Any early retirees turned cruisers with big careers have regrets?

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

No, not everyone is like that, Thom... and I'm one that is not. Forced by Covid to remain in Tasmania the past winter I renewed my earlier conviction that I hate cold, wet and dark days, find no beauty in them and longed for the end of the season.

It was the first winter in 34 years that I had not been in or very near the tropics. The way things look now, next winter may well be the second...

Damn.

Jim

Can’t you go north this coming winter, or is interstate travel still banned? We’re planning to come over to spend the winter in Queensland, then if we don’t come back to NZ we may spend the summer in Tasmania. Or is that not possible due to Covid restrictions?

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

No, not everyone is like that, Thom... and I'm one that is not. Forced by Covid to remain in Tasmania the past winter I renewed my earlier conviction that I hate cold, wet and dark days, find no beauty in them and longed for the end of the season.

It was the first winter in 34 years that I had not been in or very near the tropics. The way things look now, next winter may well be the second...

Damn.

Jim

Can’t you go north this coming winter, or is interstate travel still banned? We’re planning to come over to spend the winter in Queensland, then if we don’t come back to NZ we may spend the summer in Tasmania. Or is that not possible due to Covid restrictions?

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Can’t you go north this coming winter, or is interstate travel still banned? We’re planning to come over to spend the winter in Queensland, then if we don’t come back to NZ we may spend the summer in Tasmania. Or is that not possible due to Covid restrictions?

FXY, things change so rapidly here (re Covid) that I wouldn't risk a guess. Last winter Tasmania's borders were closed tight and NSW/QLD had varying degrees of closure at times. Our feeling was that we are in the high risk group, are not citizens of Oz, and felt that Tassie was likely the safest place in the civilized world (re Covid) and if we left we would not be able to return when we wanted to... so we've stayed on, and on, and on. Really feels strange to have been pretty much in one place for over a year now... trying times!

So, can't help you with your plans. Reckon you will just have to see what's going on at the time, and then h ope that it does not change whilst you are at sea heading somewhere!

But we'd love for you to come to Tassie and share an anchorage with us!

Jim

[goboatingnow]

I can’t quite relate slow sailing to slow life as Thom puts it.

I sail around at 5-6 knots but my life is busy. My day is packed often way busier then when I worked.

I think your whole logic is flawed.

Waiting till you’re 70 is daft. For a man , there are not many years left in average and you risk health issues. By the time you get to 70 , there grandkids , health , lack of desire to change , etc all stopping you

Now 60 makes sense. It’s a big world out there to explore at 6 knots

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I can’t quite relate slow sailing to slow life as Thom puts it.

I sail around at 5-6 knots but my life is busy. My day is packed often way busier then when I worked.

I think your whole logic is flawed.

Waiting till you’re 70 is daft. For a man , there are not many years left in average and you risk health issues. By the time you get to 70 , there grandkids , health , lack of desire to change , etc all stopping you

Now 60 makes sense. It’s a big world out there to explore at 6 knots

You seem to have forgotten that I work and CRUISE! So I have experience in both.

My job is always busy. If it's not a problem with one of my techs, its a problem with one of the simulators or one of it's systems. Example we have 11 large UPS units with anywhere from 30-72 batteries. And that is just to get power to the systems. Systems use both 60 and 400 HZ. Computer are mainframe to newer ones with up to 32 gb Ram. We are running Windows 10 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

And during this Covid time, I have had to do face to face interviews. It is hard to find a place to interview though. I have to hire three more techs now as a matter of fact. Then there was the computer certification requirement that we all had to get including me even though I've been a manager for 25 years. This took close to three months of studying whenever I wasn't working and passing two hard exams.

I think new cruisers are probably fine at first with the cruising life since it's all new and exciting especially if you are not near the coast, but I have been on the water a lot especially since 1993 either racing or day sailing/cruising.

Also spent a lot of time on the water during the 60's and 70's but that was mainly power boats up here and North Carolina. Childhood through early 20's. We used to be able to easily catch large flounder on minnows drifting on the seaside and trout, croaker, and spot, sometime flounder and drum on Bayside

The sailing was in Tennessee, Mississippi, (Inland)

Florida, Alabama, Mississippi (Coastal) and up here on the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean so switching to full time the cruising would just be an extension of the what I do now in season except more.

As far as age, I'm hoping I can hang in there and cruise in one way or another until I'm mid 80's.

I hiked yesterday with my pack loaded with clothes, shoes, a few bottles of water, snacks, and my phone this for about 2 hours since I had been so busy a work last week I only got in one lunch time three mile hike.

I am feeling it today though.

Retire at 60? It's a little late for that, but I did enjoy sailing and exploring along the Gulf Coast in the 1990's (thru 2008) when I was in my 40's /early 50's and single. And now in my mid 60's, I'm rediscovering the Chesapeake Bay which I have been on since age 5 or so.

I can remember being on the Ferries at night seeing the train headlamp out of the Little Creek base for miles and miles. They had ferries here for lower bay crossing for vehicles before the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT) was built and completed in 1964.

Then there's the fact that I spent 15 years racing beach cats where cruising speed was mid to high teens with max speed in the mid 20's so you could complete a 100 mile race in 10-12 hours going both into and with the wind ........ so yeah, sailing at 5-6 knots does seem slow but when it's windy and you miss judge the wind it can get exciting.

I made this 20 mile crossing in 3 hours with my old Bristol 27 but the wind had been over 30 knots and is still high enough to be singing in the rigging. Luckily I didn't have to sail 6 hours or a couple days because every thing was set wrong as far as sails and I do need more than the one set of reef points in the main that I have now. Boat is pushing a lot of water here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nXfjcCuiPk

[theDangerz]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I can’t quite relate slow sailing to slow life as Thom puts it.

I sail around at 5-6 knots but my life is busy. My day is packed often way busier then when I worked.

I think your whole logic is flawed.

Waiting till you’re 70 is daft. For a man , there are not many years left in average and you risk health issues. By the time you get to 70 , there grandkids , health , lack of desire to change , etc all stopping you

Now 60 makes sense. It’s a big world out there to explore at 6 knots

Couldn't agree more!

I truly thought we were busy and challenged back home working the jobs (and we were, but nothing compared to now). To sit here and read someone who think this lifestyle would bore them and cause/allow them to "slow down" or lose their edge is ridiculous, laughable and only shows a lack of having ventured outside what they already know.

But i get it. I also remember being terrified on the other side...
Afraid that we wouldn't have enough savings (we didn't), afraid all our plans for the future would be disrupted (they were) and that we would make lots of mistakes and find ourselves without a backup plan or escape route (we have)... but leaving the known for the unknown was easily the single best decision we ever made!!

These last couple years of experiences, learnings, challenges, new places and cultures, fresh ideas and understandings... far surpass decades of learning at work and are also learnings that actually make a better human as opposed to spreadsheets and coding and management and sales (though the beauty is I can still choose to do all those things out here as well if/when needed!).

We also only move at 5-6kts, but there's more to see, take in, experience than we could possibly ever cover, and despite making the leap in our mid-30s we still wish we had left far earlier.

The true beauty in my mind is... that you can always choose to go back home and to what you already know (there absolutely zero wrong with that because you'll appreciate both lifestyles that much more having experienced both)... but you cant possibly know what's out there that you're missing (or how many more years you'll wish you had to experience it) if you don't take the leap to find out what's on the other side.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by theDangerz

Couldn't agree more!

I truly thought we were busy and challenged back home working the jobs (and we were, but nothing compared to now). To sit here and read someone who think this lifestyle would bore them and cause/allow them to "slow down" or lose their edge is ridiculous, laughable and only shows a lack of having ventured outside what they already know.

But i get it. I also remember being terrified on the other side...
Afraid that we wouldn't have enough savings (we didn't), afraid all our plans for the future would be disrupted (they were) and that we would make lots of mistakes and find ourselves without a backup plan or escape route (we have)... but leaving the known for the unknown was easily the single best decision we ever made!!

These last couple years of experiences, learnings, challenges, new places and cultures, fresh ideas and understandings... far surpass decades of learning at work and are also learnings that actually make a better human as opposed to spreadsheets and coding and management and sales (though the beauty is I can still choose to do all those things out here as well if/when needed!).

We also only move at 5-6kts, but there's more to see, take in, experience than we could possibly ever cover, and despite making the leap in our mid-30s we still wish we had left far earlier.

The true beauty in my mind is... that you can always choose to go back home and to what you already know (there absolutely zero wrong with that because you'll appreciate both lifestyles that much more having experienced both)... but you cant possibly know what's out there that you're missing (or how many more years you'll wish you had to experience it) if you don't take the leap to find out what's on the other side.

I'm sure it does seem exciting for you as you are still a beginner.

What you have been on boats now for 2 years or so? That's great. Nothing wrong with that but it's just a start.

You have lots to learn. Enjoy.

I started more than 50 years ago and bought my first boat at age 16 in the early 70's after having been on other peoples boats since the mid 60's.

Point is in my position especially since I live on the lower Chesapeake Bay / Atlantic Ocean you have the best of both worlds......land and sea!

That's hard to beat especially since my boat is on the way to work and is about 1.2 miles from my apartment (city) / 70 miles from my house (country).

So speaking of variety, you have city vs country, land vs sea, the civilized world vs hunting with a bow in the country. We even have wild turkey over there now.

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I can’t quite relate slow sailing to slow life as Thom puts it.

I sail around at 5-6 knots but my life is busy. My day is packed often way busier then when I worked.

I think your whole logic is flawed.

Waiting till you’re 70 is daft. For a man , there are not many years left in average and you risk health issues. By the time you get to 70 , there grandkids , health , lack of desire to change , etc all stopping you

Now 60 makes sense. It’s a big world out there to explore at 6 knots

Everybody has their own criteria for when to retire and whether they want to go cruising and that’s fine. This thread is about leaving a career and going cruising full time and whether those who have done it have regrets. Thomm has opted to not do that which works for him but the mistake he makes is that he thinks “cruising” for a weekend or two is close enough to cruising full time so he knows so much about the subject and lifestyle that he should make more posts on this subject than all those who have actually done it have made! Sort of amazing. I got tired of him saying the same thing over and over so have got him blocked and can no longer see his posts except when others quote him. Hint hint. [emoji6]As you are obviously well aware, the idea that cruising in an actual cruising sailboat that you keep maintained yourself and live aboard full time and prepare to safely cross oceans and actually do that and constantly interact with people in other cultures is a slow paced life with lots of idle, unstimulating time just means he has no idea what actually going cruising means, just like hundreds of millions of other people who don’t go long term cruising don’t understand it either. The difference is that those other hundreds of millions of non cruisers don’t try to dominate a discussion about the cruising lifestyle. He wants to live on shore and log lots of screen time and go hunting, etc and occasionally squeeze in a long weekend aboard his boat that he calls cruising and I support his view that’s the right lifestyle for him simply because it’s his life and he’s chosen it. Good for him. But I just wish he’d go live the non cruising life that he claims makes him happy and stop endlessly repeating his non cruiser perspective on a cruising forum in a thread specifically asking for the opinion of those who HAVE left a successful career and chosen to be long term cruisers. Very tiresome!

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by jtsailjt

Everybody has their own criteria for when to retire and whether they want to go cruising and that’s fine. This thread is about leaving a career and going cruising full time and whether those who have done it have regrets. Thomm has opted to not do that which works for him but the mistake he makes is that he thinks “cruising” for a weekend or two is close enough to cruising full time so he knows so much about the subject and lifestyle that he should make more posts on this subject than all those who have actually done it have made! Sort of amazing. I got tired of him saying the same thing over and over so have got him blocked and can no longer see his posts except when others quote him. Hint hint. [emoji6]As you are obviously well aware, the idea that cruising in an actual cruising sailboat that you keep maintained yourself and live aboard full time and prepare to safely cross oceans and actually do that and constantly interact with people in other cultures is a slow paced life with lots of idle, unstimulating time just means he has no idea what actually going cruising means, just like hundreds of millions of other people who don’t go long term cruising don’t understand it either. The difference is that those other hundreds of millions of non cruisers don’t try to dominate a discussion about the cruising lifestyle. He wants to live on shore and log lots of screen time and go hunting, etc and occasionally squeeze in a long weekend aboard his boat that he calls cruising and I support his view that’s the right lifestyle for him simply because it’s his life and he’s chosen it. Good for him. But I just wish he’d go live the non cruising life that he claims makes him happy and stop endlessly repeating his non cruiser perspective on a cruising forum in a thread specifically asking for the opinion of those who HAVE left a successful career and chosen to be long term cruisers. Very tiresome!

I try to only respond when something is directed at me......in this thread.

As I mentioned before, I have a few more things to take care of before retirement.

My sister retired in her 40's to the Bahamas on a power boat. She had enough after about 6 months.

It's pretty obvious here that most cruisers do not totally detach from society but are constantly on the internet either at a marina or anchored near an island or the mainland where they can get reception.

After seeing so much directed at beginners on how perfect an early retirement to go cruising is, I thought I should point out that it's not all like that and I have known many cruisers that didn't last 6 months.

Now I must point out that this was in the mid 90's when the general public wasn't online all the time.

So called cruisers today can hangout at a marina and talk online for 6 months and call that cruising. I'm thinking why would I want to retire early to do that when I can do that and work too?!

[Allan S]

Hmmph. My best year ever was just over a hundred grand. Canadian.

Retired at 55 with two small pensions, and I mean small.

Been debt free for 10 years now and cut up all tempting credit cards.

Been cruising for going on 5 years now. It has its ups and downs, like everything else.

No snow or ice nor lawnsto worry about. I have a whole new list of drudgery.

To clarify, I am well under the poverty line. It's only when you leave North America that life is easier, way easier, money wise.

[MicHughV]

full time sailing is a full time job....it's not money that gets you thru'.....it's stamina...confidence....athleticism....social skills....mechanical inclination...navigational skills...electronic skills....fishing and diving skills...playing weatherman..people skills....etc..etc...ad infinitum....it's self-reliance with a capital S.

I don't really see what age or money has got to do with anything.

If you wanna go....go...!

If you don't wanna go....don't go!

[dannc]

The US Social Security Actuarial Life Table shows the average years one has left based on gender and current age. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

If one is of age X(first column), then one has Y years left(second column) for men, with the third column being the number of remaining years for women. I rounded up or down as required.

50 - 29 - 33
55 - 26 - 30
60 - 22 - 25
65 - 18 - 21
70 - 14 - 17
75 - 11 - 13
80 - 08 - 10
85 - 06 - 07

Course, the table guestimate does not deal with one's quality of life, physical and mental abilities at that age. One also has to be fair in looking at one's current health, lifestyle, and family genetics that will modify the table.

I had an uncle whose family members died very young, many in their 50's and only some getting into their 60s. He was an outlier and made it to his 70s but his life was a living h...l with multiple cancers during the 20-30 years of his life. His physical abilities were minimal in the last few decades of his life. Thankfully, he married into the family so I don't have his DNA.

Flip side is I have family members who have lived, or are still living, in spite of seriously abusing their bodies. One that has died likely would have lived many more decades, and one living would likely live far more years, if they had not abused their body for so many decades. Genetics can help but good genes can only do so much if one does not take of oneself.

I PLAN on the last decade or so of my life having serious reductions in mental and physical abilities but, RIGHT NOW, I am doing everything I can to minimize the number years in decline.

We do think cruising will help us live longer and with a better quality of life. We just wish we could go now but that is not possible due to family responsibilities.

Later,
Dan

[Belezar]

Several years ago one of the sailing mags had an article talking about what ages people cruising were. It may have been based on an article by Jimmy Cornell and his survey of sailors he does. Anyway, it was u shaped curve, with most people going in their 20s or 60s and later. The least went in their late forties early fifties. People don’t want to give up their prime earning years. Before that kids got in the way. It makes sense, especially the earning years part.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by thomm225

.....
So called cruisers today can hangout at a marina and talk online for 6 months and call that cruising. I'm thinking why would I want to retire early to do that when I can do that and work too?!

Well you wouldn't, just like real cruisers wouldn't. So why use that as an argument? I've met defense contractors who did next to nothing and collected a paycheck. That doesn't make all defense contractors useless slackers.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Well you wouldn't, just like real cruisers wouldn't. So why use that as an argument? I've met defense contractors who did next to nothing and collected a paycheck. That doesn't make all defense contractors useless slackers.

I use that as an argument because it appears some are doing just that. My point was you can do that on land or sailing locally. You don't need to retire to do that sort of cruising. I'd say it's another adjustment for some.

And actually, I might not hang out at a marina for 6 months, but I am online on my boat even on my short cruises with my Raspberry Pi 4 (4gb ram) when I am in range using my phone as the hotspot. The Raspberry Pi is for my chart plotter and AIS, but it does fine on the internet too but can be a little harder to use with certain downloads.

I even have an HDTV (also used as my monitor) and antenna that picks up the weirdest old TV shows I haven't seen in years. I was watching The Munsters last time I was out anchored near where I could get a signal.

It's a hard habit too break this internet thing. I actually think it may have been easier back in the day to start cruising before the internet.

Today, we have become so used to using it, it's hard to suddenly not have it.

As far as defense contractors, geez where do I start.