I'm interested in the story of the digital nomad part. Certainly easier to start sailing once you get that part done. How did you guys become digital nomads and what exactly is it you guys do?
I don't really remember where I discovered the concept of being a digital nomad. After discovering it in 2018, we decided to give it a try. I left an awesome job in Australia and we put the little 1 bedroom apartment we'd renovated on the market and became digital nomads.
Australia is great, but we both felt a little bored with Australia and with a desire to explore the rest of the world (in a way that holidays had only compounded the desire).
We put everything in storage and started by flying a cheap one way flight from Australia to Greece and from there we went to Romania. Early on, the digital nomad thing was part 'budget', so going to cheap places.
We weren't really sure how sustainable it would be. It felt a little like skipping school. I started splitting my time between working on a startup and remote contracting work, and my partner has a business she can run remotely.
If you come from a place where rent is quite expensive (UK, Australia), then there are plenty of places where a months AirBnB will set you back roughly the same or less than a rental property.
Over time we've calibrated our costs, and we no longer try to travel to cheaper places in the same way, and we don't stay at the bottom end of the accommodation spectrum (hostels, etc). Better to have a desk, kitchen and be productive.
In 2018 and 2019 we did a lot of Europe and Asia. When the pandemic hit we briefly went back to Australia (March -> end of May) but realised we couldn't stay, didn't have long-term accomodation (and didn't really want it) and we were crawling up the wall.
We flew back to London and then spent the summer of 2020 in Europe, ending up on a long-term visa in Estonia for a few months. It hasn't been the same, of course. The whole time we've complied with local restrictions wherever we've been -- it's been interesting seeing the way the pandemic is perceived and responded to in different places.
For example, we caught the train from Denmark to Sweden to visit an embassy and it crossed the bridge into Sweden and the announcer said 'ok you can take off your masks now'.
It's meant much more work than play over the last little while. It's allowed me to be very clear on not putting things off (mostly pre-pandemic). So often we have excuses as to why things can't happen. Sailing, our next adventure, has been on my "life list" since 2009 and never really progressed.
Miles, our English Cocker Spaniel is a new challenge (he just turned 1). Having to balance visa issues, covid travel restrictions and pet travel, is one hell of a dependency tree at times. Worth it though.
The whole digital nomad thing is an overloaded term. It means a lot of different things to different people. But if you can work online remotely (and a large number of white-collar/no-collar employees have discovered they can), then you can do it from anywhere in the world. You can explore places in a different way, less pressured and more just soaking in the way people live. It's a balance.
Sailing cruising is supposed to be an extension of that, and we'll split our time between the sailing seasons and continuing to do digital nomad things (or at least that's the plan so far).
