This week we interview Billy and Sierra stars of the popular YouTube channel, ‘Tula’s Endless Summer,’ which has garnered a grand total of almost 200,000 followers to date. Here we discover the ins and outs of navigating a relationship at sea, how they have built their loyal fanbase, as well as hearing about some of their most memorable moments on board together– including a close call between their beloved dog and some baby sharks. Health warning: Listening may make you buy a sailing boat.

Tula’s Endless Summer website

Tula’s Endless Summer YouTube

Brought to you by SHIPSHAPE

Transcript—–

Farah [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to the Shipshape Podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical and all related to the maritime world. Come and dive in. Dive in, Dive in.

 

Georgia [00:00:41] This week on the Shipshape podcast, we interview Billy and Ciara from the popular YouTube channel Tula’s Endless Summer, which has garnered a grand total of close to 200,000 followers to date. Here we discover their day in the life, how to negotiate, both having a relationship and a furry friend on board. And find out some of the secrets to their success. My name is Georgia Tindale. I’m a freelance editor and writer, coming to you from Lancaster in the UK and I am joined by Merrill.

 

Merrill [00:01:09] Yup. Merrill Charette. I’m a liveaboard on a talking Tashiba 36 in Boston, Massachusetts. So Billy and Ciara, where are you guys recording from?

 

Bill [00:01:19] So we’re we’re at my brother’s place right now on Long Island, New York. We just got here a couple of days ago for the holidays.

 

Merrill [00:01:27] Yeah, it’s getting cold, ain’t it?

 

Bill [00:01:29] Yeah. Yeah. We were up in the Pacific Northwest and it got real cold there real quick. And then our whole drive across the country and now here on Long Island, it’s. Yeah, it’s quite chilly.

 

Merrill [00:01:39] So getting into kind of the beginning of this adventure. I know. Billy, you started a YouTube channel, what, eight years ago, and then you started building from there, and then you met Sierra. So can you tell a little bit about that story? You know, what was your thinking with deciding to even live on a boat?

 

Bill [00:01:58] Yeah. So I guess I grew up on Long Island, live for the summers. I was the ocean lifeguard on the South Shore for 13 total summers. And, yeah, when I finally graduated college, I just always. I was obsessed with surfing and travel and all sorts of water sports. And I think I just wanted to live as close to the water as possible. So throughout college and some of my lifeguarding, my friends and I had an old houseboat that we would live on during the summer, or at least, you know, on the weekends and stuff. And then we’d like wake up and go go to work and hang out in the houseboat. And then eventually I decided, you know, when I was free from college and obligations there before I got a career job, I wanted to kind of continue to pursue that direction and see what else I could do in that world. So I bought this old 26 foot double ender, Maurice Francis sailboat, and I spent like a year, part time and full time at times fixing it up. And then finally and just learning as much as I could because I wasn’t really a sailor and just learning as much as I could. And finally, long story short, just set off south down the coast like a week before Thanksgiving and just yeah, sailed solo all the way down to Florida. Eventually, by the time I got to Florida, I was like completely broke. I was going through an area in Florida called Jupiter, which is just north of Palm Beach, and I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to stop in Florida, but I knew I know it was time to just kind of stop, you know, get a job somewhere, make some money wherever was cool and warm and like a neat place and warm. And so I was motoring through the Intercoastal through Jupiter, and I was eyeing some, you know, little anchorages that they have there. And I was like, I’m not really sure. Like, they’re not really like, I don’t know, they’re kind of these little coves and stuff off the Intracoastal. So I decided to keep on going. So I headed in another few miles, and then all of a sudden the coupling on my engine broke the back of the transmission, the engine that they had like a soft coupling. And it broke down like, Oh, shoot. So I like, banded it back together and like limped back up to one of the last little spots I saw where I could drop the hook. And that’s kind of where I landed. And I just started walking around town looking for a job. And sure enough, I, I walked into a paddleboard type board shop and that’s where Sierra was working and that’s where I got a job. And that’s where we met. And, you know, we were friends for a while and then we started dating and and that’s the start of our history together as well.

 

Merrill [00:04:24] So you went down to Florida. I like to imagine that you probably didn’t know too many people there. So, Sierra, is it true that boat is the best wingman?

 

Ciara [00:04:33] Oh, my goodness. Well, it’s so funny. Like, Billy and my dad are so similar and so different in so many ways. And like, growing up, my dad would, like, buy the holes of boats and then outfit them from their, like, little center consoles. But he was always like a fisherman, and he loved to work on his boats and there was always fiberglass. And he didn’t have any boys and three daughters. So we would go and help them and always be covered in fiberglass. And so none of that was new. And then but I’m like, totally, he was never a sailor. So this whole sailboat kind of thing, I think on our first day, Billy was like, You want to come out to dinner on my yacht? And at that point we had been together for a full year. I knew that his yacht was 26 feet and not quite a yacht, but a really, really cool boat. And just we have so much in common that the boat is just one of those many things. So it’s we are so lucky to be able to have each other and like be living on the water.

 

Georgia [00:05:29] So what would you say are the main things you have in common, aside from the boat then?

 

Bill [00:05:35] Yeah. Just love for the ocean, love for the water. Like we’re both very active and especially on the water. We like, you know, surfing and other water sports and.

 

Ciara [00:05:43] Like, we both grew up as athletes. Like, Billy was a wrestler. I was a swimmer. But obviously, when you’re done with college and high school, like, you got to find other things. So we got into like competitive stand up paddleboard racing and surfing. And then we also love surfing and, you know, just we would go on Ocean Swim, see other and, you know, just anything on the water. Like that’s just what we love to do.

 

Bill [00:06:05] And I think one other important thing is that we both like to travel. We like to see new places. And we like this. You know, it’s an alternative lifestyle and we both enjoy it. And we’re not tied to like a conventional lifestyle, which I’m sure you know, some people out there definitely are.

 

Georgia [00:06:20] So yeah, I think that’s probably the key, isn’t it? Because when it comes to negotiating relationships, if one of you is really up for and the other one’s like, actually no, I want to be shoreside with kids, that’s going to be a problem.

 

Bill [00:06:31] Yeah. And you know, right. And maybe that will change in the future. But as of right now, we’re both definitely on the same page, definitely all about traveling and experiencing new things and not really worrying about, you know, society and at least the conventional.

 

Ciara [00:06:45] What the normal should be. I don’t know if our moms are on that same page when we have kids, but we’re ready to keep going. And eventually there will be some kids on the boat somewhere around the world. But for now, it’s just jetty.

 

Georgia [00:06:58] Yeah. So tell us a little about your furry friend.

 

Ciara [00:07:01] Jenny is awesome. She is £35 mutt. She’s like Australian cattle dog mix. I got her when I was 19. Billy and I were working together at that point too, was from a high kill shelter in Alabama. And then some rescue like went up and got all the puppies and brought them back. I had been asking for dog forever, forever, forever. And like that bird that I don’t know. My mom was going by that shop and she had she was like, so cute. My mom called me. She’s like, Do you still want a dog? I was like, What kind of question is that? What have I never wanted a dog? So she brought her home with a little red bow, and she’s been my little buddy ever since. Billy and I started dating pretty soon after that. And then, yeah, so she’s been a part of the crew. She’s been on boats and she was a puppy. So like, if you say, Do you want to go home? But she thinks you mean the boat, no matter which boat it is. But she.

 

Georgia [00:07:54] Yeah, I was going to I was going to ask you about that. Like, how does one acclimatize a dog to being on a boat? I guess yours was from puppies. That’s okay. But what would be your top tips?

 

Ciara [00:08:04] Yes. So she, like, not necessarily living on a boat from a puppy, but she would we would take her paddleboarding. We would take her on like the little Boston whalers or my dad’s boat or anything like that. And then she is so attached to me. And now Billy might even be a favorite. But I’m so attached to us that wherever we are, she’s okay with. So it doesn’t really matter what that is as long as she’s with us. But she loves the beach, she loves to swim, she loves to bike. We’ll put her lifejacket on. If I want to go like swim like a mile in the water, she’ll swim with me. So she’s awesome. But best tips on the boat, man. I think.

 

Bill [00:08:40] Probably just. Yeah. For someone looking to get their dog comfortable on a boat, probably just start off with the boat. Just, you know, at the dock or on anchor. Just super, super calm like limit the variables. I think the worst thing you probably do is like, take a dog out and like super rough conditions, like first time on the boat, that would be a bad association.

 

Ciara [00:08:58] But and I would say as young as possible. But, you know, dogs are so adaptable. And if there are a dog like Jetty where as long as they are with their human and they’re good, then that should be fine. But yeah, ideally so. Right. The least amount of variables possible of anything that could scare them is definitely super important. And Jodi loves boat. She’s still scared. If it’s rough, she’ll kind of like pick her little spot in the boat and just hang out there. But nobody likes it when it’s rough. But she knows that if we’re doing it, she can do it.

 

Georgia [00:09:26] So yeah, I gather she also had she’s had some hairy moments. Tell me about the the shark encounter.

 

Ciara [00:09:33] Oh, okay. JT, Jenny’s has she’s. She’s a cat. She’s got nine lives, but with the shark. So we’ve always taken her spearfishing since she was a puppy. Our first boat that we cruised extensively in the Bahamas on, we were telling a 16 foot Boston whaler.

 

Bill [00:09:48] So it was an old 34 foot trawler and that 16 foot whaler was our tender and we just towed it around wherever we went.

 

Ciara [00:09:54] Because we like to go far, to go surf, to go dive or whatever. So this, this dinky tender, whatever you want to call it, was rather big. But she would be on there and we would anchor the boat and we’d go dive. And then Billy and I, we go together. So one of us is down, one of us is up. And whenever I come back up, I always look for her and she’s always on the bat like no matter what, she won’t sit in the shade. She will stand there and watch us the entire time. And we were there. Were we mat manager? Yeah, Yeah. Oh, no matter where we were off, man. Work here in the Bahamas and my parents.

 

Bill [00:10:27] But jump ahead. We didn’t have. Well or anymore. We had sold that trawler and that Boston whaler, and we had gotten our last catamaran adrenaline and it had, you know, conventional rib, like fiberglass floor rib.

 

Ciara [00:10:39] So much smaller than what she was used to. And we’re at an island in the Bahamas, kind of in the middle of nowhere. And we had gone spearfishing and we were down doing our same thing. One up, one down, check on her, and then we spear two fish and it got stuck in a rock. So we’re kind of back and forth. And then a hammerhead went by and it kind of wanted nothing to do with us. They usually don’t, but we.

 

Bill [00:11:00] I didn’t even see it. Cierra just like told me, like on the surface she’s like, Did you see that huge hammerhead that was like nine? I missed.

 

Ciara [00:11:06] It. And like, I tried to get video because that’s what we do. We want to get video of everything we do, but it wanted nothing to do with us. So I was just cruising and I was like, okay, so we got the fish or whatever. We’re coming back to the boat. And with that we were down and up longer than we normally were, where I wasn’t watching her because we were trying to get the fish out as fast as possible. So no other shark came back and had an issue with us and we get back to the boat. And Jody is not there. She is not on the boat. We are not a mile offshore. It’s as flat as flat can be. So you would imagine you could see her there was exposed reef kind of in every direction.

 

Bill [00:11:38] And just yeah, just glassy, crystal clear blue water, just as calm as it could be.

 

Ciara [00:11:43] Oh, so you have no idea. The fear is here in my mind. So what I think happened was we had speared another fish and put it in the back of the boat. But since this boat was so much smaller than what she was used to, I think it probably like moved a little bit and scared her. And we one of us was up, so she saw us and jumped off to us. But then we went down to try to get the fish and she just didn’t know where to go. So she she swam. But we searched for hours. We search for a solid like 2 hours, and we were like a mile offshore.

 

Bill [00:12:13] So we were just going back and forth across this reef. And then we went out a little bit. We were going around every piece of exposed reef that we saw just to maybe she saw that exposed reef and tried to climb on it just everywhere. We asked a couple of there was like one other boat out there that they were also diving, right? Like, did you see a dog swimming out here?

 

Ciara [00:12:33] And they were like a mile offshore, like even for like two miles off. So and the whole time I was like that Hammerhead wanted nothing to do with us because it just ate jetty like it was, it was full because she was swimming and ate her. And that’s what was in my mind for a solid 2 hours. And it was just so scary. And I felt so guilty because she wasn’t wearing her life jacket in the middle of I know it was probably like late April in the Bahamas, like she’s got sick red hair and she’s hot. So I didn’t keep it on her and she was in the boat. So I was like, she wasn’t wearing a lifejacket. And then we finally went to shore and we went the opposite way of what the current was doing out by us. We’re like, Let’s just try it. We don’t know. And we find her sitting under like a gazebo, just sitting there barking at us like two and a half hours later. And I’m like, Oh my gosh. So it was the worst and the best day all wrapped in together at once. And my parents were coming like that afternoon, and we were supposed to leave by a certain time to get to the island they were flying into. I was like, I’m not leaving this island without my dog. So yeah, that’s that story.

 

Merrill [00:13:37] Well, it certainly sounds that JT is the strongest swimmer of the crew.

 

Bill [00:13:42] ALL Yeah.

 

Ciara [00:13:43] And I was calculating it because I grew up swimming and I know that, like, my, my all time is like a I can’t even remember what it is now. This is like six years ago at this point, I was like, she can swim a mile faster than I can like, because by the time we got out and we didn’t see her, she must have been there already. Like, she’s fast.

 

Merrill [00:13:59] So getting into kind of your YouTube channel and a lot of the projects that you’ve been a part of, you know, boat I’ve heard stands for Bust Out another thousand. Can you comment on that?

 

Bill [00:14:11] Oh, absolutely. We’ve had you know, we’ve had a lot of conversations the past year because we just we actually just finished and just sold our most recent project that we’ve been working on. So we’ve been really talking about that, about how much things cost, where’s the balance? There’s always a balance. You know, we always get ask questions. So we talk a lot about the kind of advice we give to people or what we tell people is really interesting. But yeah, I mean.

 

Ciara [00:14:37] You can look at it in two ways. You can say, okay, I have a great job and my time is spent more valuable working and saving and then buying a nicer or newer or whatever boat. But you have to know that whatever boat it is, something’s going to break does matter how new or how old or whatever. Something’s going to go wrong. But it could be a smaller issue than that 50 year old, though, that you bought really cheap that instantly could cost you $100,000. So it’s just so hard to know. And we have a couple of criteria that we always kind of check off when we’re looking for a new boat. You want to talk about that?

 

Bill [00:15:09] Yeah, I guess, Yeah, because a lot of our projects have been I mean, all of them in the past have been these old boats that we fixed up and always made better. And I guess when we’re looking for our next boat, we were always looking for a boat that had good bones, you know, wasn’t going to fall apart on us. So that’s probably like, you know, the whole. Stringers on most of the deck and structure is all in good shape. It’s got running engines or engines that are soon to be running. They don’t need a complete rebuild or a complete re power just because it takes a lot of time or money or both. And then boats that have like really good reputations, like a really strong following, you know, there’s plenty of boats out there that are just, you know, production boats which are not that these are not production boats, but some production boats just don’t have good resale or there’s a million A million of them. Yeah. So they, you know, and they’re fine boats, they might be perfect for somebody, but.

 

Ciara [00:16:05] It’s harder to make money on those.

 

Bill [00:16:06] Boats, make money or at least sell for like a, you know, get a little bit of return at least. So that’s kind of our criteria. And then, of course, like whatever kind of boat we’re looking for. So our most recent boat was at the Fever 43 trawler. And I had always heard that the fever name in the trawler world as being like, you know, maybe not quite like grand banks, but like, you know, up probably a bit the next step up from like our old marine trader, which even those trawlers were always they have a strong following All those old school like Taiwanese trawlers have a good following. So that’s kind of yeah, why we decided to go through with our most recent one and.

 

Ciara [00:16:45] Then to like bring out another thousand. So we like we’re very open with how much we buy goods for, how much we sell boats for. But we’re also very open at like this is how much we spent. And it might not sound like we may have made a lot of money. However, we didn’t have to pay for rent for this boat for a year. For our last book for three years. We got to try to go from A to B like, imagine how much you would have to spend if you did a charter for that long. So making money or the money that goes into it for us has always been worth it. And we can give you guys kind of like a little idea. Your first boat you bought for $800 lived on it for how long were you on tour?

 

Bill [00:17:18] I guess I had it for maybe three years or so. Yeah, living on it full time for most.

 

Ciara [00:17:22] That and we know like I was it as I’m the one that normally like breaks down how much we put into the boat. So I don’t know how much was actually into work. I was on her for just a couple of months, but I sold her for $7,000. Got to go from New York all the way down to the Keys and crazy cool adventure. So yeah, still made money on that boat and then never gone. We bought for $4,000. Never.

 

Bill [00:17:47] One was a 1973 34 foot trawler.

 

Ciara [00:17:52] Marine trainer, marine trader. And then we kept her for three and a half years. We went from we went all the way up to New England, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, all of that, and then all the way down to like the southern Abaco and the Bahamas and then back so.

 

Bill [00:18:05] Soon as even.

 

Ciara [00:18:06] Yeah, yeah. Lots of miles on that boat. And we sold her for $20,000. So obviously a lot more work went into that boat. But we did it like little bitty project at a time, and that was our home while we were like, I was going to school, Billy’s working, so we weren’t paying for rent, We were anchored, we were we had solar, we weren’t paying for anything really to live. So that saves you a heck of a lot of money if you think about it. And then we ended up selling. We sold that one for 20 and then we put that money in towards the next cat. And that cat cost, I think 40 and we sold her for 87, lived on her again for like three and a half years all the way up to Nantucket and then all the way down to Grenada. This time we went, we went all the way down there and then.

 

Bill [00:18:48] Back to Florida.

 

Ciara [00:18:49] And then back to Florida. So tons of miles, tons of years living on her, saving money and rent and and just the experience. Like there is nothing you can compare to like getting to do those adventures. I can’t remember how much we put into adrenaline. Yeah. Put a lot of money into that boat. And if you actually, like, calculated out, we probably didn’t make money on her with everything we put in over three years. However, the experience and the rent definitely made us break even. This past bow we bought for $100 like crazy. Good deal. And it’s funny, we actually put out a poll on YouTube. We’re like, okay, this is a boat. We even I think showed a couple of pictures cost $100. Should we do it or should we run? And it was people were saying, run, run, run, run. And then 50% were saying, oh, go for it, because a lot of people don’t understand how much money actually does go into a boat. So if you look at it, you’re like, oh, $100, you could get more for that and scrap. However, like, okay, you’re paying to store it. Where are you going to do with it? What if it sinks tomorrow in that slip and you have to pay for everything to get cleaned up and all of that stuff. So we knew that boat, the engines needed to run. That was our one thing. And if it if they did, it was worth it. We’re going to buy. It took us like two days to get it running and the owner let us, like, mess around and make sure that we were good to go. And then we we went for it. And I just finished calculating everything for that vote. And we have about $50,000. And to her, granted, we are lucky enough where we do work with some partners for like in fiberglass and. Here is where we were able to get those and exchange like video content for them in exchange for the product. So that did essentially save us a lot of money on this number. So it would have cost a lot more than that. However, like it was a job exchanged, But we sold her for $89,000 and we went from California all the way up to Canada, back to Washington, and we had the most amazing time. It was absolutely incredible. And I did some research the other day to see what a charter would have cost in that area for about two months, and it would have been around $30,000 just to do that trip. And we got to do the trip live on its own boat. So for us, it’s totally worth it. As a flip, it wouldn’t have been worth it.

 

Bill [00:21:12] Honestly, I don’t think any more. Yeah. So from what Cierra is saying, people might think, Oh, well, that all sounds like you made money on all those boats. Like you kind of flipped them and made some money. And the reality is we.

 

Ciara [00:21:23] Can break down how many hours we have into this last boat. So we have about 3780 hours like we calculated into this boat total. So about like 1600 hours each or whatever. And like, imagine. So I looked up like the average what you would have to have paid someone at a yard to do that work because most yards like you can’t do it yourself. We’re lucky enough where we always do our work ourselves because we know how much it costs, like the minimum you’re going to pay someone else to do. This work is about $100 an.

 

Bill [00:21:52] Hour from a yard.

 

Ciara [00:21:53] So the amount of time it took and we worked hard, we’re not lazy. We’re working our butts off. Honestly, we probably work harder than somebody in this trade because we’re paying to be in the yard. You know, we’re paying to do this work. So if we had to pay someone, we would already be $378,000 deep into this boat. So if you’re not willing to do the work, if you have another full time job or you’re going to be in the yard way longer than we were, like totally not worth it. More worth it to find a cheap boat pressure washer and sell it because it looks cleaner.

 

Bill [00:22:22] And one last thing on the whole point is like, I think it’s like if you’re thinking about maybe buying a boat just to make money, just to fix it up and make money, like I do not think it’s worth it in any world. Maybe there are scenarios where it is worth it, but.

 

Ciara [00:22:36] No, I think it is. I think if you like, if we let’s say let’s say we did buy this boat and we pressure washed it and we listed it, we didn’t want pressure washed.

 

Bill [00:22:45] It got the engine running and just listed it like.

 

Ciara [00:22:47] We could have we could have sold it for 30 to $40000. Like, no questions, I don’t think. And in that case, it would have taken us a month maybe, and it would have been totally worth it. But we wanted to get and as with most boats, we want to get it up to that name. So the defeat, her name, it’s a it’s a better name. We wanted to do the work to that standard. And also, like, our job is to make videos. So a video series about fixing up a boat like does well for us. So that makes it worth it.

 

Bill [00:23:11] It was certainly worth it for us. Yeah.

 

Merrill [00:23:14] So, you know, it seems like you guys are a dynamic duo and which both you guys are able to handle all the projects on a boat. So between the both of you, what is the worst job that you’ve run into on all these boats that you’ve been on so hard?

 

Ciara [00:23:28] Because a lot of boats are really like the jobs are really difficult for me, like sanding. It’s so annoying. Like it’s just hours and hours and your whole body shaking. But it’s also like time goes by robots. It’s not like it’s it makes your body sore, but it’s not like absolutely miserable. I think the hardest thing is when you’re doing something at a weird angle that takes a long time. Like just for me, it was one of the hardest parts was like sanding, like under, like the keel of the boat where I’m sitting on rocks, like on my back and there’s no room to move or like the underside of, like, all the handrails. And for you, it’s probably like weird jobs in the engine room.

 

Bill [00:24:01] Yeah. Yeah. I think my hardest boat job ever. Yeah, Because I don’t mind the gritty, grimy, dirty stuff. Whatever. As long as it’s straightforward and, like, you’re making progress, and that’s all good. But one of the jobs. So an adrenaline. Our catamaran, our old catamaran, the forward cross beam had gotten out. It was stainless on aluminum with no isolation, so it just ate through that aluminum beam. And so we replaced the whole cross beam, and we also replaced these pins that came out of the bow of each hull that goes through the cross beams that hold locked the cross beams on there. So those pins down below were bolted to the hull, and sandwiched with the backing plates to the inside of the pin was on the inside of the hole. And then a back and plate on the outside of the hull. But it was all the way forward in this bout. The holes of adrenaline were skinny in the first place, and it was all the way forward in this tight, tight, narrow little compartment that I couldn’t even reach all the way into. So we’re trying to getting the old beams pins off were straight forward and that was fine. But tightening the new pins, I was like, It was the hardest job ever. I was trying to reach in with like a huge extension and trying to hold the knot on the ball and just and Sierra’s father helped us and he was trying to, like, tighten the bolts from the outside and, oh, my goodness, just the spot. Things like that were like, it’s really hard to reach. You’re doing boat yoga to try to get it done.

 

Ciara [00:25:26] And it’s not like a difficult job and. Just a difficult position for hours and hours trying to do one simple little thing that is so frustrating.

 

Merrill [00:25:36] So with all these different boats that you guys have been on, right, you got houseboat, you got sailboat trawler. Now Catamaran. What has been your favorite mode of transportation?

 

Ciara [00:25:45] It’s so hard because we are catamaran We we sail the furthest on that. We did the most and it was amazing. We spent like, I think like $200 in fuel and like a year because we sailed everywhere and that boat was super cool. However, like her living space set up, she was a performance based catamaran, so there was not a lot of living space. And we’re in the Caribbean. It’s hot. There’s no AC like, so it’s a little hard. At the end we were like, we were getting a little, like, uncomfortable or whatever, but we knew we loved doing that. So that’s when we put our deposit on our new boat. We’re like, This is what we want to do for our foreseeable future. And we love sailing. We love how we can I don’t know. It’s better for the environment. We’re not wasting fuel. We’re not like we have solar panels and all this stuff. So we decided then that we were going to get a sea wind catamaran. I mean, it was a simple, well, a simpler catamaran. It didn’t have like crazy systems or anything, and it was meant to be sail solo or for two people so easier and.

 

Bill [00:26:42] Super well-built and super good sailing. Catamaran The great balance of the performance that they’re not super performance boats, but a really good balance of performance and sailing ability and then like comfort and room and stuff on, on the other side of that.

 

Ciara [00:26:57] So that decision for us was huge, like because we’ve never bought a new boat before, we’re like, find all boats and fix it up. And we were kind of like just over that a little bit and we just wanted to cruise like that’s what we love to do. But you know, COVID and delays and everything like that, it’s now been over three years that we’ve been waiting for this boat. It’s got to be worth it. But, you know, we’re getting closer. But in the meantime, we like, borrowed an inflatable bug center console. We borrowed a driver and we fixed up a truck camper and drove cross-country. And then that’s when we were like, we’re sick of being on land. We want our own boat. So that’s when we bought this past trawler. Where are you? Three feet, the most comfortable boat we have ever owned. And we definitely got spoiled. There was so much room in that boat and I’m so comfortable. And she had two engines. We cruise at eight knots. We never had to worry about wind or whether anything could just go because I worried about sailing. You can go just directly wherever you need to be. And she definitely spoiled us. But every time we had to fill up with fuel, it reminded us why we loved sailing.

 

Bill [00:28:00] So I think also to add to that, like we like all sorts of boats, that trawler was the perfect boat for us, for the Pacific Northwest to do what we want it to do. You know, our old cat and our new cat will be the perfect boat, I think, for us to get back down to the Caribbean and just, you know, get back into the tradewinds and continue sailing, living on the boat and diving and water, sports and all that. And and then same with our past boats like they did exactly what we want them to do. And we’re not strictly sailors. We’re we’re open to all sorts of boats and crafts and and things like that.

 

Ciara [00:28:31] We really like unique boats. Even when we’re walking in the marina, like you can see the fanciest, fanciest yacht, like super yacht or sailboat or whatever. And then there’s like a little like tiny little tug next to it. We’re like, Ooh, that’s what we like. You know, we’re not like normal people, I guess.

 

Georgia [00:28:47] Oh, cool. It’s really cool to hear the kind of passion in the way that you speak about these boats and stuff. I was just wondering, like you’re both you seem both very kind of extroverted, fun people, very outgoing. How do you find, like managing the social side of the boat life, Like, as you know, do you do a lot with social media, but do you feel you’ve got good connections older, more socially, or does it get a bit isolating?

 

Ciara [00:29:12] Oh, that’s really funny. I think of myself as more of an introvert.

 

Bill [00:29:15] Yeah, I think, you know, we really do. We enjoy socializing and hanging out with friends and and things, but we’re yeah, we’re I think we are introverts in a way.

 

Ciara [00:29:25] Like, I think we do the, the stuff that we do because we love being by ourselves in the middle of nowhere. But the people we meet in the middle of nowhere are going to be friends, whoever they are. And we’ve met some of our greatest friends cruising and just in random Anchorages Or you mentioned social media and honestly, like our best friends from you might have heard of them, they have a YouTube channel. And I actually met Brandi because she was traveling with her dog as well, and I was like, Oh, I haven’t been to this country. Like, was it easy? Was it hard? Like any tips or whatever? So we were talking dogs and we finally met them in person in Puerto Rico, but we cruised all through the Caribbean with them and they’re still there. Were at our wedding last year, they’re still some of our greatest friends. And then like other friends like Brian and Sophie, they also have a YouTube channel. So the social media is how we meet them. But we’re just driving through Iowa and we know that they were visiting there. They’re like, Oh, can we stop and say hi? So we’re in the middle of so many random places where we get to reconnect with our.

 

Bill [00:30:22] Friends and yeah, through social media. Like you can kind of get a sense of like, you know, who you might click with initially. Before you even meet him. And you know, you could that’s again, like Sierra said, like she was clicking with, you know, Brandy and we met boom, Brandy, Puerto Rico. And sure enough, they’re the same people that they are, you know, in their videos and online and stuff. And same with Ryan and Sophie as well. Like, yeah, some really cool people that we’ve met just through the Internet.

 

Ciara [00:30:46] And you know, another funny thing about it is most people out there on boats, they’re not our age, they’re retired, they’ve finally retired. They’re out living this dream that they’ve had forever. So most of our friends are our parents age, which is so funny. And they like they call us the kids or whatever. And it’s still.

 

Bill [00:31:04] Great, awesome people. They’re great friends.

 

Ciara [00:31:06] Most of our friends are much older than us, but they’re so fun and so great. And some of our like, our best memories are with Tim and Candy, and we met them in Grenada and we got to cruise with them. And there are divers and there are just so many awesome people we’ve gotten to meet.

 

Bill [00:31:20] So it’s funny to the having our cruising friends be, you know, mostly retired age because especially like in that scenario, like Tim every day would stop by the boat. Hey, you guys want to go diving, You guys want to look for lobster on and do this and that and like. Tim, like we got to work. Like we got, like, retire at the end of, like, that first week. He’s like, Man, you guys bear a lot more than I thought. You did a lot of work.

 

Ciara [00:31:44] 5:00. We’re going lobster diving, don’t worry. But until then, we got to finish it. But no, it does it we miss. It’s so funny because you make all these great friends, but everyone goes in their own separate direction. So like to me, we haven’t seen them in like two years now and they’re all doing their own thing. And then other friends, like we’re able to keep in touch online, but there’s nothing like being anchored next to someone that you were like in the same anchorage and going diving or fishing or whatever together. So we do love our time, like alone, like in an anchorage completely by ourselves, nothing but, like, beautiful water and beaches. And we never take that for granted, that’s for sure.

 

Bill [00:32:22] And if we. Yeah, you generally, if we have a choice, we are anchored by ourselves or just with one or two other boats around rather than in crowded harbors or anchor days. And that’s what we prefer. Not that not that there’s not positive to the, you know, the other crowded anchorages and harbor there are. But for us, we prefer that isolation a bit more.

 

Ciara [00:32:41] And you know, it’s so for you like our first our trips in Tula, the 26 foot model haul and Neverland, the 34 foot trawler like we were still part time working and me going to school. So we were always like we had that home base of Florida and New York where we would always, like, be back, too. But with our cat, we just we out we left for an entire year on and that was like my favorite time like we’ve ever had, but also like hardest mentally on me. Like I was so homesick. I miss my friends, I miss my family. And for me, it is really hard to like, you know, call my friends and say, Hey, look, we’re doing this. And it’s like, it sounds like we’re just living this dream when we are. We’re working, but it’s a beautiful, beautiful and amazing job. But I don’t want to seem like I’m bragging, so I like, just wouldn’t call them. But now I know. Like this past year I made it like a priority. Like we’re here. We’re doing it like every two weeks. I have a call with this set of friends. Every other week. I have a call with this friend, and it it’s helped me so much. And I knew I had to do that when we’re home. So when we leave next, I like have that schedule, like engrained with me. So it’s a little easier when we are away from people because it, it at the end of the day, it is hard no matter where you are, what you’re doing. Like even this past year we’ve been in Washington and came to California for a year and my parents got to come visit once, so we saw them for a weekend. But I haven’t seen my sisters in like nine months, so that’s hard. But, you know, we just make it work.

 

Georgia [00:34:10] Yeah, I know. I think it’s really important to keep that kind of social side of it, you know, going even if you think, Oh, you know, we’re great, we’re having this time and that there will be times when, yeah, it’s really hard and keeping those connections going and also making sure that everyone around you knows, you know, we don’t have to get our tiny violins out for each other all the time, but understands the pressures that you are under and that it isn’t all, forgive the pun, smooth sailing all the time, is it? There are hard things, and I think it’s probably quite important for your welfare that other people know that, right?

 

Ciara [00:34:39] Yeah. And I think it was important for me to know, like I need to call them on good days and not just like feel like I need to call them on bad days. So they’re like, oh, like she’s complaining or whatever. But no, like this is our schedule. This week’s Good Week. Next week’s a good week. Oh, but today we’re having a little bit of a hard time because of whatever. So it just makes me feel better in the conversation, you know?

 

Georgia [00:34:59] Yeah, no, totally. And also, it’s interesting you’re saying about, you know, you’re with retired people and they have a slightly different approach to work. Of course, work for you is also creating content, right? So that’s the thing. Like what looks like fun is also work. So that’s an it that must be an interesting mix for you as well. How do you perceive that? Do you see it as like work, play somewhere in between a combination? Like how is that balance?

 

Bill [00:35:22] You know, it’s definitely work, especially now that it’s our main source of income. So it’s certainly a job. But like. When things become a job. I know this from I used to teach Kiteboarding and teach some other water sports. And you know, Kiteboarding is a passion. And then when you start instructing it to lessons a day, five days a week when it’s windy or whatever, seven days a week, if it’s windy every single day, you got to take advantage when the wind’s blowing and you have customers, make sure you get out there and you’re taking advantage of that and that becomes a job as well. And I think a lot of people see those that kind of job or this kind of job as the dream job. And it is. But you can also kind of get burned out from these kinds of jobs because you are taking your passion, something you really enjoy and turning it into a job. And that becomes work, I think, at least for me. I just keep reminding myself, like I look at the positives, you know, I look at the parts that I really enjoy about it, and I remind myself as well what the alternative is like. You know, I look at some of my friends who are here on Long Island and, you know, they wake up at 430 in the morning, get on the Long Island Railroad and go into New York City, and they’re an accountant or they’re a project manager in construction and all.

 

Ciara [00:36:32] That’s great for them. It’s just not what you does.

 

Bill [00:36:34] Not what I want. And again, like even just looking at the positives of our job, like I love the positives of our job being creative, being able to share our experiences with other people and seeing the inspiration and enjoyment they get out of that is incredibly rewarding. So I guess long answer shorted. It is work for sure. Like it takes sacrifice and it takes hard work, but it’s there’s no other job I would rather have.

 

Ciara [00:37:02] And I think like breaking it down even further between the fun part and the work part, like filming takes a lot of energy and a lot of creativity and a lot of little things like are the memory cards formatted? Are they clear? Are they full? Like, Do you have an extra one? Is the battery charge like all of that? It’s like little tedious stuff that kind of adds up. But the what we’re doing that we’re filming is amazing. Like, are we swimming with sharks today? Are we sailing to a new place? Are we exploring a new island Like that is all so much fun. And yeah, the the filming part adds some like little like aspect to that where it makes everything a little bit more difficult. But that’s still our favorite part, the editing part. That’s what like we’re, we’re at the point where we just, we’d rather just the other things. But, but it’s still so exciting. Like right now we’re pretty far delayed because we were working so hard on the boat that we weren’t editing. We, we have an amazing editor who helps us, but we still need to be a team and get stuff done. But now we’re looking at videos from a couple months ago where we went from California to Washington and looking at that footage again is so cool. Like we saw like 25 whales in the matter of like 30 minutes. And now we get to relive all that because we’re working on this project and it’s so cool. And it’s just the fact that from a solid eight years, we have pretty much our entire life on camera and that’s like so special. We love to like go back from three boats ago or five years ago or whatever and look at that stuff and it’s so special. Yeah.

 

Georgia [00:38:28] I mean, you mentioned in passing earlier that you got married, right?

 

Ciara [00:38:31] Yes, we did last February.

 

Georgia [00:38:33] Maybe a little bit about that. Was that like how boat was that on a scale of one to boat?

 

Ciara [00:38:39] It’s so funny. And honestly, like, our wedding is pretty far from our personalities. However, we figured our boat was supposed to be done, like right around our wedding, and we’re like, okay, when it’s done, we’re going to leave. We’re going to be gone for an extended period of time because we went two ways. We could have either had a tiny little wedding on an island, Bahamas, with just our family and our closest friends. Or we could have a party with all of our favorite people because we’re not going to see them for a really long time. And we ended up going back that route. We had. We had like was so like 150 people at our wedding. It was my honestly, if it wasn’t the Bahamas, it was my dream spot because it was overlooking the Jupiter Lighthouse. And that’s like the lighthouse in my hometown, the lighthouse that Billy went through and broke down, like, right, right where you had to turn around. And that’s where we met and everything. So it was it was absolutely gorgeous. And the date gone any better. So, yeah, it was an amazing time. And I’m glad we did do it that way because when is the next time we’re going to have all of those same people in that room? Oh, man. Very, very.

 

Bill [00:39:41] Amazing. Yeah. And in terms of boating. Yep. Right on the water. Right. Staring right at that Jupiter and Jupiter lighthouse.

 

Ciara [00:39:46] We wanted to have, like, our boat right there just wasn’t done yet. And then, like, our table pieces, like, instead of numbers, they were our photos of like, table A was a ruby, and it was a, our photo from Ruby was Barbuda, and it was like one of our pictures in the Bahamas. And like, that’s how the tables were organized and the centerpieces were like, coconuts and bananas and, and stuff like that. And we tried even at like our rehearsal dinner, we tried to keep it as like, low impact, like plastic free as possible. We did like reusable cups and like, we tried our very, very best. But yeah, it was an amazing night. Amazing day, amazing life.

 

Merrill [00:40:24] Well, it sounds like an amazing love story. How have you seen? You know, from your years of being on the water, Have you seen marine change in general? Have you noticed anything different?

 

Ciara [00:40:35] I think one thing that sticks out for me is we our first year on our first trawler, we went down to the Exuma US and there was a boat right outside of some of these caves, and there was a giant elkhorn staghorn, elkhorn coral. And our first year is beautiful and it’s an endangered world. I noticed it. I took a photo of it, and then we went back about five years later. And so much of it had been bleached. And it looks so different than that first year. And that was like really sad for me because it’s even in a protected park, you know? So it should be it should look exactly like it did before, but it didn’t. So that was really sad. What have you noticed?

 

Bill [00:41:13] Yeah, I mean, I’m sure I don’t think too hard into our anecdotal stuff unless it’s like night and day like that. I mean, I think that like if we’re talking about the marine environment and the environment in general, I think that data is the stuff that says the most about what’s happening. So I tend to not put too much emphasis on like small anecdotal experiences. One interesting thing that may relate to like the marine environment that we noticed seems recent, but I guess it’s not as few years ago now when we were on adrenaline, our catamaran down in the US, which is during most of the bad part of Covi at the very beginning, and then eventually that spring we sailed back to Florida and before we got back to Florida, we were kind of skirting along the edge of the Bahamas and we were going up in the Straits of Florida, just south of Bimini. And we noticed, like all the cruise ships there are like, I don’t know, within a few miles are like, what, 5 to 10 cruise ships, just like hanging out, like not really doing anything.

 

Ciara [00:42:12] Because I don’t think they were loud back in Florida. They weren’t allowed back in their homeport. So they were just like.

 

Bill [00:42:16] Yeah, So some of them were just cruising at like two knots, like just off the Bahamas. Some of them were in this this little tiny section where I think they mined like clean sand for like beach renourishment and stuff. Ocean key. I could have that wrong. But anyway, it was that area. But that was very interesting to me. And I guess in terms of the environment I’m getting at, like cruise ships in general, I guess we see, I don’t know.

 

Ciara [00:42:39] Some crazy that’s trying very hard lately to make better systems and everything so can’t bash them. Some of them we just listen to a podcast the other day that do terrible, terrible things and try to hide them.

 

Bill [00:42:49] Yeah, I guess that’s why it’s fresh, fresh in my mind that we just were listening to a whole podcast episode where they were talking about the cruise ship industry and these whistleblowers kind of calling them out for some of the bad. Yeah, they have this thing called a magic pipe. They call it just this big kind of DIY discharge pipe to discharge everything that is difficult to deal with on on a cruise ship.

 

Ciara [00:43:11] But that’s just one example. They’re not all like, I.

 

Bill [00:43:13] Don’t know, you.

 

Ciara [00:43:13] Don’t know enough about any of this stuff to comment on it. But another example of this whole environment thing, we were going from, I think Dominica to Guadeloupe, sometimes Dominica to Guadeloupe, we’re fishing off the back of our catamaran and we always have a couple lines in the water because we prefer to eat fish and eat our own fish and everything. It’s just a cheaper and more fun way to eat dinner. And we have one of our lines where we went crazy like a fish on really good and really good and really good. And it’s not fish, it’s a giant plastic bag. And we were out in the middle of nowhere. Like, how did this even happen? But just like those kind of things where, yes, it’s one circumstance where we saw so we can’t relate it to the entire world. However, in our little world, like we got a bag for dinner instead of a fish. So that is pretty sad.

 

Bill [00:43:57] And that’s something that may not have I’m sure it’s changing, but the change alone, that’s something that we certainly see everywhere we go is that a ton of plastic pollution, especially like in remote islands of Bahamas, where in all the, you know, the seaweed line and that high watermark, it’s just loaded with plastic, single use plastic and even not single use plastic, you know, Tupperware bins and things like that. So that’s something that certainly sticks out in terms of environmental issues and the marine environment.

 

Ciara [00:44:25] And this past year, even in where we’re the Marquesas Keys, we’re on this little trimaran and we’re just exploring one of the islands with Jetty and one side of it, which is absolutely covered with crab traps. Right. And crab berries and crab this and crab that. And they were just everywhere. Like you couldn’t step without stepping on like a piece of plastic or a piece of foam. And it’s just it’s really sad.

 

Georgia [00:44:47] Yeah. And I get what you’re saying totally about, you know, you don’t want to extrapolate from anecdotes and say therefore, X, Y, or Z. But I do also think the importance of these stories is that like individuals going out there and seeing it for themselves, I think actually can make a big impact on people because you can talk about these things in theory and with data, but then if you actually go out and see, I think emotionally it can have quite a profound impact on people when they it selves.

 

Bill [00:45:14] Yeah, and it can certainly represent the bigger problem in a very visual way, that’s for sure.

 

Ciara [00:45:19] And you know, like a lot of people don’t, they will probably never acknowledge the fact that, you know, plastic’s an issue and all this other things, but so funny, like if you just look at the. For 5 seconds. I walked them down to the beach or walk Anybody down beach? Oh, yeah. No plastics on this. Okay, look for 2 seconds. You want a fork, a bottle cap and all of this stuff. So it’s there. It’s very clearly there.

 

Merrill [00:45:38] So as we kind of come to a conclusion, can you tell us what your future holds? What are you guys thinking you’re going to do next?

 

Bill [00:45:46] Yeah. So hopefully this sea wind catamaran that we ordered three plus years ago, it seems like it’s nearing completion. I actually did go to visit Vietnam a what, a month ago now and got on the boat. And it’s it’s incredible. So hopefully that’s done pretty soon and it’ll be a few more months until it’s tested and we get it shipped and we take delivery of it. Long story short, and we’re going to start cruising on that boat. So the ideal situation for us is we cruise back over to the Bahamas. We that’s one of our probably our most favorite cruising grounds in the whole world from where we’ve been at least. So really cruise back over to the Bahamas, get out to the outer islands, and then hopefully for hurricane season, get either down to Panama or maybe back up to the northeast. But hopefully for us, I think we’d like to get down to Panama, to Central America, and then just continue on. And that’s all our really specific plans are. And then from there, we’re not sure. Probably spend a bunch of time in Central America and probably not cross the Pacific quite yet. We, you know, with Jetty, it’s that kind of thing is pretty difficult just checking into some of those foreign countries especially and like French Polynesia. So I’ll probably spend a lot of time in Central America, maybe even go through the canal and spend a lot of time on the west coast of Central America.

 

Georgia [00:46:59] Just because I’m a massive animal and, you know, we’re coming to the end of our time together. Tell me about the coolest animal you’ve seen in the wild.

 

Ciara [00:47:07] Ooh, we had so many. Okay. So recent. Oh, there are so many. There are two are probably top recently, like I was a Free Willy was my movie when I was little. And I’ve just always had this dream of seeing, like, orcas in the wild. And my dad is the same way. He’s like an orca lover and he wants to see them in the wild and all that stuff. And in Canada we actually got our we have finally got to see them. They came up like right by the boat and it was a whole family. And we actually got to see them twice. The second time they breached and they spun and it was all like out, like we were on our own boat in the wild doing our thing and these orcas just come cruising by. So that is like, just like that doesn’t happen. That just doesn’t happen. And it was able like we were able to experience it. And then our our other time we were we were in Jupiter, we were both in our work on school season. So I was going to school, I was going to work. And I was actually like in my final semester for my bachelors and one of my final projects was you had to do a research paper, 15 page research paper on any animal you choose, and I chose a specific animal. At the end of that project, we had a break from school and we went out. We went like three miles offshore in our little whaler. And we were I think we caught like a little mahi and a little tuna. And then all of a sudden we see this giant thing. We didn’t know what it was. So this giant thing sticking out of water, you thought it was like a plastic.

 

Bill [00:48:30] I thought it was like one of those Rubbermaid like storage lids. Like I thought it was just like floating out there in this lid. Kind of, like, popped up and was just floating, like this big piece of plastic.

 

Ciara [00:48:40] And I thought it was the Dolphins and all about Hammerhead because they have like a very specific, like, very pointy. It doesn’t look like any other shark. But I was like, That is a massive hammerhead. Like what? Like there’s no way. So we went closer and we went closer and it was the tail fin of a whale shark. And it was like cruising. And then it went down and we got to witness it, eat it feeding. And my 15 page research paper was actually I had just written like the last paragraph, and it was about the natural history of a whale shark. And I was like, What? Like they’re endangered. They’re not really around here. And it just happens to be cruising by when we’re like, fishing. Like, how amazing is that? And we’re we can see land like we’re not far away at all. We got video of that. That was one of those times where, like the memory card was filled and one camera battery was dead and we didn’t have a mask. We’re like, Oh, we got to get out.

 

Bill [00:49:28] So I’m like, I’m deleting clips on the GoPro to try to make room for to capture this whale shark.

 

Ciara [00:49:32] And I like jumped in. Even though we didn’t have mouths, I was like, oh, like at least I can say like a got in the water with it. And it was just those two are like the most like memorable. But there’s so many other memorable ones like the 20 where humpbacks you saw California or the sperm whale and Dominique I like oh just we get to see send do so many cool things and we’re so, so lucky.

 

Merrill [00:49:54] Awesome So where can people find you and see more about your story and all the adventures you have?

 

Bill [00:50:00] So I guess our most popular one is YouTube. And if you just search tours Endless Summer, you’ll do it on the summer on YouTube, you’ll find this. And some people prefer Instagram. We’ve been posting a lot on Instagram and yeah, it’s those two are probably the best way and obviously we’re doing some stuff on Tik Tok. Some people prefer to be on that platform, so we try to whatever platform there’s visual content and we try to be active on. So but yeah, YouTube and Instagram, probably our biggest ones.

 

Merrill [00:50:28] Awesome. It was amazing to talk to you guys and hear your story.

 

Bill [00:50:31] Oh, thank you so much for having us.

 

Ciara [00:50:33] Yeah. Thank you, guys. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

 

Farah [00:50:46] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to ship Shaped Up.