Here I am: 3 a.m. on an early Wednesday morning lying in our balmy aft cabin, reliving our unrelenting first week living aboard. It's a thick 85 degrees inside the boat, my head’s throbbing, our fridge refuses to turn on and my phone will be dead all day tomorrow…that is until I get to work where I can plug my charger into an outlet without fear of it not working. You would presume, given the above, that I would be missing life on land, but somehow by some unfathomable stretch of my own imagination, I don’t. I know things can only go up from here and the fact that we survived our first week without a thought of selling the boat I say bodes well for us.

Now before we get ahead of ourselves with the boasting, I should really explain what else happened this week— other than us only losing power tonight in the middle of a Florida summer. This time last week was our first night onboard. It went without malfunction and was surprisingly very smooth. Our greatest fear, after spending our weekends working on Luci, was the heat. I've never sweat this much in my life, but it's been coupled with doing projects outside in a marina, in the St. Petersburg sun, so it comes with the territory. Somehow, we were freezing our first two nights living onboard—our standalone A/C unit was pumping out BTUs with authority.

This was pretty much the extent of our good luck for this week, because the next morning we were nailed by some chain-smoking GMC Yukon driver on our way to work. This driver apparently didn't see my bright red Prius in the left lane and completely side swiped us as she was trying to make a left turn from the far right lane. Needless to say, Kelsey and I were pretty banged up. Immediately after the accident, I assumed Kelsey would be in the most pain due to her side receiving the brunt of the impact. However, after my gracious tow truck driver dropped me off at work, I realized I had a pretty severe concussion. As the day went on, my co-workers noticed I was struggling to complete sentences and I was not feeling like myself at all. After the workday ended, I reluctantly went to the ER for some CAT scans. Luckily, everything came back ok and the Doc gave me a prescription for some muscle relaxers and some other drug for my head that he coupled with the abiding realization that he knew I wouldn't be taking them. I'm somewhat opinionated when it comes to modern medicine and our healthcare system, but we won't go down that dark, damp road.

The cherry on top of it all was a named storm heading right for our new home. Tropical Storm Colin decided he needed no invitation to our housewarming party and abruptly showed up two days after our accident. All he brought was some 50 mph gusts and a whole lot of a rain. Which leads to the green flash....

It's 10 p.m., I hear Kelsey tramping across our deck to come down below after her shower and simultaneously our power goes out. I'm inside, winding down for the evening, banking on catching up on some overdue sleep. I immediately reach a guilty verdict for Kelsey as the one who caused our power outage. She was the only witness to the notorious green flash, but apparently a transformer across from our dock (owned by St. Pete's energy powerhouse, Duke Energy) blew up! This led to us having no power and our perishables inside of our fridge, perishing. All the while, my battery on my iPhone withers away and tomorrow's alarm for work with it. With the hatch open above me begging for the slightest hint of a breeze, I lie in the subjective comfort of our bed, and I have an exploding sky full of stars serenading me to a short, much-needed sleep. But all I can do is be excited that it can somehow only get better than this.

I was reminded this weekend why we originally wanted our blog and video series to be 100% financially transparent and to really focus on the planning aspect of our journey to aid viewers in developing their own adventure plans. We were watching a new sailing video series on YouTube, which had unbelievable cinematography and was extremely well put together. Despite it being the best series we've watched aesthetically, Kelsey and I were extremely disappointed once we went back and watched their first episode.

They were speaking about the beginning of their boat buying process, their way of explaining how did they end up where they are now? They went into some detail on how they purchased their gorgeous blue water boat but prefaced it by telling viewers they were searching for a boat with no cash. Granted they are in their young 20s like us so we understand the lack of cash but how the hell do you go from no cash to buying a yacht for 60k? For the sake of lack of transparency on their part, I'll follow their lead and keep the name of the series a secret.

*The ocean's plenty big enough for all of us why keep secrets on how you achieved the dream?*

People follow, contribute and support sailing series and blogs for a variety of reasons. For me I interpret it as either they want to be entertained, inspired or educated. I believe majority of viewers want to be inspired and educated because they are most of the time dreaming up their own plans to do something similar to the series. Which in turn means the creators of the series not explaining how they magically produced the 60k required for the boat, are doing their viewers and supporters a major disservice. If supporters are backing them financially via Patreon or by donations, the least they can do is arm their followers with the best information possible to support their own adventure dreams.

This leads me to my next point - if you look on all of the major sailing creator's blogs or video series, their number 1 question on their FAQs is how did you afford to do this? Some people might say they have no obligation to provide us with how they afforded the dream or that speaking about money should remain hush hush. And I wholeheartedly disagree, unless the creators aren't asking for any donations or support.

*Not everyone in their early twenties can go from no cash to bluewater boat in a matter of minutes.*

S/V Delos & Sailing La Vagabonde both provide at least a little background on how they originally funded the dream, one offshore on rigs, the other Windsor knotted to a desk in Seattle. Both sites also go into how they almost had to give up the dream at one point due to running out of cash. Which not only makes for a good story but also a very realistic one that doesn't only show the romantic side of sailing around the world.

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking this way and if so, someone please comment and let me know so I can rethink the purpose of our blog and video series (just kidding it'll take a lot more than that). Now let me be clear that I'm not calling for sailing series to release their tax returns like some zealous politician. All I'm saying is when people are contributing to your dream in return for fueling inspiration of their own, the least we as creators can offer is transparency so they know exactly what it takes to make the dream a reality.

The Green Flash

$hhhh