D'ya Savvy? Learning from the best...

As beginners in the world of sailing, we have spent the past weeks/months watching sailing vlogs and reading blogs, with google firmly at our side for the inevitable sailing lingo translation. We don't know much about sailing but we have watched enough of these to be able to highlight those that really helped us understand what we are letting ourselves in for and how to get there.

We won't name and shame those we don't love (as everyone's mother says ' if you don't have something nice to say...') but we'd like to share those resources we have found the most useful and why.

Gone with The Wynns (Topic: Travel Inspiration and 'how to' tips)

Jason and Nikki Wynn were the second vlog we came across and remain probably the most professional. They are engaging, fun and relentlessy positive which makes them a relaxing and informative watch. The highlight for me was that they hadn't ever sailed a yacht before they bought one - Jason memorably called the boom a 'plank' (or similar) in one of the videos, giving us hope that if they could do it and learn the lingo, so could we!

Follow the Wynn's adventures here.

Sailing La Vagabonde (Topic: Life at sea)

It's nigh on impossible to look up sailing vlogs and not come across this channel. Don't be fooled by their impossibly good looks, they are not just pretty to look at but have gained a wealth of experience about sailing and living aboard in their five years doing just that. Made even more famous by their trip across the Atlantic with Greta Thunberg, this is a staple of sailing vlog enthusiasts. Follow them for daily life adventures, inspiration, life on a catamaran and 'how to' tips.

Follow Elayna and Riley here.

Saving to Sail (Topic: Working remotely)

Melody at Saving to Sail is the best resource we have found for finding ways to support yourself when embarking on your new sailing adventure. Her blog is not only full of inspiration of the myriad ways you can choose to fund your travels but also contains explicit steps on enacting these plans and making them a reality. If you want to master remote working and the ups and downs of doing so, this is a great place to start.

Follow Saving to Sail here.

We are close to the start of our journey - we have all the questions and few of the answers. The focus now is absorbing information like a couple of sponges. That said, we wanted to record this stage where we have the same questions many of you may have, so that we can return to them with answers as we go and provide our experiences and what we learned so far.

What we have learned is that there is a plethora of information out there, and that everyone has wildly different opinions! So you will believe every author or blogger you listen to, until you watch or read a new one, and then your mind will change. As such, we found a few things useful to bear in mind:

• ​​Read or watch a diverse set of sources - even if you don't see yourself sailing sans motor a la Pardee (if you don't know who they are, you will!), it is eye opening and inspiring to learn how simply you can live on a boat if you wanted to. Go Small, Go Simple, Go Now is a good motto to bear in mind.
  

• Find your crew - despite what I say above, you will start to hone in on those who have budgets, outlooks, skills and itineraries that resonate - after a while you will begin to focus on those that match your needs and remove the others or it can become information overload.
  

• Subscribe and pay it forward - whether you plan to start your own vlog or not, subscribing to others means they get a little bit more income to keep them afloat (pun intended).
  

• Learning to sail, maintain and earn - there are channels out there for everything you need and books aplenty too, you can find the link to our favourites here but it's good to watch sailing tips, boat buying tips, remote working tips and maintenance videos too.
  

• Start a spreadsheet as soon as you can - once you have a ballpark figure of the type of boat you want and how much that is going to cost, you need to map out how you are going to get to that figure, how you are going to earn your budgeted annual requirements for food, marinas, maintenance and all the other costs. The sooner you face this head on the easier it is to put the blinkers on and zone in on your perfect (for you) boat.
  

• There is no perfect boat - you will hear this a LOT, but it's also true, we have several things we wanted in a boat and so far , no boat has all of them (in our price range anyway!)
  

• Get out on the water ASAP - we didn't know whether to do a course, join a sailing club, volunteer as crew or buy a boat and as such we procrastinated a little. The thing we have learned is that all these options work. We have watched videos of people buying a boat, hiring a captain to train them for a few weeks and then setting sail (locally at first), some spend years refitting a boat or watching vlogs, others start with simply take dinghy lessons first - and everything in between. The key is to get out on the water and to see if you enjoy the community and the feeling and you will find that opportunities to speed up your learning will present themselves!