini) or sleeping in a hammock strung across the fore deck, wearing, you guessed it, only her bikini. These ones tend to be light on story and big on sunsets. Lowering the anchor also features prominently as it combines the girl on the foredeck in bikini, swimming to check the anchor (yes, obviously), and then cooking a celebratory dinner in the clearly too-warm-for-clothes, galley. Oddly enough these ones seem to be getting the most hits. The ‘Jolly English family’s adventures around Scotland’ may not have the universal appeal.

And of course many are doing this to fund their trips! Lots of traffic on YouTube is one way but many ask you to hit the PayPal button to ‘Make a donation to fund our dream’. Now the only sailing dream most intelligent people intend to fund is their own, yet amazingly people are doing this and some are making a lot of money. Add to this t-shirt and beer coaster sales and bingo – you have a lifestyle!

Let me be clear there are some very good ones – one chap single-handing around the world is first class, but the ones filmed on the phone with little editing and no real story can be the funniest and most cringe worthy. These are the ones you want to follow. It is amazing how little some of these people know and are willing to share! One couple showed how they left to sail to another Caribbean island without any charts and were further astounded that they would have to pay a fee to enter and to moor their boat whilst they were there. Who would have thought! They sailed back to where they started because they were broke. Another filmed themselves as they broke into an upturned boat on a mooring buoy and stole the owner’s possessions – then put this up on YouTube!

So folks, now is the time to make your dream come true! Don’t worry that you don’t have enough money, but that boat, set up a website and go and let your global audience pay for everything.

But first it may pay to get some experience on our Offshore Trip from Yeppoon to Brisbane where you will learn all kinds of skills that will make your videos less entertaining but your trip far more rewarding. And yes you can cook in your swimming togs if you wish.

That’s all for this edition, until next time – get filming.

Cheers

Mike Job