I was one of those that would watch YouTube every now and again. I had a few feeds that I subscribed to on YouTube, but really, I did not do a whole lot with the feeds that I followed. That all all changed back in November of this last year. I was not looking for anything in particular, I was just browsing around the Internet. It started out as searching for the ocean, beaches, etc., and then turned into watching people sail. Turns out, there are a lot of people that have given up their lives on land (for the most part) and their home is a sail boat. Most of them record weekly or bi-weekly broadcasts of their adventures. They actually make money by those watching their videos and then people can send them money too.
The site that almost everyone uses is called Patreon. Until coming across these sailors, I had not heard of Patreon before. Low and behold, there are a lot of people using it as almost all of the people I am following use this site. No, I have not donated any money yet, but it is a interesting concept. Basically, followers of a particular person donate money for each time that site creates an update. Whether that is a video, blog post, etc., the patrons (see what happened there... Patreon's) commit via the site to pay the poster $1, $5, and up for each new item posted.
I started off with one particular channel that I basically watched all of their videos in one evening. There were a lot, but I was addicted. After finishing watching the entire season, I searched for other YouTube sites and quickly found there are a lot of people doing this same thing.
I think in all the cases of the videos that I am following on a regular basis, all of them have in fact quit their jobs and sail full time. They sold their homes for a sail boat. At least one of the videos I follow, they say how scary it was to sell their home and leave what they knew to only sail. Now, they would not give it up for anything. Of course, the other thing that many of these adventurers also gave up was their family and friends that they left behind. A few of them are able to have their family meet up with them on their adventures of the wild blue sea, but this has been a rare occurrence.
So, you might be curious which sea adventurers I am following. They include the following no particular order except for the first one which was the first one I started following:
These are all like TV shows where they document each week what has happened for the previous week or two. Some (i.e. Shaun Sailing) only post every other week while others (I think most of the others) post every week.
Not only are the videos of where they are beautiful, but I get swept away with the thought of leaving everything to go be on the wide open ocean. Being on the ocean in the middle of the night with no one around for miles and miles... Makes me wonder how I would feel in that situation. When I see a notice come through via YouTube or email that a update is available for one of these channels, I get excited and cannot wait to view their latest adventure.
I would like to thank the above linked video bloggers for providing videos of their adventures. I look forward to future adventures. Don't worry, I do not plan to sell everything and become an adventurer on the open ocean.
What are your favorite YouTube channels to follow? Do you have feeds that you have to watch as soon as they are released? Please share them in the comments or send me a Tweet about your favorites.