What A Life!

Ask anyone that is planning an extended voyage or a permanent lifestyle aboard a sailing vessel, and you will find very similar responses. Most people simply want to adventure to far away places and have an exciting life. Others see voyaging as a lifestyle that affords one freedom and adventure. Still others, mostly the older among us, see voyaging as a retirement alternative. The latter is the reason why we have opted to buy, refurbish, and live aboard a sailboat.

The Best laid plans…

The wife is an attorney and I manage the office. Sometime back in 2008, just after the crash, our business suffered a financial setback. We saw our income drop by 800% within two months. Our retirement kitty had also taken a hit. At that time we started looking into alternate ways of getting clients in the door. Because I also handle advertising, it was incumbent upon me to find suitable advertising that would make up for the referrals that were no longer available from the companies that we had been affiliated with. It seemed that people in need of legal services were either handling their matters themselves, or they were settling their differences instead of hiring attorneys. When I would go to court to file documents, I noticed that the lines had become longer and longer with people filing their own documents, so the writing was on the wall for the type of law that we handled. We muddled by for about a year before we hit our stride again.

After changing how we advertise and moving into a different area of law, an area where the First Mate was already very familiar with, things started to turn around. Long story short, we finally made it to a point now where we are referring new clients to other attorneys we associate with and I have not needed to run our ads for over a year now. We accept a limited number of cases as they are referred to us and also have previous clients come back to us when they need legal assistance. We are able to pick and choose which cases First Mate wants to take. Although it was a painful process, what we went through was the impetus for looking at alternate ways of retiring. And we are positioned to where we can now cut the lines in a year if we wish, and sail away.

Our home

And this brought us to where we are today. The proud owners of a Morgan 41 Out Island sailboat that we have readied for long distance voyaging. Although we now have the means to live as and where we wish, we have so fallen in love with sailing and the thought of voyaging, that we have decided to stay with our plan to retire onto our sailboat. The sailing life fits very comfortably into our retirement budget, and the thought of freely sailing when and where we want is very appealing.

So, why are we doing this? Early on it was more a means of planning for the financial ability to sustain ourselves in our retirement. These days it is the most appealing retirement plans that we can dream of.