Many of you may be thinking, "I'd like to do that someday." Whether it's actually sailing off into the sunset like us or getting a hunting lodge in the mountains or the equivalent dream, things like this don't just happen. Opportunity + preparation = luck.

Preparation looks like changing our mindsets, living differently than others and swimming upstream. For starters, we decided many years ago to not go into debt for anything but a house. Thanks to some great resources on financial freedom by my friend Stephen DeSilva called Prosperous Soul. Then we started to downsize our life. We moved from a 3,500 sq ft rental house to a 1,750 sq ft rental. Two of our four children moved away to college, so we did not need the room. We bought our cars cash, used. The last one we purchased new was a company car in 2005. Which means you are always in a car that is not amazing, but a tool for getting from one place to another. No bluetooth, nav screens or other bells and whistles. We started to reduce our footprint in a lot of ways. We would save up to buy a side of grass-fed beef for $4.58 lb for any cut; so hamburger was $2-3 less per pound when you buy weekly, a fillet minion was 1/3 the price. You get the picture.

If you've ever played the game Cash-flow, the object of the game is to get your passive income to exceed your monthly expenses, then you can leave the rat-race and pursue your dreams.

Sailing is a very green way to live and travel. I know I can hear you saying, "boat stands for: Break Out Another Thousand!" Well, they don't have to. We looked for boats that were older, well built and were below the magical 40' length. Every single cost on a boat is directly related to the length. In fact, most marinas, boat yards or services base their sliding scale from 0-39' is $X per foot, 40-50' is $X+25% per foot and if you own a 50+ foot boat, you're paying more than double of what I am per foot. There is a 55' motor yacht on the end of our dock in La Paz, it's paying for an 80' end-tie at a much higher cost per foot than us. The parts, paint, varnish, engine, mast, sails etc. are all exponentially more expensive the bigger you go. A winch on our boat is pretty big, but the next size up is twice the cost. So, like our cars, we are not turning heads when we pull into ports, but we can anchor alongside boats worth a ten thousand times more than us while enjoying the same view; actually ours would be nicer since we're looking at their yacht and they're looking at ours.

​Sailing, using only the wind is very economical too. You just need enough food and water to live through the crossing of any ocean in the world. 30-45 days is a typical long crossing. If you have patience and moderate skill, you can go anywhere you want to in the sea. 

Someday...when is that? It's not a day of the week, it's kinda like tomorrow. Opportunity was before us, we had both lost our jobs at the same time. We could have freaked out and hunkered down. Instead we saw the hand of Providence orchestrating our lives, knowing that He is good and has only good things for us, so we asked the question, "Why not now?" I started looking at boats that would be solid, blue-water boats (Capable of crossing an ocean without breaking or sinking) not coastal cruisers with fin keels bolted on and spade rudders. Keels do fall off and rudders break when subject to the constant gyrations of a large sea. When I found the one we have now, it was more than I budgeted for, so I sold my car and cashed in some gold to make up the difference. It's about balancing assets and liabilities. We had some assets that we could part with for this season.

A lot of our blog entries, Instagram and Facebook posts are about freedom. So many people sacrifice freedom for security. Security provided from a job is worth the lack of freedom on a day-to-day basis, right? I described my life as 'living on rails' or "I feel like a slot-car" no deviation, just faster than the previous lap. Days turn into months and years go by, all the while you are serving, working and building something. Maybe it's yours, maybe it's the company's. One of the previous owners of our boat could not break free to do what we're doing, they owned a business that they could not offload due to the financial crisis. Maybe you lost that job that seemed so secure, the big company with your pension was bought-out or collapsed. So security is not so secure. Freedom is such a big deal, people bleed for it, risk their lives getting to freedom or become refugees in order to get out from under oppressive governments. People will always desire to be free. It's no coincidence that we spent two months of our 30th anniversary on a boat called Living Free and ours is called New Adventures. 

The dream remains a dream until you wake up. 

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January 14, 2017 La Paz, BCS, Mexico

I can hardly believe that two weeks have already passed! Tim and I have been playing with some different media ideas and have posted a few videos on our Facebook Page. I wonder how many of our readers think we are living in paradise, in the lap of luxury? I will not deny that we are in a spectacularly beautiful place! What is life really like? You must want to know. Our boat was built in 1979 in Hong Kong. It boasts teak both above and below deck. The teak on the top side needs to be refinished and sealed before we are going to be heading out again. This takes time to complete. Tim is tired of being tied to the dock, he’s ready to get out there in Sea of Cortez and see more of this amazing area. Some of you may be thinking, then get out there! Easily said!

Here is our average day: 
For Lynette:
After sleeping, or being in bed for about 10 hours, I finally emerge from the v-berth about 0800 or so. I make my coffee and enjoy drinking it, followed by making breakfast which usually consists of oatmeal. After breakfast the dishes have to be washed and are left to air dry. Then comes tidying the cabin and completing various chores that need doing. By now it is usually after 1000. My next tasks are usually planned the night before with Tim. For the last week it has been sanding the teak for 2-3 hours. Then comes lunch followed by more dishes. Next is my afternoon coffee break. I sit down to do an hour of DuoLingo to improve my Spanish. Once it’s about 1630 or so Tim and I walk down to the beach for sunset. Some days we go to the club with friends for drinks and maybe the pool or hot tub. We work our way back to the boat to have dinner, after which there are more dishes to wash. We then spend the evening in various ways such as visiting with our friends, watching a movie on my 13” laptop, playing games, working or cleaning. Finally, we plan what we hope to get done the following day and I head off to bed sometime between 2030 and 2230.

For Tim:
Tim sleeps less than Lynette does. He is usually up much earlier in the morning to catch a faster internet signal to complete his work. Tim spends about 4 or so hours each day working, as in working for dollars. Tim then begins his boat tasks of the day. The tasks can include sanding, applying epoxy, fixing rigging, adjusting other items to work better, repairing things that have broken, and on the list goes. Tim often calls it a day at lunch time and other times he gets right back to work for a couple more hours before we head to the beach. Some days he’s the jack of all trades and forward progress is halted for other repairs.

There you have it a day in the lives of the Jenne’s! Our friends Steve and Janny have a motto for La Paz: “Every day we work, we play, and we take a nap.” We are aspiring to be like them for sure. This last week I had the word linger go through my mind. According to dictionary.com it means: “(verb) loiter, delay. It is synonymous with: amble, dawdle, hang out, hang around, goof off, mosey, dilly-dally, drift.” It is the opposite or antonym of: “go, hurry, leave, rush.”

If you are personally acquainted with us, you already know how focused and driven we can both be. This drive is not in the sense of running people over, but in accomplishing things we want to get done or achieve. From June to the end of December there has been this internal pushing and pressure to hurry up and get our boat ready to just get going again. Hurry up and get out of bed, go! Come on! Get moving! I have been asking myself what is this go-go-go thing? I believe somehow I grasped the idea that my time is going to run out and I have more to do. I am not talking about my life being over, I’m talking in general about my day-to-day journey. Or we have to hurry up so the cruising kitty doesn’t run dry.

If I truly want to enjoy and experience different cultures it will require me to linger, enjoying the moment in its fullest while experiencing the absence of a pressure to go towards the next moment. We have decided to embrace lingering. It has brought us more rest and we are actually making more progress on our boat projects than before. As I sit here at the beach club, watching the sun setting as I write, I’m ready to embrace a life of lingering in all that I do, even the cleaning and sanding projects. This means I will no longer feel pressured that time or money are going to run out. How about you? Tell us what you think.