Why We Decided to Start Sailing – Sailing Tipsy Turtle

A love for the water and adventure
Tabby and I both have a love for the water, whether that’s the ocean or fresh water. I grew up water skiing, wakeboarding, and pretty much anything you could ride behind a boat at our nearest lakes, Lucky Peak in Boise, Idaho and Payette Lake in McCall, Idaho. Every year for the past 33 years my family, grandparents aunts and uncles, and cousins have gotten together to enjoy a week on the lake and all of the activities with the we water we enjoy so much.

I grew up in Boise and have never lived anywhere near the ocean. Tabby, however, grew up on the east coast in Maine. She has also lived in Florida, Hawaii, and Japan. She has a very different experience than I do living by the ocean, eating fresh fish and lobster, and experiences you can’t have living in a landlocked state.

Tabby and I met each other at Boise State University working for the school’s newspaper, the Arbiter. She broke things, I loved to fix them—a trip to Playa del Carmen and that’s when I proposed. We ended up getting married the next year on a beach in Playa del Carmen at the Sandos Resort.

We spent two weeks there relaxing on the beach and taking a trip to Cozumel. We rented a scooter and went around the whole island stopping at so many fun little spots along the way. One place we stopped at for lunch, which I would most definitely recommend, was this place on top of a cliff, right before you turned to cut through the island to get to town, called Coconuts. We thought it was named after the fruit. We were wrong.

A trip to San Diego
For our third anniversary, we decided that a quick four-day trip over to San Diego was the perfect idea. We were cruising through listings in the area and found a retro cool hotel on the water at Sunset Cliffs (The Inn at Sunset Cliffs). We booked that one for 2 of the nights. Then we came across a rather interesting listing, something we did not even think about—a sailboat! The boat was a 39-foot Hunter. We had no clue what that was, but the pictures looked awesome and would give us an experience we never had before.

A Hunter 39′ Sailboat Airbnb
We arrived at the Sunroad Resort and Marina where we would be staying aboard a Hunter 39′ that we had found on Airbnb. We were pretty excited about this experience being so different than anything we had done before. We met with the owner’s mother who was super nice, she gave us the gate code to get in and the keys to the boat. She showed us around the marina which had a pool, hot tub, and a nice shower room. I was pretty impressed already with the marina having only been to marinas at our small lakes back home. She took us to the boat and showed us how to get in. The boat had one bathroom (head) and a shower. It seemed very spacious with an aft birth and the V-birth. The boat was in very good condition.

Sailing Vlogs
After our trip to San Diego I was looking on Google about how to sail and came across a Project Atticus’s episodes on YouTube. I was intrigued and started watching their videos. Cruising on a budget was their thing and they bought a boat for 5k and then did a refit. After 2 years they left Florida for the Caribbean with only $2,000. I thought this was so cool. I watched every video they had then wondered how many other younger people were on this adventure on the ocean.

I found a ton of people who decided that this was for them vs. the suburban lifestyle. After Project Atticus, Sailing Soulianis was next, and I was so impressed with their story and had to give it up to the video quality and stories they shared. You can tell they spent a lot time on these. Below is a list of some of my favorite vlogs I’ve watched.

Project Atticus really got me into thinking I would love to sail offshore one day, Sailing Zatara gave us the inspiration that we could possibly do this with our kids, Sailing Soulianis for the book recommendation and giving me ideas on how we could pay for a cruising adventure, and Expedition Evans for making me believe there might be room on the internet for another unique story about finding adventure and new experiences sailing the ocean with our family.

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