Sailor James is on an adventure filled with beauty and danger. He’s currently sailing around the world all by himself. We talk solo sailing, remote islands, being stranded at sea, pirates and the best sea shanties. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Fictional Vehicles.

Sailor James: 01:37ish

Pointless: 33:10ish

Top 5: 45:06ish

http://youtube.com/sailorjames (Sailor James YouTube)

https://www.instagram.com/james.the.sailor.man (Sailor James Instagram)

https://www.svtriteia.com (Sailor James Website)

Dakota Lithium : https://dakotalithium.com (Sailor James Sponsor)

Renogy Solar : https://www.renogy.com (Sailor James Sponsor)

Rolly Tasker Sails : https://www.rollytasker.com (Sailor James Sponsor)

Interview with Solo Sailor Sailor James

Nick VinZant 0:11

Welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode solo sailing, and fictional vehicles

Sailor James 0:20

during that trip is what changed my life forever. It was like time travel. And that was it. For me. That was it. I was like this, I have to figure out how to make this my life. What happens is it's like living in a snare drum for day in and day out. And it's so loud and intense. I think the most, the longest period I slept in 32 days was two hours. When you start sailing, you get a full bag of luck, and you get an empty bag of experience. And you're you're like your job is to fill up the experience bag before your luck bag runs out.

Nick VinZant 0:59

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, leave a review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So our first guest is on an adventure filled with beauty and danger. He's sailing around the world all by himself on a boat built in the 1960s. It's an adventure that's filled with sleepless nights, remote islands, being stranded at sea pirates, and sea shanties. This is solo sailor, Sailor James, when did you really fall in love with sailing, when did this kind of become something that you wanted to do?

Sailor James 1:42

It really, really started, I was pursuing a career as a like a fine artist for about a decade. And there are these things called artists and residencies, where you as an artist, you will, you're invited to go to a place and you go there for a month or up to three months, you make a body of work, you have an exhibition at the end. So these happen all over the world. I done one in St. Petersburg, Russia in January of 2014 on the island of cron stop, and I had made a body of work and based on maritime history, because the island had a rich maritime history. So I was receiving a lot of maritime history. And then I applied for another residency and got accepted in northern Scotland on a sailboat and I made a drawing machine that this wheeled platter moved beneath the fixed pin and made drawings based on the sailboats movement as see. And so we were sailing all throughout the the northern isles of Scotland, the Orkney Islands, and I was making these abstract drawings from Island island. But during that trip is what changed my life forever. Sailing between all of these different islands in the Orkney Islands and visiting Neolithic sites and going to all these unbelievable sites spinning i Under anchor on this like sailing vessel, learning how to sail and understanding what cruising is where you just travel by by the wind and by the elements. And then the moment that I always say was like the sort of moment that changed the trajectory of my life as we were sailing into Stromness on the Orkney mainland, in very, very thick fog, and I watched this ancient Seaport Village emerge from the fog, as we approached, and heard the anchor chain rattle down as the hook set on the seabed floor and held us in place. And it was, it was like time travel. And that was it. For me. That was it. I was like this, I have to figure out how to make this my life. And when I returned to Los Angeles that I set that in motion, I was like, Okay, this has to be what I do. I have to see the world and magical places. undersell

Nick VinZant 3:54

is it more about the act of like sailing in and of itself, or is the destination the goal,

Sailor James 3:59

there's like two sides of the same coin. You know what I mean? So it's like, I think it's beautiful and magical. The idea that, like, I sailed here to Hawaii, from Los Angeles, 2300 miles just by the wind without the motor running. Like I travel like a leaf on a pond. The fact that the elements can just if you know how to point the sails, and you know how to point your boat and you know how to navigate, you can reach any land on the planet. And so then, somewhere I read and who knows if it's true, but I read somewhere that 80% of the country's can be reached by water. And I was like, that's like a fascinating option to be able to travel slowly and using the elements and reach all of these like foreign places and new cultures and see beautiful things

Nick VinZant 4:52

now is the goal is still to kind of what is the word circumnavigate the globe?

Sailor James 4:57

That's the Yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. Yeah.

Nick VinZant 4:59

Now how long would it take you if you were just like to do it non stop? Like, how long would it take you to circumnavigate the globe?

Sailor James 5:06

I think nowadays or depends on my boat. My boat is a 1965 sailboat. So she's older and not as fast. So it would take about a year,

Nick VinZant 5:15

is that faster? Is that slow? I'm not entirely sure which one that is.

Sailor James 5:18

today's standards, it's very slow. Like, because nowadays boats are like, made differently. They're much faster. But they're also far less comfortable. So there's a trade off. But um, yet, in today's today's world, some of the boats are absurdly fast and my vote is very slow and very safe.

Nick VinZant 5:40

Is that when you look at different boats, though, is there always a trade off between the safety and the speed? Like, cool, that's going to be fast, but

Sailor James 5:48

for sure, yeah, for sure. So and it's not necessarily the safety and the speed. Maybe it's the comfort level, and the speed, but I that can play into it. Because if you're not comfortable, if you're in a boat, that's not necessarily that's more designed for coastal cruising, where they're like, flat bottomed, and they're fast, and you can move quickly between places on the coast, and they're very wide and roomy, like an apartment, where those are not comfortable in big seas. And what happens is, it's like living in a snare drum for day in and day out. And it's so loud and intense. And while the boat didn't risk, like breaking, breaking up, it was perfectly sound boat. But the experience fatigues you in such a way that it can put you in a dangerous situation. And even more so a solo sailing, fatigue is a very dangerous aspect. Because then you can mess up and mess up at sea, especially if you're alone could mean your death. So

Nick VinZant 6:43

So like for solo sailing, how do you go about doing that right? Like do you have to just be alert 24 hours a day, the entire time that you're going there's a

Sailor James 6:55

thing called AI S, which is a system that all major ships have to have broadcast AI s. So there's this a s receiver, you can buy a transponder, a receiver, but the transponders are very expensive, which would send out your data. But the as receiver tells you, when a ship is near you, it tells you which direction they're going and how fast they're going. So you can set up alarms were like, Okay, if a ship gets in 10 miles of me, I need the alarm to go off. And then you can get up and kind of figure out where the ship is and figure out if they're gonna, if you guys are going to cross paths. So that lends itself to help a lot. But generally, on my passage, the way I do it, when I'm when I'm at sea, and I'm not coastal cruising is I would start my night shift around 9pm. And I would send alarm for the top of the hour for every hour. And I would lay down hopefully sleep through the hour, and then my alarm goes off, I would get up, go on deck look for ships slowly scan the horizon, check the sails, check the course make sure I'm still going the right direction, and carry on my way. And there's a thing called a wind vane self steering system, which is all mechanical doesn't take any electronics. And it um, you basically you set your course and you activate this wind vane, and it steers the boat for you. So it removes you from having to hand steer the boat. So that allows you to like live, you know, because the otherwise you would just have to put the boat that's called heave to which basically like stall the boat and sleep for hours if you know and then go back to sailing. So with a wind vane steering system, it allows you to just go kind of constantly, but you wouldn't

Nick VinZant 8:31

ever want to like just sleep for eight hours straight with the boat going, like Alright, well I pointed at East,

Sailor James 8:38

it's not a good idea. Because usually the sea conditions change the wind conditions change. And so your winds or your sails might you know, back when you start pointing in the wrong direction. You know, it's like you're sailing eight hours in the wrong direction is not going to help your final cause. So I think the most the longest period I slept in 32 days was two

Nick VinZant 9:02

hours. What does that do to your body?

Sailor James 9:05

Um, I lost 20 pounds. Also the conditions at sea it's really hard to cook so you kind of eat pretty, pretty simply. And then yeah, you get into a rhythm with it because it's not just nighttime so like, I don't drink any caffeine when I'm at sea like I don't have coffee. I love coffee on land and when I'm like you know just nearshore but I don't drink any caffeine when I'm at sea so that in the middle of the day if I can lay down then I can sleep you know so you just kind of grab rest wherever you are. And yeah, it's it's almost like you go on by standby mode anytime you can just to kind of conserve energy and, and stay alert.

Nick VinZant 9:44

My one experience with kind of the open ocean is on a giant cruise ship and I just felt like oh my gosh, I got to get off this thing. Like I felt trapped, even on a huge one. Like do you ever feel like that?

Sailor James 9:57

Not at all, especially being a little Um, you know, 1000 miles from land in any direction, it was like the most piece I'd ever experienced in my life. I think it's just different people wired different ways.

Nick VinZant 10:10

You know, that's true. I was like the word like, Have you been somebody that always kind of gravitated more towards that kind of solo experience towards being alone,

Sailor James 10:21

the way I like to say it, about specifically about ocean crossings, and I've done both I've done solo and I've done crude ocean crossings is that I'm pretty comfortable being uncomfortable. And it's, it would be much harder for me to be on a boat with someone who was miserable. So like, you know, I'm not that miserable. It's like, yeah, there's things that you know, that are ideal, or maybe they're not, you know, they're not 100% comfortable, like you would think of in everyday life. But that's like, the adventure tax, you know, so it's like, to get to see these things that no one gets to see, sometimes you got to you got to pay that tax.

Nick VinZant 11:01

So for somebody who's like, never been out on the open ocean, what's what's it like, compared to like, how is the open ocean different from being near shore?

Sailor James 11:10

Well, for one thing, you can be rescued near shore, um, that like, you know, in the middle of the ocean, there is no rescue or, or if you're lucky, you might get rescued by a cargo ship, but then your vessel or your home, your boat has to be sunk, so that it's not a danger to other boats navigating in the same waters. So that thought, you know, it's not like a helicopter can just come pick you up when you're 1000 miles from shore. So that is wildly different. But on the flip side of that is there's nothing more dangerous to a boat than the shore. So when, like, when I'm navigating close to shore, if I'm doing overnight passages like non stop overnight passages, I'll sleep in the cockpit outside with my alarm set for every 15 minutes, because that's about 20 minutes is about the time a ship will reach you from the horizon if it's traveling at full speed. So about every 15 minutes, you pop up, look around for ships and then lay back down. And even with a is because a lot of small fishing boats don't have that. And if somebody is on that boat, not on watch, they're on autopilot, they can easily run you down. So and So boats do not move very fast, you know, because it is right around the base of like walking swiftly or walking slowly, depending on the wind.

Nick VinZant 12:29

But I mean, that's it, that's as fast as you're going, you'll go in like three or four miles an hour. Oh, yeah. Even if the winds like whipping, you're still like poking around holes.

Sailor James 12:40

A hole speed on my boat, I think is like seven knots, which is like, you know, it's not one for one for like miles per hour. But um, it's not very fast. Yeah. And it's like, that's, yeah, I didn't have mentioned that. I said, you know, like, my passage here from Los Angeles would have been the equivalent to me driving from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh at three miles an hour. Basically.

Nick VinZant 13:03

I thought you were going a lot faster than that. I assumed that like, all right, you get on the open ocean, they're probably doing like 30 or 40. Doing like five

Sailor James 13:12

giant cargo ships, they max out at 30 knots.

Nick VinZant 13:16

Why did I think everything was so much faster.

Sailor James 13:19

But like fancy race boats, like for the America's Cup, they have these boats, these sailboats that look like spaceships almost those things will go like 40 knots, or you know, those those things are totally bananas, but they don't go long distances really at that speed. You know,

Nick VinZant 13:33

I have never understood why it's knots and not just miles per hour.

Sailor James 13:37

Back in the age of sail. The way they would determine the speed of the ship is they had a log that was tied to a rope. And the rope had at specific links had knots tied in it. And they would turn an hourglass over, throw the login and then count how many knots went through their hand until the hourglass ran out. And then they would write down. How many knots in the log book

Nick VinZant 14:05

that makes perfect sense. You know, for like the water conditions out on the open ocean. Is it smoother? Is it wavy? Or is that the right word? Like what's it like?

Sailor James 14:16

Well, depends on almost everything depends on the wind. So the swells generally if there's no wind, they're very long rollers. So the the swells are long. And you know, like long swells are not dangerous. I've sailed in, you know, 20 foot seas in the North Atlantic, but they were long periods and they said they're not breaking waves, so they're not scary. They're intense to see 20 feet hill of water behind you and then suddenly you're on top of it. And then the captain who taught me to sail in Scotland cilia boo, she told me about she sailed to Antarctica and Cape Horn all the stuff she sailed to South Georgia on a boat as crew and she saw 60 foot waves in the southern ocean, where there were 65 Foot, mountain and mountain 60 foot tall mountains of water. And then they were on top of 60 foot mountain of water looking down into the trough 60 feet. So if they're long period and they're breaking, then they're not dangerous. But here in the Pacific, the it's um, it's a very calm ocean primarily other than like if you're in a hurricane track, or if you're in the North Pacific, and if basically it's like it, any ocean in the correct season is fine. If you're out of there, if you're sailing in waters in the wrong season, it's not fine, but the Pacific is very mild compared to the Atlantic. And that's because the Atlantic is, especially specifically like the Caribbean stuff is so the water so shallow, that it supercharges the storms, and that's where all the hurricanes happen there. But there we don't have like hurricanes in Los Angeles.

Nick VinZant 15:46

So when you look kind of forward, and like the in the goal of what's the word, circumnavigating? Like? Is there a spot where you're like, Oh, I'm not ready for this place yet. Or this is gonna be this is gonna be the test.

Sailor James 16:03

Yeah, Cape Horn, the my eventual goal I planned around Cape Horn, which is the most dangerous place in the world. And it's killed 1000s and 1000s of sailors over the years, eventually, all around Cape Horn, and it just depends. And that's the place where you just have to have all your ducks in a row and, and a number of small boats have done it. And again, it's like, waiting out weather windows, you know, and not, you know, that's a lot of it is like, waiting for weather. But with today's technology, it's easier to know what weather it's going to be. So it's easier to sort of like know what you're getting yourself into. But yeah, that Cape Horn will be the spot. That's like, and the Indian Ocean too, but crossing the Indian Ocean from Southeast Asia to Africa will be a challenge. But again, it's a matter of like going in the right season.

Nick VinZant 16:54

Why is that? Such a what makes that place such a rough, rough area?

Sailor James 17:00

Yeah, I don't I don't know probably. I'm not specifically educated on that fact. Or that reason. But I would guess it's in relation to to like Africa and the landmasses around there that just creates, you know, like the storms that are pretty gnarly, the Indian Oceans pretty gnarly. So, yeah, I would just imagine its weather systems that are in relation to the Southern Ocean on one side and Africa, the African continent on the other side. So

Nick VinZant 17:29

when you go for, you know, when you go for a leg of the journey, like how much preparation goes into it, like, how long will you spend, like stocking up or preparing or reading maps or whatever,

Sailor James 17:41

I'm always researching even further ahead. So kind of always, you do quite a bit. And because you kind of got to especially places that are kind of far flung like I'll be going to a lot of uninhabited atolls in the South Pacific. So I'm researching a lot of that, and there's a lot of techniques that goes into visiting those places that you wouldn't necessarily apply anywhere else. So really digging deep and learning from all the people that have gone there before. And with the internet, I'm able to find tons of blogs or, you know, cruising guides or whatever that that tells you things to they need to think about, you know, what's there, what isn't there. And, you know, even like anchoring, and you know, around coral is a different, you anchor around coral in a different way than you would anchor on just like a sandy beach. And even down to you have to really be cautious about collecting rainwater. So you have make sure you have enough water because there's no fresh water, a lot of these add holes and stuff. So yeah, I don't know, I think I think the preparation never stops. But as far as provisioning goes, that's kind of one big bulk thing. You just kind of a provision for kind of double what you think it might be and go from there.

Nick VinZant 18:59

Like how much generally provisions will you carry, like I carry this many days supply of it.

Sailor James 19:05

So my trip from Los Angeles to Hawaii, I thought should have been around 20 to 25 days and ended up being 32. But I had provisioned for 40 days, and had way like way more water than I needed. So I was I was well stocked.

Nick VinZant 19:21

How guess how good at sailing? Do you need to be able to be to go on like a open ocean journey. Right? So let's say 10 Is Black Beard level. I'm the greatest sailor ever and one is like I know how to swim. Like where on a scale of one to 10 Would you say alright, you need to be about here before you even try something like this.

Sailor James 19:42

Well need. It's like should I know it's like people People often ask me like what kind of boat do I need to do this? I'm like, Well, you you can go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Like is it a good idea? Not necessarily. You know, like the KonTiki was a raft that they drifted from South America to French Polynesia. So like, I just sell to Kawhi with a gentleman named Jeff. And he told me, he had sailed a lot on little lakes on small boats in New York, and then had a dream of sailing, bought like a 37 foot boat had never even slept on a boat, especially in the heat, he on a boat that size, he'd never spent the night on a boat before he got on it and tried to sell the Hawaii. And he successfully did it. But he said he was like, scared to death. And you know, he had some problems, but you know, he worked it out and got it done. So one person, someone told me once that when you start sailing, you get a full bag of luck. And you get an empty bag of experience. And you're, you're like, your job is to fill up the experience bag before your luck bag runs out, you know, people might be able to pull it off in there. At the right time of year in specific oceans, especially trade when sailing is fairly simple, like sailing to Hawaii, you're downwind and down seas. So someone with less experience, that's an easier thing. But you also have a lot of distance to get things wrong and have no way out. Like downwind trade wind sailing is the easiest. And then, you know, upwind sailing is for sure the hardest, I don't. Because basically, you have to think about the ocean currents and the winds. They all move in specific ways around the world like Northern Hemisphere runs one way southern hemisphere runs another way. So you basically plan that with it to to have the most success.

Nick VinZant 21:37

I don't even know how you sail against the wind. I have no idea.

Sailor James 21:41

Yeah, it's well, like modern sailboats that have the sails flat like like sloops or Bermudan sloop. Once they figured that out, it acts like the wing of an airplane. So it uses lift. So that basically like the wind on one side of the sail creates a high pressure system and the wind on the other side of the sail creates a low pressure system, and they want to meet so it's almost like squeezing a watermelon seeds to your fingers. It like pushes it forward.

Nick VinZant 22:10

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Sure. What is your most memorable experience sailing?

Sailor James 22:18

Probably? Well, for me, it's probably when I lost my rudder and all steerage 1000 miles from Hawaii. I think that one's gonna stick with me for a while. And being adrift in the ocean for three days. That's fairly memorable to me.

Nick VinZant 22:33

So what like obviously you survive this, but how? That seems like a problem.

Sailor James 22:39

Very, very big problem. Yeah.

Nick VinZant 22:41

How did you lose?

Sailor James 22:44

Um, I struggled to submerge object of what I do not know. When I got when I finally got in, and dove on the boat, there was a big red mark on the rudder and a chip out of the back. So it may have been a has a submerged sea container. That's like a known problem. A lot of race boats have hit on and different cruising boats have hit them. Like, I know, I looked up the stats after it happened. And in 2020 alone, 3000 sea containers were lost overboard. And if you think if they're carrying a shipment of foam, they'll float just below the surface. You know, if they're carrying a Boolean object, then they can just float right below the surface. And there was a famous movie, all is lost. And it wasn't Robert Redford, I think, based on that exact thing of him hitting a C container. So that's my best guess. But I didn't hear it happen. I didn't see it happen. So I'm not sure.

Nick VinZant 23:37

How did you then how did you get out of this situation somebody just find you ARE YOU JUST

Sailor James 23:41

NO I, I sailed by drugs. So there's a thing that you can get these things called drugs or see anchors. And basically, they're their purpose, their purpose made for you drive, you trail it behind your boat on a long line. on boats, ropes are called lines. So it's on a long line behind your boat. And it's made to slow your ascent down giant waves. So if you're in a really bad seas, and you're going too fast on waves, and you you could flip this way like pitch pole, this slows your your your speed down, you Dragon, this drug and mine look like a traffic cone, it had holes in it and it creates drag to slow you. So I deployed that and rigged up a pole across the back so that I could move it from one side of the boat to the other to steer the boat. And the easiest way to understand how it works is when you're in a canoe and you're paddling, if you hold your paddle down and hold it flat, it'll turn you this way, return you that way. So that's exactly how this drug worked is like I would move the resistance from one side of the boat which would drag the boat this way and then the other side of the boat would drag it this way.

Nick VinZant 24:50

Now was that was that a technique that you knew ahead of time or did you like well, I got to figure this out somehow.

Sailor James 24:55

I did not know ahead of time at all I had drove on board I had all the gear on board for other reasons. And then I was communicating with my shore team via satellite phone and trying to figure out what my options were. And two of the members of my shore team were captains and they were both sending me information about ways to try to set my drug up to steer the boat and yeah, that's what I ended I ended up doing for 1000 miles for 18 days was no steering I sailed with zero steering um, yeah,

Nick VinZant 25:30

this might that experience might have been in this might be something else but your scariest experience while out there.

Sailor James 25:39

I'm scary it maybe I want to say this, the scariest where I actually felt terror was one night on that same passage, when I was still my rudder was still fine. I came out in the middle of the night and it was in very thick fog. And there was a shadow from my navigation lights. Projecting, like the shadow on the fall the wall of the fog directly behind me and it looked like there was a boat within 20 feet of me. And I, I it was very alarming. I really, really I shit myself. And I was like, Oh my gosh, and and then I sat there for a minute and then realized it was like my own shadow. So I was scared of my own shadow. That was literally as like if I'm going to say the most terrifying. Maybe not the most concerning but the most like actual writer that yeah, for

Nick VinZant 26:39

sure. I like that split second of like, I'm dead. I'm dead.

Sailor James 26:43

I was. Yeah, just terror. Yeah.

Nick VinZant 26:45

Coolest animal you've seen.

Sailor James 26:47

I encountered like four finback whales off the coast of California. And that was pretty amazing. Because they're such big creatures. And I've had a lot of encounters with whales over the years and you know, stampedes of 1000s of dolphins. As far as the horizon could see, I've seen 1000s of dolphins. But seeing these fin backs, I've never seen fin backs before. And they were just it was like very calm seas and they were just just breaching very slowly or not breaching, but you know, servicing very slowly and it was just, it was quite a scene.

Nick VinZant 27:22

What is your favorite sailing related movie?

Sailor James 27:25

Now? Now? Does that mean Movie or Documentary?

Nick VinZant 27:28

I feel like it's got to be movie documentary. I feel like it's cheating a little. Yeah, too easy, too easy. Or the one that sailors would be like, yeah, they got it right.

Sailor James 27:39

Oh, there's no sailing movies that sailors would say they got it right. Other than maybe Captain Ron, that's probably the closest to getting it right.

Nick VinZant 27:46

This kind of leads us into our next question. Honestly, are you prepared for pirates?

Sailor James 27:51

There are only pirates in very, very, very few places in the world near the entrance of the Suez Canal here Somalia is obviously of great concern, but they're actually more interested in while they used to be more interested in capturing cargo ships where they could get millions of dollars for the ransom. The other place where there's like piracy is a concern is in the Malay sea near Malaysia. But that's mostly you just don't sail at night. So like if you buddy boat or you just don't travel at night, you know, mostly it's like local bandits. You know, it's like people who are, you know, trying to find food for their families and stuff. So it's like people are very scared of imaginary boogeyman and piracy is not a great issue at sea.

Nick VinZant 28:43

Not not something that you're staying up at night for necessarily, whatever favorite piece of sailing lingo piece of sailing

Sailor James 28:50

lingo.

Nick VinZant 28:52

I gravitate towards the poop deck I feel like

Sailor James 28:55

most people there's that Yeah. Yeah. I don't know batten down the hatches as always, you know an easy go to have you

Nick VinZant 29:04

ever said something like that in real life though but you've been like batten down the hatches

Sailor James 29:09

here's here's the one here's here it is I got it. My favorite sailing lingo is most certainly land Whoa. And I have for sure always said it when I first started land for sure.

Nick VinZant 29:22

I'm favorite sea shanty? Do you could you have any good sea Santi recommendations?

Sailor James 29:28

Hollaway Oh, Joe is my favorite Sea Shanty.

Nick VinZant 29:31

I don't know what how does that one. Do you remember how that one goes?

Sailor James 29:35

All the way all the way age or?

Nick VinZant 29:38

It's pretty good. There seem to be making a big, big comeback all of a sudden.

Sailor James 29:42

Yeah, yeah. The social media really blew him up recently and a lot of great renditions of him like beautifully song.

Nick VinZant 29:48

Can you make a full time living off of this?

Unknown Speaker 29:51

Absolutely.

Nick VinZant 29:53

Does but do you make a good amount of money or do you just have to like live cheaply,

Sailor James 29:58

you definitely have to live within a Budget. Like my now my full time job is YouTube. So, yeah, it's possible, but it's not necessarily stable. So like as a fallback, I'm a licensed unlicensed, I've hold a Master's license with the US Coast Guard. And that's primarily so I can do yacht deliveries of like, you know, larger yacht deliveries and make a large amount of money, and then use that to kind of cruise on until my funds get low. And then I can do other do more deliveries, or drive dive boats in different destinations. So I've set myself up different sort of employment options for around the world. So I know how to fix everything on a boat of my boat, is totally refit by myself. And I know how to do all that stuff. So I set myself up to be able to work as I travel. But again, you have to live pretty, pretty simply. And be happy with that. Otherwise, it's much harder. But currently, yeah, making YouTube videos and sharing them weekly pays for all my expenses. And it'll get easier as I leave here, because Hawaii is very expensive. Good for you, man. And writing. Like I've published a few books and then moving into like writing articles for magazines and stuff for sailing. And so yeah, it's like that's the the writing is the long game. And then YouTube. There's a lot of people that have made an amazing living off of YouTube. And I'm just like, you know, I don't count my chickens before they hatch, but I'm happy each month when I'm like, okay, cool. Well, this is working out.

Nick VinZant 31:38

So now I'm really curious though, like, how much if you take if you take a boat from or a yacht from, like, la to Honolulu? Like how much? How much does that cost? Like, how much do you get paid for that?

Sailor James 31:49

Well, well, Oh, you mean for a yacht delivery?

Nick VinZant 31:53

Yeah, like how much? Oh, yeah.

Sailor James 31:55

I mean, you can make 20 grand on a big delivery? Well, I guess it takes you that long, right? It depends on Yeah, depends on the distance. It depends. Like, I make like as a delivery captain, I make about $500 a day as a delivery Captain plus all my provisions plus airfare to and from. But the thing is, is like it's not like you can count on a delivery a month, you know? Yeah. So that's the other thing if you get if you get locked in with a, like a broker, specifically on the East Coast, it'd be a good spot. If you if you started working with a broker and you're running boats up and down the East Coast, you can make a regular living as a delivery captain.

Nick VinZant 32:36

That's pretty much all the questions I got for you, man. Is there anything else that's like you think that we missed or what's kind of coming up next for you?

Sailor James 32:44

Yeah, I'm just getting getting the boat dialed in wintering here in Hawaii, and exploring the Hawaiian Islands and getting ready for French Polynesia.