Making the Dream Happen

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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Tim Jenné

Former CEO of Bethel Media. For over 25 years has been an IT & security professional for large accounting firms, banks and non-profit organizations. Since 2005 President, CEO of Interface Innovations Inc. where we provide business and IT consulting services. Has consulted for Verizon, American Airlines, Berkshire Hathaway, large school districts as well as many private and publicly-traded financial institutions, engineering and high-tech companies from Seattle to San Diego.