It can be challenging, but the rewards are enormous, and you don’t have to be rich to be an ocean voyager. By Sally Howard
Tim Geisler runs, an intensive sailing school for would-be liveaboards, with his wife, Rosanna, in Colorado. “Our enquiries are up 100% on pre-pandemic levels,” he says. “Our clients have seen the liveaboard lifestyle on YouTube channels, many of these channels have millions of viewers, and they’ve thought, ‘You know what: I could live like that!’” Client demographics, Geisler notes, have also changed. “A few years ago it was seniors, but now 70% of our clients are aged between 35 and 55.
The Turner-Benningtons are planning to navigate the French canal system, then continue, via the coast of Portugal and north Africa, west across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. The route will land them in the kind climate of the Caribbean for winter, a popular destination for European liveaboard cruisers.
“We remind people that lives back in Britain are pretty cushioned,” says Melissa – God help you if you aspire to cook anything elaborate in a swaying galley kitchen, they point out. And shopping for basic provisions as a liveboard is a “full-day event”. “You have to get in your dinghy, get to shore and then get to the supermarket, which is usually on the far side of town,” Natalie explains.
Liz is also dismayed by what she sees as a retrograde division of labour among heterosexual liveaboard couples, with women typically taking on the galley and men the boat work. “There seems to be this narrative that women aren’t capable, though you would think boat communities would be a bit more progressive.”
“Running a chip shop for 15 years, you spend many hours looking out the same 8ft by 8ft window,” Jamie says. “After a while life got a bit mundane. I wanted the kids to see more, too.” The family sold the business and signed up for a charter holiday on a yacht where they met a British family who were circumnavigating the world in a catamaran. “They gave us loads of advice and said, ‘Just go for it,’” Helen recalls.
There are downsides: the exploding toilets, the rats and the cockroaches; the salt on absolutely everything
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