In this exciting installment we interview Matt Ottman and Jeremy Goolsby. Together they run a yacht delivery and transportation business. Their work has afforded them the opportunity to travel the world and experience life on the seas. They are as boat as they come, and give a unique prospective on the race for time that being a professional boat delivery captain requires. This exciting episode covers what it takes to be a delivery captain and some pretty crazy sea stories, get ready!

Transcript ——-

Talha [00:00:00] Shipshape the number one resource in the U.S. for marine professionals. The profession. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Shipshape podcast. This is telematic. With me is Farah. And today we have two special guests with us. And they’ve been all over the world in a sailboat, thousands and thousands of miles in one sailboat, thousands of sailboats probably as well. And so we’re going to get a better idea of what they’ve been up to. The Jeremy and Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on.

 

Talha [00:00:39] So let’s start just tell us a little bit about yourselves. You guys have been doing this for a while. I don’t even know where to start. Who wants to go first?

 

Jeremy [00:00:45] Go ahead, Matt. All right. Yeah. My name is Jeremy. I was in the Coast Guard for 20 years before that. I grew up around water and always enjoyed boats. And then when I retired from the Coast Guard, I thought that I had had enough of working on boats, and that moved off to Washington State and did a couple different jobs, drove a truck for a little while and decided I wanted I was missing something and it was boats.

 

Talha [00:01:10] And being on.

 

Jeremy [00:01:11] And near the water. So I got back into it. And then so now I work at Little Creek Marina after having a few other businesses where I did boat repairs and things like that and then ran into Matt, I met this fine fellow and started a whole nother chapter of doing boat deliveries and stuff like that.

 

Talha [00:01:29] Very cool. And so that.

 

Farah [00:01:30] When you guys.

 

Talha [00:01:31] Met recently, how recently?

 

Jeremy [00:01:33] Oh, what’s it been, three years now?

 

Talha [00:01:35] Three years.

 

Matt [00:01:36] Now? It’ll be three years and two weeks.

 

Jeremy [00:01:39] Oh, that’s right.

 

Talha [00:01:40] Matt’s given Jack a little bit this year myself.

 

Farah [00:01:44] Thank you. Thank you so much for being on the show, though. Matt, tell us about you. I mean, you know what? Why did all this begin? So tell us a little about your life.

 

Matt [00:01:54] Yeah. So I have, you know, very conventional life. I grew up on the water in eastern Long Island, always on the ocean or never really in a boating or anything like that. We didn’t have that kind of money. So traveled around, went to school, did all the regular things. We got to Florida in the nineties and got into a lot of hiking and kayaking all around the state, up and down the East Coast, traveling a lot. And then somewhere along the way, after a decade or two of doing that, I figured one of the way to do it, the same kind of life I was living, but more mobile go anywhere. But obviously flying everywhere is too expensive and boats with motors that it reliant on motors are impossibly expensive for fuel. So a sailboat is the natural solution. So after I bought my boat 13 years ago and been living on it since mostly as an apartment for the most for the beginning part. But then I actually started sailing five or six years ago, cruising constantly. I haven’t lived on land like worked on sea, worked on land since I knew there had to be a transition. So somewhere along the way I got into deliveries of sailboats like four years ago and really it’s been accelerating ever since. And like I said, three years ago almost, I met Jeremy, I got towed into this marina, Little Creek marina. It was Cutty Sark back then, but on a repair in the middle of the night. I met him the next day and we became very good friends ever since. And I finally dragged him into this business. So it’s good to have a highly competent friend along with you all the time.

 

Jeremy [00:03:23] And it makes sleeping at night a whole lot easier when he’s on watch.

 

Farah [00:03:28] What do you mean by the watch? Please explain that. I mean, that’s fascinating because I saw Dock Master because I obviously had a chance to talk to LA about this and I was looking through your achievements. And I mean, I’m seeing amazing things like Coast Guard and Dock Master and, you know, words like Liveaboard and Snowbird and please elaborate. I mean, so what does it what’s a doc master do?

 

Jeremy [00:03:48] Well, Doc Master sounds a lot more important than it really is, mainly just facilitating the boats visiting the marina. So we have transients then, and you brought up snowbirds. We can get back to that. A lot of times boats move up and down the coast or across the ocean and they need a place to stay temporarily. So they transients, they come in and they’ll stay with us. So I help them out whenever and wherever I can with that. And since getting into LA delivery is also helps with that because Matt and I have met several other captains and if they’re passing through Norfolk, which is kind of central on the coast, so a lot of boats pass through here if they need a place to stay. It’s nice to, you know, see friends and old acquaintances that you haven’t seen in a while.

 

Farah [00:04:36] So is it the districts or is it.

 

Talha [00:04:38] It’s a little of both.

 

Jeremy [00:04:39] It’s not so much technical other than, you know, catching mooring lines when people are pulling in or telling them what restaurants to try out and then doing up temporary contracts, stuff like that. So that’s.

 

Farah [00:04:52] Amazing. And so Matt shares this responsibility with you.

 

Matt [00:04:55] You know, I’m I’m I live at the marina. My boat has lived at the marina now for. Little over two years, and I’m centered out of here. So besides the friends I’ve made around here, the logistics of being here is pretty important. I have a very close, very close airport. The weather’s very temperate, so my boat’s always safe here, and so I can fly out to anywhere for all the jobs I do. And like I said, but I have the added bonus. This little this little area here is got a great bunch of friends. And, you know, it’s a great place to come back to when you’ve been away for a couple of months or so.

 

Talha [00:05:32] So guys are currently you’re doing a lot of sailboat transports to give us like a day in the lives of Yeah, but what does that look like?

 

Matt [00:05:41] So basically people you know easiest example is somebody got their boat in Saint Thomas for the summertime for the winter time and the season’s almost over and they have to you know, they want the boat back up in New England or where they wherever they live in the summertime and they want their boat back up there. So they get a hold of somebody like Jeremy or I, and we get a crew together and we fly in and repair the boat and inspect the boat and make a course and plot against weather and take the, you know, whatever time it is based on the conditions in the boat and get it to its destination safely. So that’s the broad strokes. You know, there’s day to day stuff that we encounter along the way. And generally it’s a crew. A two, two, three, two is ideal just out. Of course, the fact like we can make each season make more money effectively. But the problem is people that are competent that you like Jeremy said earlier, that you can sleep soundly, you don’t have to worry a while. So we go on watches. You know the most general is three on, three on, six off or two. If it’s Jeremy and I, it’s four on four off kind of thing.

 

Talha [00:06:46] So what does that mean?

 

Farah [00:06:48] Yeah. Sorry. What does what does that mean? What does that mean? Four on 4.

 

Matt [00:06:51] Hours on watch where we’re solely responsible for the navigation of the boat. That’s it. Safety and navigation of the boat. Everybody else is either sleeping, eating or chilling out watching movie or reading or something like that. So when you’re not like you’re sorry, go ahead.

 

Jeremy [00:07:08] I said. Or for fixing things.

 

Matt [00:07:11] Well, that’s a whole different aspect. You know, we’re constantly, like I say, preparing these boats, but more often than not fixing these boats and get to know them quite a bit better than even their owners do sometimes.

 

Talha [00:07:23] And these are not small boats, right?

 

Farah [00:07:25] Yeah, that’s what I was just about to ask.

 

Matt [00:07:27] They have 40 to 40 to 70 foot. Is that generally what we run. That’s the average in the forties I guess.

 

Talha [00:07:34] Mm. And more sailboats eyes exclusively.

 

Matt [00:07:37] Well I shouldn’t be so prejudicial. I have exclusively done sailboats for a long, you know, for a long time for, you know, for all the they’ve been in it, which isn’t a long time. But by the way it’s only three and a half, four years. But anyway, but I’ve come to appreciate the easy money, if you will, and in comfort and simplicity. Those sailboats go 24 hours a day. We don’t stop unless we have to get out of the ocean because of weather or we have some mechanical issue. Otherwise it’s around the clock. Navigating a powerboat is limited by its fuel supply, and generally it’s only several hundred miles or something like that. So it is a marina to marina jump, and it’s something quite easy about that when you only have to run for 6 hours or 8 hours and go to Marina to fill up with fuel and you sleep for the night and you leave, then you know, whenever it’s advantageous. So yeah, I can appreciate that life too.

 

Farah [00:08:34] With the sailboat, it’s it’s consistent. I mean, you’re just out there, it’s you, the water. And it’s just, you know, you sleep on the boat, you live on the boat. And when you mean, like, what’s the longest that a person could go, What’s the longest sail that you’ve done?

 

Matt [00:08:47] I’ve I’ve done upstate New York Catskills to Smuggler’s Van. Wow.

 

Farah [00:08:53] And how long?

 

Matt [00:08:53] Main? Yeah. We had to stop in the Azores for a we had intended to stop for fuel initially, but halfway between North America and the Azores, the boat broke a steering cable, so we had to rely on autopilot for a week. While we made it to fly out. We went to the small Azores to just a closer island and spent four days there getting the repairs done and other things done. And it was a wonderful accident because we got the boat repaired in a couple of days and we spent four or five days exploring these just beautiful, beautiful island. So that’s the perks of the job. And these all these trip, when you do stuff like that, aside from your social drinking or eating out here on the dime of the boat, you know you’re eating on your sleep well, you don’t incur any any cost. And like you said, unless you’re being a tourist. So, yeah, there’s a lot of good parts to the job when you do that.

 

Farah [00:09:50] But it’s also a lot of responsibility. And it’s and from what I’m understanding, it’s not a cheap endeavor. So if somebody wanted you to potentially move their boat from one low. To another. It is an expensive project. Because you’d have a crew. You’d have your time, your energy, your effort, and you would set out the route, the navigation, the maps, all of that. And and if something were to go wrong during the course of this, are you liable or do they is it part and parcel of what you do or, you know, is.

 

Matt [00:10:20] A lot of it’s not a handshake. There’s very few jobs I’ve done that have been contracted and bonded and insured. It’s less many times I don’t even meet my client until I bring the boat to their marina.

 

Farah [00:10:32] So, no, it’s all an act of good faith, you know?

 

Matt [00:10:35] Oh, yeah. And when you have issues like mechanical problems Jeremy and I have put up, we had three back to back to back jobs last year where we I think we laid out 20 $200 apiece to get parts and stuff done to boats on always on a handshake that we’re going to get reimbursed.

 

Farah [00:10:55] And did you.

 

Talha [00:10:56] Always.

 

Matt [00:10:57] Oh, you did. Oh yeah. The guy was showed up with a pouch full of money and a very appreciative delivery.

 

Farah [00:11:04] That’s amazing, because, I mean, okay, so you can appreciate that this is all quite alien for me because I’ve ever seen on a boat. I’m not very savvy with the marine world. And this is my first insight into how wonderful this world is. So, I mean, you know, everywhere you look, even something as simple as doing a transaction here at a grocery store, everything is billed receipted. And, you know, there’s no such concept of a no contract, no, just a little handshake. That’s fascinating. So would you say the marine world still operates on more primal sort of, you know, behavior, like more instinctive behavior where people there’s more camaraderie versus what it would be like if you were living on land.

 

Matt [00:11:44] I think the sailors in general, yes. My my niche of it, what I’ve tapped into is even more niche than that. I very much I prefer the anti anti-establishment anyway. So what I do, what I do perfectly suits, you know, my whole my feeling is like I get calls from strangers, but they’re always referred by.

 

Talha [00:12:10] I was going to.

 

Matt [00:12:10] Ask that we have. Yeah. So many queries. You know people aren’t just my I don’t advertise whatsoever. It’s not really, you know, it’s the nature of things. It’s never required it. And I think I did 15 or 16 jobs last year, which is unheard of in really the delivery world, because you’re limited by seasons and weather and timeframe.

 

Farah [00:12:32] But why do these people not deliver themselves Like, you know, why if I endeavor to go from A to B, I would drive my own car. Why would I why would I need to enlist your services?

 

Matt [00:12:44] Well, that implies you’re good at driving your car and you have and you have the time to do it away from your otherwise life or whatever that implies. Because, you know, some of these trips, they’re not hours, they’re days and.

 

Talha [00:12:58] Weeks and weeks, you know?

 

Farah [00:13:00] Wow, that’s amazing. That is absolutely fascinating. So, I mean, okay. Mean to an average day.

 

Talha [00:13:08] Jeremy. Jeremy.

 

Farah [00:13:09] Yeah.

 

Talha [00:13:09] Jeremy Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:13:10] I was just going to add to it’s a little more complicated than going out for the weekend on the boat. Yeah, you’re talking about going to places that you may have never been or weathering things that typically, yeah, if you’re the boat owner and you want to go out on a nice weekend, you can pick and choose when you want to go out. Whereas if you’re doing a delivery, you’re trying to pick the best weather, but it’s also the best weather to get there In the a lot of times it’s not necessarily a nice sunny day. You know, we may pick a day that or several days we pick our weather window because we can make way because we can get there in time. So we’re looking for sometimes not ideal conditions for everyone, especially if you’re doing in the wintertime and it’s freezing cold and, you know, we’re up there on on watch, sometimes completely exposed for 4 hours at a time and then go down a dive in Iraq and get a little bit of a nap, if you can.

 

Matt [00:14:04] Most fully.

 

Jeremy [00:14:05] Clothed. Absolutely. Because because it takes that long to warm up.

 

Farah [00:14:08] So what do you mean by watch as in your you’re on the. Sorry, you’ll have to.

 

Talha [00:14:12] Excuse your driving ride for 4 hours.

 

Jeremy [00:14:15] We’ll see before you. Yeah. So you’re responsible for operating the boat and then So, Matt, if Matt and I are on a trip together, one of us will be on watch for 4 hours. Then the other one is sleeping, and then we switch out. And then So he would take over, steer the boat, you know, maintain the navigation everything, trim the sails. Ideally, we do would do any sail trims and stuff when we’re both on deck.

 

Farah [00:14:41] Just full sail trim. Sorry, you’ll have to explain that to me.

 

Jeremy [00:14:44] So on a sailboat, you have to adjust the sails to fit the wind conditions. So sometimes that means making the sails smaller so you reach them. Sometimes that means making, you know, the wind dies down. You want to add more sail. So you have to. Either hoist more sail or put up more sails. And a lot of that stuff you have to do on quite a few of the boats that we drive for the week that we work on. You have to be up on deck so you’re exposed to everything and you know, the boat’s pitching and rolling and you’re already on a heel.

 

Talha [00:15:15] Heel is when you’re sort of out there at an angle, right?

 

Jeremy [00:15:19] Yes. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

 

Farah [00:15:20] Okay. So picking up from what you’re saying, I mean, obviously on a lovely sunny day when it’s about, you know, 30 degrees outside and you’re on a gorgeous sailboat, it’s obviously no problem to be on watch, as you said. But I mean, you guys are doing this in extreme conditions as well. And it’s it’s technically a job, right? It’s a job at the end of the day, maybe a lovely job because you’re enjoying it, but it’s still a job. So to somebody who is coming in for the first time to this to the marine world, do you need any credentials like a license or do you need a resumé to actually get into this when you’re picking your crew? Say, for example, I was to come up and just say, I want to join you, Jeremy and Matt, I want to get on this boat. You know, you would probably just say go home for a you know, click to identify, you know, throw up all over the boat. But, I mean, do you need any sort of training, any prerequisite? Because it’s a long journey. I mean, you know, to know how to fix things as well. Do you need training?

 

Matt [00:16:14] So you need you need to know how to sail. Really?

 

Talha [00:16:19] But but like you said, you just pick that up. Right?

 

Matt [00:16:22] But I’ve sailed with many, many people that they sail, think they know how to sail or got to sail. But the reality of sailing for 24 hours at a time and it’s different. That’s having that very short sleep cycle. Living on a hill, like living on an angle all the time, sometimes extreme, sometimes you’re physically fighting the, you know, the gravity of the angle of the boat just to navigate through the boat and cook. And you go to the bathroom and sleep and change your clothes, anything like that. It’s actually physical work. It’s stormy or it’s rough conditions or adverse conditions.

 

Farah [00:17:00] How extreme? How extreme is the angle?

 

Matt [00:17:02] I’ve been in boats where it can be well over 20 degrees a heel and blowing.

 

Talha [00:17:07] Oh, boy. Oh, my gosh.

 

Matt [00:17:10] Oh, wow.

 

Jeremy [00:17:11] Yeah. That last one that you and I did together was that was a pretty serious injury.

 

Matt [00:17:14] That was probably one of the worst. We’re in this little tiny Catalina, kind of a soft little day sailing boat. And we had some 30, 40 knot winds in the upper Chesapeake near Baltimore, and that we couldn’t reduce sails enough for that poor little boat. We had lost the engine. We had blown a high pressure fuel pump the day before, so we were able to sail up well. We sailed about 100 miles or sail about 80 miles. Oh, yeah, about a hundred. And so we got close. We got within 14 miles of our destination. And there was a whole bunch of reasons that we couldn’t get closer. But we tried. We hid behind this island as best we could, and finally a tow tow service came out and got us up and brought us the rest of the way. But that poor little one tailed over like 30. That boat was probably 30 or more degrees, that thing. The boat was getting beat up.

 

Talha [00:18:11] She had a day. Yeah.

 

Matt [00:18:13] It was when we had a.

 

Jeremy [00:18:14] Race in the water.

 

Matt [00:18:15] The lot that was not. That’s like, Yeah, really?

 

Farah [00:18:19] What is real As in, like.

 

Matt [00:18:21] Like the gun or like the side of the boat, the edge of the boat where your deck is in.

 

Talha [00:18:26] Deck sideways boat.

 

Matt [00:18:28] Is physically in the water as you’re going forward. So yeah, those are pretty extreme. Some boats are built to live like that, but most are not.

 

Talha [00:18:35] But I mean, first question, the ceiling.

 

Farah [00:18:38] I mean, from sailing, what other sort of skill set do you need to have to be a hands on person?

 

Matt [00:18:44] Yeah, I had a point where I started that. So Jeremy and I are kind of a good example of come at it from two totally different angles. So Jeremy’s a very talented Coast Guard pilot. He got very proficient at his job and has this long career of, you know, doing things and learning things by, you know, kind of by the book, you know, by, you know, as going to school. And I very much stumbled across it as a, you know, kind of a new lifestyle. And this is the skills I needed to learn as I got along. And we are you know, we both seem to be pretty adept at it. So I think that’s a lot of reason why we’re, you know, good friends at this. And but so I’m you know, I very much learned on the job, so to speak. And I seem to get it. I mean, I just and it’s it’s being able to live with discomfort. And nobody the people that I work best with are very even when things are going sideways. Jeremy And I’ve had many, many thousands of miles of experience where things have gone sideways. So it’s it’s comforting when you know you got somebody with you that does that. But other than that, you just some jobs require a captain’s license, which. Neither of us could obtain because of our experience in our miles. We don’t. We don’t have. And we chose not to for different reasons. But. And but most jobs don’t require them. Again, they’re pretty much handshake and word of mouth and trustworthy. You know that in the last three and a half years, I’ve done close to, well, nearing 40,000 miles. So, you know, just the constant work. Some people sail, but then stop for many years, and that might be enough to keep you out of your prime, kind of keep your on, you know, on your sharp, sharpest behavior.

 

Farah [00:20:31] So. So what advice would you give to somebody who is interested in getting into the marine world, I mean.

 

Talha [00:20:36] Into the delivery.

 

Farah [00:20:38] Into the sailboat delivery world? I mean, what what if somebody just said, oh, man, Jeremy, you’ve got experience, I’d love to do this. What kind of advice would you give to them on how they would get involved in this? Oh.

 

Jeremy [00:20:50] Your first the first interview would be to come sail with one of us.

 

Talha [00:20:54] And I like that. And you said, Oh.

 

Matt [00:20:58] We get it all the time. We get people, you know, here what we do and are, you know, eager to give name and number. And any time you need a hand and, you know, I’ve met a thousand people who want to do that and I think I’ve called one. And fortunately it worked out so well.

 

Jeremy [00:21:13] You get many of those that are you either no, you’re you don’t want to spend time with them on a boat thousands of miles from land and several days or weeks away from anyone else, or they just don’t have the skillset to do that job. It’s not for everyone.

 

Farah [00:21:29] It’s not No, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t assume it’s for everyone, given the fact that, as you said, it’s it’s lack of sleep and it’s hard auditions. I mean, it’s jokes aside, it sounds like so many things go wrong in the ocean and you have to keep a really calm head and, you know, whatever kind of situation there. And it could be a short trip, big trip, whatever trip. You’ve got to keep a very cool, calm head. And it also seems like you need to be very savvy with your hands in terms of you just can’t sit and say, I’m not going to bother fixing this. I don’t know what to do and put your hands up and cry.

 

Talha [00:22:01] You know? Yeah, this is very.

 

Matt [00:22:03] Very a very generic line. We, you know, figure it out. You know what? You know, you hear something, motions, Something’s going on. What happened? This is what happened. Okay, Figure it out. You know.

 

Farah [00:22:14] And the living conditions as well. Matt and Jeremy, correct me if I’m wrong. I mean, I was just talking to people, obviously, to our listeners who obviously can’t see Matt and Jeremy, but I was talking to them on camera a few minutes ago and I was noticing amazing things in Matt’s boat, you know, like hammocks or fresh food and you know, how it keeps the air circulating. And these are really important things that people miss. You know, you just assume living on a boat is like living in land. It’s not the same thing. You know, you’ve got to if you’re on a boat for weeks on end, you don’t have access to fresh groceries or you just can’t pop into a shop and just get some fresh oranges. It’s it’s tough. It is uncomfortable. You know, even if you want to get off, you just can’t get off. You’re on a.

 

Talha [00:22:54] Job. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and but that’s one side. But then some of the boats, these guys go out on their palaces, on the water.

 

Jeremy [00:23:01] Some of them are absolutely beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Do you live on them?

 

Matt [00:23:06] Do they have. No, no.

 

Jeremy [00:23:08] No, no. We are the crew.

 

Talha [00:23:10] We The crew.

 

Farah [00:23:11] You are the crew. As in, like, you and and Matt.

 

Talha [00:23:14] And they get the whole boat to themselves. They have this, like, five bedroom boat. So you don’t.

 

Jeremy [00:23:21] Know which one he’s talking about.

 

Matt [00:23:22] Matt Adams and I. So now.

 

Farah [00:23:27] Like with a fully stocked kitchen and you can access their rooms and just the lap of luxury.

 

Matt [00:23:32] Part of the expenditures of a delivery is a generic rule of thumb is $25 a person a day for food. So my farm captain, I have that budget for a crew every myself and every crew member to go buy provisions. And then it is literally I take request B, I want people to eat what they want to eat their cover. I don’t care if it’s machinations every day. I want them to eat what they want to eat, what they usually eat if they want. They want Cheerios and almond milk or whatever they eat. I don’t care. They get it for them because that’s what.

 

Jeremy [00:24:02] They’re.

 

Matt [00:24:02] Getting. That’s what you get and that’s just how it goes.

 

Farah [00:24:05] So it’s expensive arms, right? It’s podiums, right? 25 podiums a day.

 

Matt [00:24:09] Yeah, I’ve I’ve worked jobs where I wasn’t the captain and I’m with owner captain. And they are far more luxurious than that. And I’ve seen through that is just it’s just extravagant. And I’m not I’m not saying no. So I join in the fun. Hmm.

 

Farah [00:24:28] I was unfortunately.

 

Jeremy [00:24:29] Most.

 

Farah [00:24:29] Excited. Yeah. I was about to say 25 is a bit low. I mean, if you’re doing breakfast, lunch and dinner, it’s normally roughly. Now the new rates are 35.

 

Matt [00:24:37] But if you do the multiple, say you have four people, that’s $100 a day. So that for four meals, for four people, you can really do. You know, when you’re buying a grocery store, you’re not eating out. So it’s you know, you’re buying slabs of maidens, you know, lots of fold chicken, you know, big, long trips. You’re buying produce, lots of produce. I’ve you know, I’ve had a crew at three what we we spend like. In a box for a seven day trip, and that was pretty hellacious. And we always buy more than we actually need. So, yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:25:06] And we but we still eat really.

 

Matt [00:25:08] Well. Not really.

 

Jeremy [00:25:09] And not every day is amazing. You know, some of them, you know, you make it out there and nobody’s going to cook. Because I was like.

 

Matt [00:25:17] Yeah, only a couple of people are equipped to cook and he’ll bake, so. Because, yeah, I mean, I cook pretty much at all conditions, but it’s it’s not pleasant. Somebody’s got to be in the mood for it and they’re willing to put in the hours where the prep and cook and clean up to do it. But to me, eating hot meals when it’s crappy out is worth it because it’s morale boosting, not only what your body needs and but it keeps your brain right, keeps you, keep you motivated. So.

 

Farah [00:25:44] So I’m sorry. I know this. I’m dwelling on this, but I just. I’m fascinated by the fact that you will actually. You’re saying you’re cooking while you’re on a hill. I mean, so what kind of situation would you face? Would everything just be tilting, flying to one side? It’s everything. Is it difficult?

 

Matt [00:26:01] The galleys are the stoves are gimbals. So they they tipped with the movement of the boat. So they stay relatively level. But when you’re frying things in boiling like pots of water, it gets a little chaotic.

 

Farah [00:26:14] Precarious.

 

Matt [00:26:15] Yeah. They swing in little chaotic ways. So you do have to be quite careful. But there’s some people I watched a client I had it was a husband and wife and their two kids, and I took them into the Bahamas and the husband and sail they had is great dream. They’re going to they sold everything and they’re moving onto this catamaran. And I sat with them for two weeks to bring them there and teach them as we went and evaluate them, they went and it was very good. She she was afraid of Little boat wakes the first day and by two weeks and her son had caught a £20 mahi and she’s frying. He was doing seven knots and all overpowering in an.

 

Farah [00:26:55] Amazing.

 

Matt [00:26:56] Pose going on and everything. And she was handling it. And I love it was a cool transition. So.

 

Talha [00:27:03] Yeah, that’s quick.

 

Farah [00:27:04] So is this wow, is this very male dominated, though? I mean, I have to ask, would you say it’s a very male dominated, you know, niche market? What you what’s the work.

 

Matt [00:27:13] In the life, the work or the life I mean. Yes, in general. But yeah, Yes, in general, more so the delivery than the life. There’s plenty of, you know, women that live on sailboats and handle sailboats. And I’ve sailed with a bunch of young women that are super talented. The one the myriad of people I’ve gotten requests for, one I hired turned out to be an exquisite sailor and cop and just, you know, just takes on. She’s a master diver, so she’s kind of equipped. She’s only 27 or eight years old or something like that. But she’s kind of a she’s a.

 

Jeremy [00:27:47] Rock star.

 

Matt [00:27:48] Too. Not panic, you know, just be that was actually the leading thing that caused me to hire her is because being a master diver, you have you teach other divers and she’s, you know, very competent and very controlled when she’s working like that. So my heart just turned out to be right. So she’s, you know, very talented human. So I’ve been blessed everywhere. I’ve worked with hundreds of people. And I can count on one hand lesson, one hand people I would never sail with again. And most of them, they’re not bad people. I just wouldn’t sail with them again.

 

Farah [00:28:18] And you would, you say so have you sailed with as I’m coming back to my question, would you say it’s male dominated? So you sailed mostly with men versus women? Yes.

 

Matt [00:28:26] Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:28:26] 90% is majority. It is getting better. I think it’s a little more integrated. Yeah.

 

Farah [00:28:30] What do you think the hold up is like? Is it because of the fact of the length of duration and how committed you have to be to it? Or is it just is it it’s a physical demand on you?

 

Matt [00:28:40] I think it’s a function of just I don’t know if there’s how many willing candidates there are for this job in general, let alone for a woman to do it and the niches. So I think the niche is so small, and all the women I’ve met this past year especially have been in their twenties and early thirties and.

 

Talha [00:28:57] Looking for a new way of.

 

Matt [00:28:59] You know, young people living on sailboats probably in these numbers is probably a new thing and increasing.

 

Farah [00:29:04] Well, so would you say that’s a new trend now?

 

Matt [00:29:07] Yeah, I think so. And it’s certainly, you know, all these COVID years of have moved people into sailboat and trailers and all these things even at a bigger pace. So it’s just probably more noticeable. And I’ll you know, I’ll say, you know, we talk about this is such a niche thing, what we do, I mean, there can’t be but a few hundred people or a thousand at the most in the whole Atlantic basin that even do this to any great extent. So and we’re not you know, there’s a companies that do this. They’re, you know, delivery crews and they’re all very licensed and very credentialed and charge a whole bunch of money and have a whole lot of paperwork. And and then there’s us.

 

Jeremy [00:29:41] Then you get dispatched to, you know, there’s there’s companies that will, you know, like Matt will say, and they have a hired crew, a stable I guess, and that they they get owners that contact them and then that this dispatcher sends crews out, which may end up being people that you’ve never met before and never worked with before. The way we get jobs is all word of mouth from other captains or other owners that, you know, we bring a boat up and it’s all sparkly, clean and beautiful, and it’s exactly where they wanted it on the day they wanted it there. And, you know, the neighbor, their neighbor at the marina asked him how you know, who we are because we kind of look like pirates, you know, And when we pull in, it’s, you know, a little bit shocking. Sometimes when we’re on $1,000,000 boat, we pull it in and they’re like, okay, what is this about? People ask questions and that’s how we get more work.

 

Farah [00:30:31] Just all word of mouth. It’s all word of mouth promotion. That’s our business.

 

Jeremy [00:30:35] Is It is really. We’re pretty damn good at what we do. And so.

 

Talha [00:30:39] That.

 

Jeremy [00:30:39] Makes a lot more words.

 

Talha [00:30:41] Jeremy I do. I do want to dig a little deeper into like Matt was saying, is that like you went through the actual school angle or say, the Coast Guard angle. So a little bit more about that. Like what did you end up doing there all those years? Like maybe a crazy story or two.

 

Jeremy [00:30:57] So when, when I was in the Coast Guard, actually, I didn’t really tell many people that I could sail just because it’s it’s very powerboat dominance through you don’t have. And there was a kind of general opinion, I think too, that sailboats are a problem. You know, it’s not a problem. But, you know, I guess I guess a lot of my guys would have.

 

Talha [00:31:20] They’re the ones who always do the rescuing. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

 

Jeremy [00:31:25] You know, because, you know, we’re out there thousands of miles from shore and, you know, something happens. Well, at least we have somebody that’s out there that can come to the rescue, I guess. But so I never really told anybody. And I. I grew up my dad had a small sailboat, and so I learned it there. And like we had talked about before, it kind of a perishable skill. So a few years ago, we bought a boat and started sailing again. And then shortly after that I met Matt and I think he and I did for that 1500 miles just in a lower bay, doing just day trips, you know.

 

Matt [00:31:57] Was way more than that between your boat. We had we had like 1800 or more miles just at for period.

 

Jeremy [00:32:03] Yeah. And that was I mean, we sailed every day. We did We’re taking several people out that had never sailed before, but I. I’m getting off topic here, but.

 

Talha [00:32:11] Well, I just want to ask you, like you’re like more that Coast Guard and how you made that big job again, like from powerboats to like sailboats and making a living out of it, basically.

 

Jeremy [00:32:21] I’ve always loved sailing. There’s something very, I guess, back to nature about it.

 

Farah [00:32:25] Therapeutic in a way.

 

Jeremy [00:32:27] It’s very therapeutic. Yeah. I mean, some people go to the beach and kind of find their Zen for myself, certainly. And pretty sure Matt too, you know, sailing when you’re on a perfect sail, that’s just, you know, a beautiful day that really kind of recharges your the batteries of your soul, I guess. You know.

 

Matt [00:32:44] I don’t even need a perfect sail. Just, you know, I mean, you get you turn, you put the sails up and you kill that motor and yes, everything goes away. Everything melts away. I’ll land all your nonsense, all the realities of the day, all the drama.

 

Jeremy [00:32:58] Yeah, we just.

 

Farah [00:32:59] It’s just clarity at that point. It’s just fine. Clarity.

 

Matt [00:33:02] Felicity It’s perfect. WOMAN Simplicity. It’s absolutely. You’re self-reliant, you’re slept subzero. You’re out there on the power of the wind. You know, in a manmade vessel that you control.

 

Talha [00:33:14] It’s pretty a great feeling.

 

Matt [00:33:17] Yeah. I mean.

 

Jeremy [00:33:17] There’s do.

 

Farah [00:33:18] You do you feel victories? Do you feel training as a Coast Guard has aided you in your in your where you are currently? I mean, do you feel that it’s prepared you for it? Obviously, Matt learned through his life experiences. Do you feel that your training as a Coast Guard aided you?

 

Jeremy [00:33:34] Absolutely, yeah. So for 20 years I drove boats for the Coast Guard and there was mostly search and rescue. You’re doing things in weather that most.

 

Talha [00:33:43] People ask people that you know.

 

Jeremy [00:33:47] So, yeah, the boat handling part was something that we drilled constantly. We always wanted to be the best boat handler you could be because, you know, it’s not always going to be pleasant conditions when you’re going out there and trying to come alongside another boat or ship.

 

Matt [00:34:00] And you kind of What kind of boats did you handle for the Coast.

 

Talha [00:34:04] Guard? Yeah, too well.

 

Jeremy [00:34:05] It was mostly so toward the end of my career, it was jet boats. There were 45 footers that were so much fun to drive. They were amazing. But it was all search and rescue stuff. So motor lifeboats, surf conditions stuff, jet drive response boats. And then we had a couple when I was down in the Keys, we had some there were chase boats to chase down drug runners and minor smugglers like that. Yeah, those are fun. Yeah. Kind of.

 

Talha [00:34:32] All the boats, lots of fast stuff, a.

 

Jeremy [00:34:34] Lot of.

 

Farah [00:34:34] Like probably Jeremy Bond. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:34:37] And then they even let me drive a couple of the bigger boats, some of the ships, and that was, that was fun. But so yeah, that really honed skills as far as boat handling and stuff like that goes and monitoring weather, you know, looking for things that and actually a lot of that I’ve also learned from that, you know, looking at different things and he and I will sit down and compare a weather forecast and kind of. Compare notes and figure out what’s the best, because we look at it kind of from different angles. I’m looking at it as as far as like, what do we have for sea, state and wind? And he’s kind of looking at it as what, you know, maybe how many miles we can cover and also what kind of wind we’re going to have. And but he’s he can actually look at it and say, you know, look at a forecast from for tomorrow and kind of predict what’s going to come down and degrees.

 

Farah [00:35:24] Yeah, Nice experience.

 

Jeremy [00:35:27] Yeah. Yeah. And then also the so for Kazaa experience, we we did a lot of stuff, we call it cross deck training where you learn the jobs of everybody else on the boat.

 

Talha [00:35:39] Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:35:39] So you have a coxswain who’s in charge, which was typically my job. You have crew members and then you have engineers. And engineers are typically responsible for the power plants, all the all the engineering basically on the boat. Okay. So we had to learn their job as well. So I learned a lot of mechanical stuff from that. And I’ve always been kind of mechanically inclined. So that definitely helped the navigation stuff. Boat handling, engineering, just casualty control stuff. When something breaks, you know, being able to break it down and figure out what failed and what we can do to fix it. A lot of that came from just a Coast Guard background.

 

Talha [00:36:13] Nice and moving. How does one get into the Coast Guard? Do you supply like the Army Navy or is it.

 

Jeremy [00:36:19] Yeah, Yeah. So they’re recruiters. You talk to a recruiter, they can give you some basic guidelines or guidance. Actually, it’s actually I think it’s the website super simple. It’s like go Coast Guard dot gov or something like that. In fact, I looked it up the other day and a friend of mine, her daughter’s considering going in the Coast Guard. Not so I was looking up a local recruiter for them. And now my computer comes up with all this Coast Guard ad getting spammed by my own branch.

 

Farah [00:36:48] So. Nice. I just wanted to ask if I want to know what an average day in your lives looks like.

 

Jeremy [00:36:54] Oh, go ahead, man.

 

Matt [00:36:55] That’s a good question. I’m in I’m in a unique point in my life. I worked in this swimming pool business, of all things, for like 35 years. I had several companies. I worked for many companies building pools, working on them, fixing them, servicing all that. And so that transition, you know, that was the obvious 9 to 5 or 6 to 10 actually kind of job. And so I knew when I took on this life that I had to have a dear friend. I got rid of the last, the last business I had that I shrunk down before I left and everybody knew I was going to leave and of course didn’t believe me. But then the reality I knew I had to take any, you know, whatever the skills I had and hone some more, learn some more and take it wherever where that’s my boat allowed me to go wherever I wanted to. So it’s just a matter of being able to sustain myself theoretically outside the country, but, you know, anywhere. And so falling into this delivery business has really changed things in ways I didn’t expect. I’m actually working more than I ever expected to and need to actually sell more. I got into this for sailing and I haven’t done my own sailing in a in a couple of years almost, So I’ve set on remedying that. So but when I’m working, it’s really very routine. It’s very quite easy for me because of the boat aspects of working jobs. When we get in season and we’re rolling from one job to another, it’s pretty cool. There’s a lot of traveling. I fly a lot like last year. I well, this April to April I flew like 23,000 miles and I sailed about 16,000 miles and.

 

Talha [00:38:28] And all paid for it.

 

Matt [00:38:30] Yeah. And all that. Yeah. I get the miles and everything but, and so it’s kind of always on the go and I’m packed. I got two bags packed and I’m go from here, go from there, and then you prep your boat and then you have your regular days. So it’s kind of very normal. That’s very normal. Then I come back to my boat and I have two days of decompression and hibernation and then, you know, reconnect with some friends and then it’s housekeeping or maintaining my boat. So I found myself recently being in a holding pattern for the next job instead of doing things I really need to do. And season takes, you know, has a lot to do with that. Winter is awful for anywhere unless you’re below the 26th latitude. So you got to say something.

 

Talha [00:39:11] About this, right? So that’s that’s those are the snowbirds that sort of make this all possible for you guys.

 

Matt [00:39:16] All right. Because it’s you know, there’s a lot of people that live in the Northeast or anywhere in the United States, and they bring their boats to Florida or the Caribbean in the wintertime and they visit them. Sometimes they sell them around sometimes. And most of the time they just sit there. And then when we get calls to bring them north for the summertime and bring themselves in all the time, and that’s typically last year there was a boat show, a bunch of new boat owners or new sailboat owners. So Jeremy and I bring a couple of boats. People had bought them in Florida. So we when we fly down, they fly Austin and then we assess the boat and prepared for a voyage and deliver it as fast as we can which.

 

Farah [00:39:58] On track to work. It’s contract work, but yeah, but it’s contractual. But at the same time, I mean it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, you’ve got down days, up days. It’s not like you’re in a solid 9 to 5, but you know it’s when you are in the work it’s, it’s intense. It’s not exactly 24 hours. Oh yeah. You have to build up your energy into it. So it’s not, you know, it’s it’s not for the faint hearted.

 

Matt [00:40:23] And not everybody can take off on a moment’s notice. And I don’t have children while real estate. My boat is my home. So I’m free to I’m free to come and go at a whim. So, again, not everybody is able to do that. And I think probably cause I’ve got a fair amount of jobs just because of that availability.

 

Farah [00:40:41] So what about you, Jeremy? What’s the day? An average day for you?

 

Jeremy [00:40:45] So ideally it’s on a boat, but if I’m I’m doing the marina thing, so that’s a more or less part time at the marina. And they fortunately give me the flexibility like Matsu, to kind of take off on a whim and do deliveries. And I may be gone for a month or two months and then come back and it’s like I was, you know, everything’s still there, everything’s okay, and then fix the stuff that was broken while I was gone. So replacing cleats or floats under a dock or fixing someone’s power pedestal and things like that, that’s the typical day. And then on delivery is like kind of like what matter, you know, where you get into a routine, where you’re, you know, what your watch is. Then you know when you’re going to be working. I mean, we’re always working. But, you know, you know, when you get to take a nap and you really look forward to that time coming sometimes. Yeah. So.

 

Farah [00:41:32] Yeah, but Jeremy, if you’re dock master, how come, I mean, my understanding would be a stock master? It’s pretty much like being manager of the dock, Right? So how do you have the flexibility to actually go off on these these trips and go for a couple of weeks at a time, get these amazing expeditions and go off for like three, three weeks? For four weeks? What do you do? Who who looks after the dock in the meantime?

 

Jeremy [00:41:56] So we also have a manager at the marina and she takes care of of a lot of the stuff, mostly. So when both of us are there in town, she generally looks after the the building and I guess the administrative stuff, you know, contracts and things like that. And then when I’m and when I’m also there are tend to take care of the stuff outside because every marina almost has some derelict boat mat had kind of mentioned it before boats that just never move and the people never have a chance or don’t take a chance to come down and check on their their stuff. And so, you know, sometimes you end up pumping out a boat that’s taking on water from rain or they have some sort of mechanical failure inside that or moving boats around to their to better locations for them and for the marina, I guess because you’re you have and Tala knows this very well because, you know, initially when he came down the gold sidebar there, he came down for a month and then yeah, extended another month and then extended another month and then finally agreed. Well, that’s right. Welcome to Little Creek. It’s kind of like a back alleys here forever.

 

Talha [00:43:02] I mean.

 

Farah [00:43:02] I think that’s amazing. I mean, you know, you’re your manager, so if says there’s a problem, right, because you’re a dock master, how does she get in touch with you? You’re in the middle of nowhere.

 

Jeremy [00:43:12] Well, actually, you can do satellite communication and stuff like that, but generally it’s texting. But she’s very self-sufficient and she can take care of most everything herself. And fortunately, we have a lot of people at the marina that live on their boats that are willing to pitch in and help out and do things. And she knows who those people are and I know who those people are. And all it takes is just a, Hey, can you give me a hand for a second? And they’re more than willing to pitch in because I think it’s part of the whole lifestyle that if you were in that situation, you would want somebody to be able to to you your hand so you would never turn down somebody else. That that needs a needs a hand or needs, you know.

 

Farah [00:43:50] You to such a beautiful community feel, though, quite honestly. I mean when I hear you three speak, it’s so wholesome and in a lot of ways it’s very pure because, you know, you’re not infiltrated, you’re out in the ocean. You don’t really have like the world we live in right now is infiltrated with social media. You’ve got.

 

Matt [00:44:09] You know.

 

Farah [00:44:10] Podcasts and Instagram and, you know, and Facebook puts out there’s an explosion of content and, you know, you would assume you’d be in your four hour nap. You’d be sitting in watching, I don’t know, the latest drama or sitcom, but instead you’re getting the quality time. You’re one with the ocean and then you’re around people and these people that are around you, even though they’re docked at the marina, they’re so invested in their community around them that everybody’s helping each other and being there for each other, which is really rare.

 

Jeremy [00:44:39] It is, I agree. And honestly, my favorite part of every trip is when I get far enough off shore that my phone doesn’t signal anymore.

 

Talha [00:44:47] And.

 

Jeremy [00:44:48] I can guilt free, set it to airplane mode and not hear from anybody for a couple of days. You know.

 

Farah [00:44:53] So in terms of like are all Marina, I mean, you guys have obviously traveled. Far and wide. Do you find this similar attitude in other docks or marinas, or is it not the same kind of community feel, or is it is it like a feeling that’s prevalent all over?

 

Jeremy [00:45:10] I think it’s kind of a mix. You know, you have some the good ones kind of have that community feel and others, you.

 

Matt [00:45:16] Know, and if there’s a lot of sailboats or a lot of powerboats or I think.

 

Talha [00:45:23] They’re built on pens, location and you know, where and how new or how old like some of the marinas I’ve been to where like, you know, the same people have been around for like ten years. Super community. Yeah. Some of the ones that just got built, you know, to have. And the community hasn’t started yet. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:45:40] Well in general too were, were sort of hesitant I guess to really you will talk to anyone but let somebody come in and I don’t know it’s a quick judge of character I think cause sometimes you can, you know tour to boat today that beautiful boat. In a normal circumstances, you know, you’re basically walking into someone’s house. And how many people would actually just let essentially a stranger into their house? And I think it comes down to that whole kind of community that, you know, you when you pull into a marina, you definitely get a feel whether or not you you’re welcomed or if you’re just kind of passing through and nobody’s going to kind of help you out, I guess.

 

Farah [00:46:18] So amazing that it’s just I find this all quite fascinating when I speak to you about your experiences on the boat.

 

Talha [00:46:25] So I get guys so almost getting to the end of the show, maybe on our way out, like last few questions, maybe each of you could just leave us with your most memorable sort of ocean marine memory that you guys have made in the last few years.

 

Matt [00:46:40] Perhaps going to the Azores on my trip to Spain, going to Vidal Island of Fire, the Port of sorta was pretty impressive. And then just recently taking a boat from Mobile, Alabama, to Havana, Cuba. So there was a lot involved in both of those trips. Far beyond that, you know, that generic answer. But yeah, those are exceptional memories that I’ll have for a lifetime, and I’m going to have a tough time tapping both of them.

 

Talha [00:47:05] But like what? What about the Maiden special was.

 

Matt [00:47:08] Azores was a unexpected, beautiful stop in a place where we encountered some hardship, and I made a bunch of tremendous friends. And the wildlife we saw, we always see, you know, big trips. If you’re out there long enough, you’re going to see whales, you’re going to see dolphins. Really, you’re going to see birds farther away from land that you can even figure out how they’re right, why they’re out there. But they’re probably living up in the water and and exploring the ocean. And then Cuba was a special Cuban trip, a special for a number of reasons, not only going to that island, but I travel with the man I had known for a few years through a friend and never actually got to sail with them. I actually had a beer with them the first time just about eight months ago in Charleston, and we encountered so much and overcame so much with the boat and with the clientele and went to circumstances and wound up in this place and being so satisfied over what we had to overcome and accomplished in just five days of work, in 14 years of travel, sailing. And then we got to enjoy it for a couple of days in a place neither of us had ever been. So that person that was personally satisfying, professionally satisfying. So that was really we went down.

 

Talha [00:48:15] Like.

 

Matt [00:48:16] 100 stories in that trip alone.

 

Talha [00:48:18] Yeah.

 

Farah [00:48:19] Imagine having another show for that one. I’m intrigued.

 

Talha [00:48:25] And you need a few shows.

 

Jeremy [00:48:27] For that.

 

Talha [00:48:27] One. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:48:31] No, I actually think it kind of ties in the whole marina community and lifestyle. The one that comes to my mind is, is the day Matt and I met and it’s like, Oh.

 

Talha [00:48:44] Yeah, yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:48:46] Well, it was pretty special.

 

Matt [00:48:48] Yeah, well, I got, I got, I got dropped off that at 3:00 in the morning, the night before.

 

Jeremy [00:48:53] So yeah, yeah. So we’re neighbors now, so our boats are beside each other in the marina, centrally located. So all of our friends can be around us, which is good and bad. So I was on kind of the end of this dock and Matt and the the guy who was sailing with the owner of the boat, they get towed in midnight. So I kind of wake up. I’m like, All right, well, that’s cool boat down there. And I had already had friends coming down, so I took about ten people out sailing for a day trip. Mike and Matt see what’s going on. They’re like, Oh, okay, this is interesting. And so when I pull back in that afternoon, Matt comes down and he’s helping hand a line and stuff like that, and we’ll leave some of that out I think, by the end. So anyway, so I go down and I’m hanging out on this beautiful yacht with Mike, with Matt and the owner and kind of hanging out. Well, the owner had gone and met some ladies and they can’t they’re coming down to the boat. The three of us are sitting there in the cockpit talking. And so Matt had just met the owner of, what, seven days before and. The three of us at all actually just met about 30 minutes before these women show up and they get down there and there was such a, I guess, a sense of camaraderie because we talked like we had known each other for years and these ladies picked up on that and they’re like, well, there’s no way that you guys have only known each other for 30 years. Well, no, technically, it’s been 35 minutes now. And, you know, but that’s kind of that’s kind of how that, I guess, all comes together is.

 

Talha [00:50:22] You.

 

Jeremy [00:50:22] Meet so many really great people through this and you can share experiences and share. I guess there’s a commonality to it that not everyone has. Not many. Not many. You know, it’s one thing, you know, stand around the WaterCooler and talk about the sitcom you watch the night before. But doing something like even something as simple as just sailing. Not everybody has done that. And so that was, I guess, kind of highlighted to me that how quickly you can become friends or get to know someone nice.

 

Matt [00:50:55] So, yeah, you almost have to make character judgments kind of quickly. It’s because. Quickly. Yeah. Especially if you’re going to be working with them and. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:51:03] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

 

Matt [00:51:04] Fortunately, that, you know, that’s all. That’s the best part. I’ve been fortunate to have been able to pick my crew exclusively. So like that after that time, you know, when Jeremy and I met, we become friends for sure. We. And then we spent last summer, like he had mentioned earlier, sailing a great deal. So our trust in each other definitely built. And I quickly learned that I needed to have him work with me because I knew he was very good at what he was doing. His temperament was exactly right and he was he’s an exquisite pilot. He’s the best pilot I’ve ever met, and he can put his hands on nearly any boat I’ve seen him and quickly learn how to control it like he’s been on it for a while. So bringing those skills, him and I, along with other other skills and a strategic third person every now and then, we’ve had the pleasure of doing a lot of great trips together and overcoming a lot of great stuff. So definitely it was amazing.

 

Farah [00:51:55] Can you give me I know this is this is not ideal, but worst ever memory was to a trip where you were like, I’m not doing that again, You know, Hey, me and I still will not do that again.

 

Jeremy [00:52:07] Yeah, but we still to go and do it again.

 

Matt [00:52:10] I don’t know. I give you. There’s always a moment, you know, if you’re fortunate enough to get the rebirth, the forward part of the boat, and if it’s a big boat and a piece of garbage boat, like I shouldn’t disparage, I’m not going even to say that maker. Then a big, big French expensive boat. It really is. It shouldn’t be any ocean. And and it sounds like it’s falling off a skyscraper and landing on my buoy and bouncing and levitating you and making noises like it’s going to come apart. I’ve had a bunch of I’ll never sleep here, that I’ll never be on the boat again kind of thing. Yeah.

 

Farah [00:52:47] Wow.

 

Talha [00:52:48] Yeah. There’s not too.

 

Jeremy [00:52:48] Many there’s not too many boats that I would disparage, but there are a few. There are a few that I’m like, You know what? This piece of junk. Such and such brand name isn’t only about Hatteras, but.

 

Talha [00:53:03] Will people.

 

Matt [00:53:05] Ask if if I you know, if I’m scared out there and I’m actually I can honestly say I’ve never been scared. I’ve been uncomfortable, I’ve been freezing cold, I’ve been unhappy, I’ve been miserable, I’ve been grouchy, I’ve been hungry, but I’ve never been scared. And even at the even a storm’s, some are more persistent than others, it seems once it’s over, you always go, Well, that wasn’t so bad. Yeah, Yeah, it’s kind of.

 

Farah [00:53:33] Like. It’s like lava. It’s like they say you have the baby once and then you women forget, and then you still go out there.

 

Matt [00:53:38] Never that miserable nature fades away.

 

Talha [00:53:44] Yeah.

 

Matt [00:53:45] It’s not the comfort zone.

 

Jeremy [00:53:47] Well, it’s like even after Hurricane, the best day to sail is the day after a hurricane today.

 

Talha [00:53:51] Andrew. Why?

 

Farah [00:53:52] Why is it the coast? Because it’s, you.

 

Jeremy [00:53:55] Know, absolutely gorgeous day, the day after or two days.

 

Matt [00:53:58] Of rising flat seas and yeah.

 

Talha [00:54:00] Clear. Everything’s cleaned up. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:54:02] You may not have boys where they used to be, but it’s beautiful.

 

Farah [00:54:06] Well, gentlemen, I have to say, you’re making me want to toss aside my land life and actually get on a boat and say.

 

Matt [00:54:13] You would be surprised. That happens all the time.

 

Jeremy [00:54:16] Like this time of year over here. We’ll go sailing.

 

Farah [00:54:20] That’ll.

 

Matt [00:54:20] That’ll definitely captivate you. So it’ll be over.

 

Farah [00:54:24] It will be done. I’ll be gone for good.

 

Talha [00:54:29] Oh, so that was awesome. Final question for each of you. Any pro tips you’d like to share with our listeners?

 

Matt [00:54:35] Yeah, I’ve been mulling on that one. I don’t really, I don’t know, pro tip. I really don’t. I hardly call myself a pro. I’m a pro by trial.

 

Jeremy [00:54:45] Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing.

 

Matt [00:54:46] It’s like I’ve been too.

 

Jeremy [00:54:47] Dependent on myself and.

 

Matt [00:54:48] Found out I can swim pretty well. So. Pro tip. Yeah. I don’t. This is not for everybody. You can desire it. You could love it living on a boat, you know that could. A life that’s different. Doing deliveries. I’ve been spoiled. I got given an opportunity by a virtual stranger and have gotten to where I’ve gotten. Now I’m pretty spoiled in that I’m only going to sell with people I trust implicitly, and I’m blessed to have a lot of them and some way, way more proficient with hundreds of thousands of miles with very important names like this one for your listeners, look up Matt Rutherford in Rutherford and Red Dot in the Ocean. Good friend of mine donate to his organization and he is trying to protect the world’s oceans and doing research. So but you know that I’ve been blessed who I’ve been exposed to and it’s a pretty small, tight circle. And not surprisingly, I guess they’re all, you know, we’re links, you know, not six degrees of separation. It’s like half a degree of separation. So if you love it, you’re going to wind up in it. It’s really there’s no pro tip. You know, I can give you a Pro Tips about, you know, gear or something like that maybe. But I don’t know, like the life is it’s a weird life and it’s the you we talked about being on the water. I’ve never been in a more peaceful content place in my life than being on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. And there’s nothing there’s can’t be anything on this planet in this life that could be better than it can’t be, because it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever encountered.

 

Farah [00:56:16] So I’m amazing as fearless. Jeremy, step, any pro tips?

 

Jeremy [00:56:23] No, I kind of like where Matt won with that.

 

Talha [00:56:25] He had.

 

Farah [00:56:26] The team.

 

Jeremy [00:56:27] And honestly, I got into this whole thing kind of riding his coattails, and he had a lot of contacts that I guess if I had a pro tip, I would say do some research on it, see if that’s something you’re actually going to do and try it for a short term. You know, whether it’s whether it’s liveaboard you getting used to minimalist type things because you don’t have room for everything you own in your house. Well, except for maybe in his case, But that’s exceptional. You know, cramped showers or the normal view like being uncomfortable and cold while stick psychiatric help and then go.

 

Talha [00:57:05] But but where there’s a will, there’s a way as well, right?

 

Jeremy [00:57:08] That’s true. That’s absolutely true.

 

Talha [00:57:09] And lots of people will sort of upgrade. They’ll get the first boat. They’ll be like, oh, boy, I need a bigger boat. Oh, everyone upgrade. Oh, that’s great.

 

Jeremy [00:57:17] Yeah. Whether it’s a bigger boat.

 

Matt [00:57:18] Or I’m currently looking for my, I guess my bigger boat. So. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [00:57:23] And it didn’t mean, you know, upgrades don’t necessarily have to be a bigger boat. It may just be a boat that’s better tailored to you and what you prefer to do. You know you like to do protected bay sailing, but go faster. You know, a lighter boat will be the way to look if you want a heavy all weather boat but don’t care about going fast or you know, then choose your life at four knots and look for that kind of upgrade. Yeah, bigger is always better.

 

Farah [00:57:49] No.

 

Talha [00:57:51] Final question for me is is like have you guys already like what, your dream gig and has it like already happened or. Yeah, like what would it be?

 

Jeremy [00:58:01] I don’t know. I think I like to keep the options open for, you know, I was in the Coast Guard for 20 years and thought I was kind of exposed to every sort and intricacy of every maritime industry. But I had no idea about boat deliveries, let alone sailboat deliveries. You know, I knew people went up and down the coast and snowbirds, but I had no idea that there was an actual you could make it a job to drive other people’s boats.

 

Talha [00:58:28] You pay for a ride.

 

Jeremy [00:58:30] And get paid for it. Yes, not paid shabbily. But, you know, you got to remember, too, that if you’re looking at just dollar amounts, but you got to understand that we’re putting our lives and them out there on the ocean and we don’t know the condition of your boat. How many times have we got on a boat that we’re we had to fix more stuff just to be.

 

Matt [00:58:48] Of 100% of the time.

 

Talha [00:58:53] So you’re Jamie’s keeping his options open. He’s like, dream gig hasn’t even happened yet.

 

Jeremy [00:58:58] That’s right. That’s right.

 

Matt [00:58:59] Yeah. I mean, in a delivery business is only Pacific is the next. I’d want to get gigs in the Pacific Ocean. A rather easy leg. Not easy, but a conditions wise. A fast benign leg is called Southern California and Mexico to Hawaii. It’s like a month, like 3000 miles in this trade. Winds traveling. So you’re with the normal currents, wind, parents of the traditional pattern. And so you’re it’s pretty consistent sales, pretty benign in that respect time wise. No, but conditions wise, this isn’t usually unexpected stuff. And then other than that, there’s just a lot of solo sailing I’ve still yet to do before I get my next boat. Probably I have a 31 foot ballad on right now. It’s rather small inside, but it’s a very stout blue water boat. And I initially on the big, big dream of sailing it around the world. But more realistically and time wise, I want to sail this one around the Atlantic. So here to the age. Czars to the Canaries, to the Verde’s and to the Caribbean. And that generally takes about two years to do if you want to enjoy where you go. So very much will probably happen rather soon.

 

Talha [01:00:11] So love it. The man of the plan has a.

 

Matt [01:00:15] Lot of plans. We all see. We just had head forward and see which plan, you know, which past lays out in front of us really is what it is and firm believer in once, you know, kind of put your mind to something and you really kind of, you know the manifested but you’re not invested.

 

Farah [01:00:32] Yeah it is.

 

Matt [01:00:34] Very much is you know you’re if you’re focused on it and you’re moving toward it and I don’t care how how organized you are about it, if you’re consistently dwelling on something and working toward it and learning about it and making it, you know, if it’s meant to be, it’s going to happen. It’s going to. And this is very much how my life is falling out. I did not seek out deliveries. I was given the opportunity to do a delivery and I’ve just follow in the path that’s laid out and it’s just gotten increasingly more adventurous and and pretty wild. So I’m not looking to get off at any time soon, but I’m definitely learning to regulate it and enjoy and enjoy why I’m out here and not just be it my next career. I’m I’ve I’ve never lived on less and I’ve never been happier, but I certainly don’t want to get stuck in the same routine of just working, no matter if it’s nice.

 

Farah [01:01:23] Such an interesting perspective. Thank you. Thank you very much, both of you.

 

Talha [01:01:28] Yeah.

 

Matt [01:01:29] Thank you.

 

Farah [01:01:30] It’s been an absolute pleasure having a chance to speak to both of you.

 

Matt [01:01:34] Yeah, it’s been interesting. I like I like to tell stories about what we do. We have very blessed lives. I do? Yeah, Definitely share.

 

Talha [01:01:41] I guess. So. Where can people find you if they were looking for you? Beginning at the board delivered.

 

Matt [01:01:46] I’m on Instagram at Short bus Life at four knots, short bus life at four knots. And that and on Facebook is just Matt Ottman and you’ll see me jumping off a ghost ship in the Turks and Caicos.

 

Farah [01:01:59] Woohoo! Nice.

 

Jeremy [01:02:01] Yeah. From the top.

 

Matt [01:02:02] From the.

 

Jeremy [01:02:03] Top, Yeah. What about.

 

Farah [01:02:04] Water? Where could we find you?

 

Jeremy [01:02:07] I’m on Facebook also Jeremy Goolsbee and Instagram. I think it’s just Jay Goolsbee. Easiest place. Or feel free to call a little Creek marina.

 

Farah [01:02:15] And you happy to hear from everybody. Just, you know, as long as you open, you’re receptive to people contacting you.

 

Jeremy [01:02:23] Oh, yes, Yes.

 

Matt [01:02:23] My social is all public. I’m just I only put up sunsets and sail and nice and nothing serious. It’s all very much enjoyment.

 

Farah [01:02:32] So excellent. Well, thank you so much.

 

Jeremy [01:02:36] We can share Karma’s Facebook page, too.

 

Talha [01:02:38] Yeah, please do. And this is your sailboat.

 

Jeremy [01:02:41] Right? Yeah. Karma is my boat. Right next door to Mats, Short Bus and Death. It’s S.V. Karma is the Facebook page.

 

Talha [01:02:49] And if you go there, you can get a nice sort of slice of what to.

 

Jeremy [01:02:52] Expect in a little bit. Day sales. Yeah.

 

Talha [01:02:55] They sales day.

 

Jeremy [01:02:56] Sales. I think I, I think I edited out all the newly diagnosed.

 

Matt [01:03:03] Coming in season time to go sailing.

 

Jeremy [01:03:06] Yeah I know. I mean I know it’s been too cold too.

 

Matt [01:03:09] Long to call Too long. It’s cold today. I got a heater on one of this nonsense. Yeah.

 

Jeremy [01:03:16] Kind of ridiculous.

 

Talha [01:03:18] They’re good boys. Let’s call you and really appreciate your time. And thank you so richly.

 

Farah [01:03:24] So if you want to check out more about Matt and Jeremy, we’ve shared their details with you. Check out the boat, Check out s SB Karma, is it?

 

Jeremy [01:03:33] Yes.

 

Farah [01:03:33] That’s going to be my new boat. Jeremy No, but it’s an an absolute pleasure and we look forward to maybe having you again. It would be lovely to see what beautiful new adventures you go on in the months to come. And thank you so much for giving us so much of your time and sharing your wonderful experiences.

 

Matt [01:03:53] Thanks very much for having fun.

 

Talha [01:03:55] Yeah, thank you very much, guys. Take care.

 

Jeremy [01:03:57] All right, guys.

 

Talha [01:04:12] If you liked this content, you’ll love what we have on tape came across.