It’s time to stop for a bit and look back how this travel looks so far in numbers. Btw, I think I screwed up counting the days. Anywho.
I started to draft down the number of countries (10+1 territory), islands (4), continents (3) I’ve touched during this trip so far. Also did some calculations of how much distance I’ve made roughly on land (4k kms or 2.5k miles), on sea (8k kms, 5k miles or 4.4k nautical miles) and via flight (5k kms or 3.1k miles). But then I was like, what’s the point? Have I extensively studied each countries’ histories and cultures to put a badge on my chest and proudly say, I was there? The obvious answer is no. I traveled through some of these countries, in others I spent a lot of time, but I found there is no real point of collecting countries like stamps.
Different vibes, different styles
I’ve met the most traveled Sri Lankan in St Martin, a guy called Leo, who lived in Australia and who’s been progressing in visiting towards 200 countries+territories in his collection, out of the 240+ recognized by the UN. He was an intelligent guy, a retired accountant. He was spending the evenings on the hostel dock getting drunk alone, checking his investment portfolio every now and then. He was a great talking buddy though and seemed happy with his life, but I had to realize, it’s not my style to collect countries like stamps in a collection book. I don’t want to feel the urge to visit a country just to tick it off the list. If I get to visit it, I don’t want to find myself rushing to the border just to put another few on the list, since they are already in the surrounding.
It’s not to judge the guys who are doing this, I guess I’m just a different kind. I’m also trying to minimize my carbon footprint these days, sometimes with more, sometimes with less success, so I guess, when he told me, he flew like a 100 times to progress with his collections, my anxiety level jumped for a second, and then I was like, cool, have fun with that. Leo was a great guy though, very open minded for a 60+, I have enjoyed the time talking to and learning from him. Now I hear Erik’s (my ex-captain, with whom we crossed the Atlantic) voice in my head “Aron, carbon is life! Without carbon there is no life on this planet! The climate change is bullshit! This is on the global government’s agenda to divert people’s attention from what really matters! The governments are rigged! Power to the people!”
On another note, numbers are not great storytellers, they do not give a great insight of what has actually happened on the road. When traveling for longer time, you realize, like in life, you need to create your own pace and style, how you are moving forward, that feels most authentic to you. Which people are you surrounding yourself with, how much money are you willing to spend, in which conditions are you willing to live in, how strong are you drawing your boundaries and how open are you for various kinds of experiences. If you are a traveler, it’s assumable that you are already more open-minded than the average, but in that range, there are also highly-varying spectrums. Like, will you live in a tent or a hammock on the Caribbeans, or are you willing to afford a cheaper hostel? Or do you have all the money in the world to spend time in true luxury and you travel by taxi everywhere? I guess, based on what I have learnt about myself and the fellow-travelers so far, I’m falling in the low-mid range on the scale. That means, I can afford the mid-range, but I prefer to keep it on the low. It’s the frugal, accountant mind in the working, that I cannot help myself with, other than accepting. On the other hand, the most guys I’ve met were in their early-mid 20s, whose budgets’ are obviously at a lower-end compared to someone approaching his mid 30s. Damn, writing this down is a painful acknowledgment.
Approaching Omar
When I was at the planning phase of my trip, to tackle my imposter syndrome and to get closer to the traveling world, I’ve hit up an ex-colleague of mine, Omar, with whom we’ve had a longer conversation. He became a traveler after spending time in corporate and his IG profile has skyrocketed, after starting to journal about his no-flight project from Egypt to Japan. I’ve prepared a whole survey and bombarded him with endless questions of all kind. I was deadly serious about it, and he was patient enough to address all my concerns. At the time we spoke, he was already at the ‘IG Stardom’ phase winning the best travel content of 2024 (not sure which society decides on that), so I appreciated him carving out time for me. You can hit up his account on Instagram, it’s ‘@Omar.nok’. He consistently progressed towards his goal from Egypt to Japan traveling through Asia, which is a big deal going through countries with concerning political backgrounds, like Afghanistan or Iran. He completed his whole project in like 250 days.
At the time I’ve started my own travels, I thought, I’ll be like Omar. I’ll be unstoppable heading towards my goal, crossing the Atlantic via sailing, and then finding other boats to hit the mainland. I’ll be an influencer in no time, people will love me and I’ll be in the focus of attention, everywhere I go. No kidding.
At this point in time, I honestly thought I would be cutting through the bush somewhere, in mainland Columbia with a machete, fighting with mosquitos against getting Malaria. Instead, I’m sitting in a cafe, in Providence, Rhode Island in the US drafting this post, hoping there is at least one person out there in the universe worth writing it for, who is actually reading it and it might move the needle inspiring at least one person’s life. What the heck?!
I will tell you what happened. 2 things, let’s start with the first one.
When I started to plan the trip there were 2 main items on the agenda:
- Learn sailing and find a sailing boat to cross the ocean
- Continue the trip on mainland towards Patagonia from Central to South America
To tackle the sailing part, I’ve started to read all sorts of materials about sailing, including memoirs from Sir Francis Chichester. I’ve never sailed before and only had an idea about ocean sailing through the book of Nandor Fa, who is the biggest icon of sailing back in Hungary. He mentioned in a podcast, that he was inspired by Chichester, so I thought it will be nice to start with those memoirs. Chichester became my best friend, at nights reading through his books and the crazy stuff he did flying over Europe, Africa and Asia with a classic Gipsy Moth type of airplane and then after crashing his hydroplane in Japan and almost dying, tapped into sailing in the UK. He won the first solo Atlantic crossing competition from East to West and then circumnavigated the planet with his Gipsy Moth IV, 53 ft ketch. I was so lost in his stories that I kinda forgot about the Patagonia part of my trip.
Then I started to travel and went in with the approach of, let’s see what happens. Completed the first sailing course in Gibraltar, and was heavily invested in making sure that the sailing part of the trip goes well. Then I met Erik, we crossed the ocean together and during the trip he convinced me (not that I needed too much convincing) that I should look more into sailing. So I did. After arriving to St Maarten / St Martin, instead of looking for the next boat to bring me to mainland, I started to look for a job, to work on boats. And I found one. I was assisting in repairing, maintaining and cleaning boats of all kinds, starting from smaller monohulls, catamarans, motoboats and larger sailing ships. It was just about a month of practicing the craft, but I knew I wanted to learn more about boats. So I signed up for the STCW, to be commercially endorsed working on all kinds of boats as crew. Then, through Sam (my fellow crew-member and chosen brother, with whom we crossed the ocean with Erik), we could spend 2 weeks on a 50ft catamaran just looking after the boat. We learned tons about outboard engines. Then just before my course would have started, I’ve met Santiago, the captain of Ikigai, who first offered me a day-work on his boat, and then a crew job to deliver the boat to the US. When I stepped on the boat, I already had a good feeling about it, and when he came up with the offer, I just couldn’t say no. Fast forward a few weeks, after getting the US Visa in Trinidad, I found myself first in Bermuda, and then delivering the 84ft yacht to Newport, transforming the boat from chartering to ocean racing conditions. It wasn’t easy at all, I can tell you that. There was serious money at stake from all parties involved, with high stress-levels onboard, but somehow we pulled it through. And I learned some bits and pieces about ocean sailing and the yachting business again.
The second one.
I didn’t become an influencer, shame on me. When I first started to draft videos I have hit multiple obstacles:
- When I started my IG account, I shortly had to realize, that I cannot edit videos. I had no clue how to. Never had an Instagram account before and I was distant from social media in the past 7 years. I was protesting against it. I felt most of IG content is fake and superficial. That it only triggers jealousy in human kind for no reason, and fuels the society to consume more and more, just because ‘if the others can do it, why I couldn’t’. I kinda liked Omar’s content though. I felt, he could still preserve a level of authenticity I could click with, he didn’t have a mask or fake smile on, which was the single most important thing to me. So I decided to start learning from scratch, how to put videos together. Following the Mr. Beast advice, I started to work towards the first 100 videos. I’m around 20 now. I’m like, if the 101. video is still crap, I’ll stop. Until that point it’s all about learning the craft. But it’s still hard, because you have already set the wrong standards and expectations, by taking Omar as an example. Why the algorithm doesn’t pick up the content? What’s wrong? When you put the work in and think, it might get pulled through and it doesn’t, it can hurt. But it’s always a good feedback at the same time. On the other hand, there is the ‘Artemi-factor’. Artemi, a fellow-traveler of mine, clearly pulled it through having millions of views on his account, with a constant growth-rate, which shows, that it’s not impossible at all. You can hit up his account on IG, ‘@artemigrimm’. He does it in German, I think he does cool, sometimes edgy stuff. I always tell him, don’t kill yourself, it doesn’t worth it after all. To put the past 6 months into perspective though, I think I improved my video content. My first video had about 5 pictures and 5 videos done in 30 minutes, put on one another with an audio, my New York visit video probably had about 1.000 edits that I worked on for about 15-20 hours. That signals some progress in the end.
- I don’t find the right formula to stay authentic and interesting at the same time. The videos I’m making right now, are clearly not hitting through the IG algorithm. Which on one hand, is not meeting the expectations, on the other hand, it gives me a whole lot of surface for experimenting and gives space for breathing. If there is only a bunch of followers, I can try out all sorts of things and I can progress towards my goals without too much pressure of learning the craft of sailing and seamanship.
- I don’t know if I want more followers. This is the biggest piece. When you are not 100% invested in what you are doing and working towards making it happen, results will not come. There is no consistency in my content and reel posts, the content is boring or just somewhat interesting, it looks more like a travel-diary you want to show your family at the end of your trip during Christmas-gatherings, not something you can grab the attention of the outside public with. This problem child is driven by the fact, of me being puzzled by, if I want to be a traveler or if I want to work more on boats. If you ask me, I’m sort of a hybrid in between the two. You can only grab serious attention though by making bold commitments, and working towards those consistently and so far I have been losing momentum on that front. While the Patagonia project is a cool idea, I have been seriously losing consistency on progressing towards the goal, which means, losing attention. And that’s okay in the end, I’m still learning tons on the way about seamanship and traveling, but the sword as always – is double-edged, on the other side I’m sacrificing making my travels look more presentable.
- When you are making your way in the boating industry, you are not screwing around making content. Others are investing time and energy into you and they have high expectations of you delivering. So you are not spending time with ‘how should I make the camera stand, to get this piece right.’ To give you an example, after about a month working together, Tiago from the last delivery and boat transformation job had enough trust in me to say ‘Okay, feel free to make any kinds of videos you’d like.’ But then we had new crew members joining, high-profile pros, whom I’ve had to build trust with from scratch again. You won’t stand in front of Dee Caffari and say ‘I will work on this boat, but I will record content at the same time’. You just bow, STFU and work hard to not find your way off the boat from one day to another. Dee is a very cool person by the way, it’s not to signal her personality, but more about, how are you setting the right expectations working with and respecting these kind of pros.
Boooring. Lot of words. Tell me, what’s next.
At this point there are again multiple options to pick from. First, the default setting comes into picture:
Option A) Going back home. I have created the below graph to show you, what I’m talking about. Traveling is amazing and it brings you lots of ups and downs, which means, you are effectively out of your comfort-zone, and you are de facto growing as a person. But it only worths doing, if it comes with some value creation. What is the value I can add to the world by doing this? Is this something I’m doing for self-indulgence, out of caressing myself OR is there something beyond I can do, to add value to my surrounding? I can give you 2 examples:
- During the ocean crossing, our wind-pilot of the boat went off, which meant, the boat has lost its automatic steering solution. Erik, the boat’s captain offered to call for an evacuation. We were in the middle of the ocean, with no help in probably few hundred miles range, just the 3 of us. Sam and I said, ‘there is no way you’ll evacuate us from this boat. We are in this together, and we will push this through.’ And we did. In 33 days. Manually steering the boat for almost 20 days. That means you are waking up every 3 hours for a 1.5 hour shift. Imagine. Erik later told, we were his best crew so far and he couldn’t have done this without us.
- I have been working on delivering and transforming a yacht the past 4 weeks. The first mate of the boat, went harsh on me, several times. I was like, fine, as long as it’s not personal, I can take that, have a thickened skin and have experience with these kind of people. I felt she was representing the industry standards in yachting, so I was like, ‘okay, that’s the bar I need to hit to enter the industry. I think I can hit that.’ When we said our farewells 2 days ago, she was sobbing, thanking me, saying ‘We couldn’t have done this without you.’ That’s all I needed to hear. It meant, there was value created, and I grew as a person in those 4 weeks. I can be trashed, being harsh upon, it doesn’t matter. As long as I’m driving value and growing.
So below, you can see the stars, where it’s worth aiming for, when traveling long term. You can create value, just by seeing beautiful things of the world too. You will bring that back to your life and share it with others. I’m not saying you need to work your ass off while traveling, but more like setting the right intentions how it worths traveling.
On the other hand, stable life also offers growth in a more predictable and stable way. We are all growing in a way in the end, as long as we are open for growth.
So when I’m talking about traveling, I’m setting the standards of hitting the star flagged area. That’s where magic happens. So I need to be on projects that are hitting the red bar. Otherwise, there is no point for me staying around here, wasting my and others’ valuable time. So the alternative projects need to carry weight and value. Let’s have a look at those.
Option B) Getting my ass back down to St Maarten to complete the STCW training, that I’ve been postponing now for almost 2 months. Then, being commercially endorsed for working on charters, maybe get some experience and finally, find a boat to Central America mainland and move on progressing down towards Patagonia.
Option C) Get use of the US Visa and find other interesting boating projects in the summer season on the East coast. Coming back to the graph, I feel like I could get some more learnings in boating. But I would not do other kind of jobs, my interests are only in boating. In the ‘Dilemma’ post, I’ve described that I’m tempted to do the journey down to Patagonia by buying my own sailing boat. Then I sort of decompressed the idea in the ‘Follow the flow’ post, because I felt it was too heavy on me, but staying in the boating industry is clearly heading me towards the direction of how I could move the needle on that front little by little.
Let’s look at the options logically. C) doesn’t close out B) and A). A) kinda closes out B) and C). B) closes out C), but it doesn’t close out A). I’m not a GMAT guru, trust me, but it seems like C) wins for now. So I guess, I will need to find out, if I can get my hands on other cool boating projects around the East coast and learn more about boating without having much at stake in safe and controlled environments. If not, then I guess, well, B) will win. And I can always go with A) at any point in time whenever I feel, the fuel runs out.
Thanks for reading!
