Sailing La Vagabonde
Of recent one of my favourite youtube hangouts is with Riley, Elayna and Lenny on their amazing trips across the open oceans of the World.
They seem so with it and little Lenny is so cute and growing up very fast. He has the most committed smile and brings so much happiness to the decks of the ‘La Vagabonde’.
A recent episode where they dock in Hampton Virginia and prepare for their 20 day trip across the Alantic to end up in Portugal, they had a special task at hand. They were going to attempt to deliver Greta Thunberg and her Father in time for them to get to the COP25 climate change meeting in Madrid. No mean feat!
I haven’t watched the follow up episodes yet and am keenly awaiting the uploading, I can’t wait to see if they make it on time and without mishap.
They are such an inspiring example of what can be achieved with a good work ethic a little bit of luck and a lot of assistance from enthusiastic followers.
Both Riley and Elayna are young Aussie adventurers (I think both under or around 30 at the writing of this post), but they seem to have just found the thing that makes them tick. Other than one or two moments of emotional doubt Elayna has shared with their followers they seem to know exactly what they want to get out of the whole situation.
From the outside it does look to be an easy going idyllic lifestyle, but if you pay a little more attention to detail you will see just how much effort these guys are putting into maintaining a well planned, well maintained and productive onboard experience with the added tasks of raising their baby, filming, editing, uploading videos and also keeping their followers close.
Riley and Elayna could insure their whole family for less than it costs them to purify their water each day.
How much does it cost to buy such a beautiful boat?
Living on the water is truly an admirable dream to have and there are many that have only their aspirations, but to the ones that actually end up taking the plunge and fulfilling there passions of living aboard their own boat there is always a starting point.
It is important to note that a seaworthy vessel could cost you as little as a second hand car but in order to have some level of comfort and safety you will probably have to be aiming a little higher than that.
In the case of the first La Vagabonde, Riley had scrimped and saved for several years to build up enough of a nest egg to be able to take the plunge. He has highlighted on his website that he spent around $100,000 AUD (in 2013 being the same as USD due to the financial crisis). When taking into account flights, survey and after purchase improvements the total cost was around $115,000.The most important thing to do is to ask yourself, not whIn the case of the first La Vagabonde, Riley had scrimped and saved for several years to build up enough of a nest egg to be able to take the plunge. He has highlighted on his website that he spent around $100,000 AUD (in 2013 being the same as USD due to the financial crisis). When taking into account flights, survey and after purchase improvements the total cost was around $115,000.
This is probably a pretty good starting point for anybody and if you look at some of their earliest videos this vessel was an en extremely comfortable place to be living.
The current iteration of the La Vagabonde is a result of all the hard work and success that their youtube and social media channels were having. Riley and Elayna were given an extremely fortuitous break, they had somehow managed to organise a partnership with Outremer boats in France. I am a little sketchy as to the actually details of the deal but the outcome was that Outremer would give them a catamaran to use for a year or more in return for some public partnership. So far is has been four years and they are still going strong.
If they had to buy the 2016 Outremer 45 (I think it’s a 45) they would have had to have a cool $1,000,000 sitting around weighing them down. So I suppose it was something that was just meant to be.
How do you stay afloat (financially) whilst cruising the waters of the world?
Anybody that has ever tried to live away from their home and families knows that there are many challenges and one of the most difficult to deal with is often how do you pay the bills. Well living aboard a sea going vessel full time is no different. If you are not making your living by shuttling guests from island to island or trawling the seas for her treasures then you need to have someway to bring home the bacon.
One of the miracles of the modern world is the fact that you can become the host of your very own online broadcasting channel. Riley and Elayna have taken a passion for many people and turned it into a profitable viewing experience. The interesting thing is that it costs you absolutely nothing to experience their amazing adventures. You don’t even need to subscribe to their channel to be able to watch, from beginning to end, their day to day trials and tribulations that make up the sea going excitement of the sailing of the La Vagabonde.
The youtube channel, Sailing the La Vagabonde (the LaVaga for short) has around 1.32 million subscribers, they have 230+ episodes of their adventures and some of their videos have over 4.5 million views they have 40 plus videos with over 1 million views and the least views is something like 400k views. In total without the benefit of the back end statistics you could guess that there is over 184 million views on this channel so far, with this sort of popularity you could also hazard a guess at a price per view of around 5 cents. This by itself works out to be over $900k in income from the channel.
This by itself is great and does not take into account merchandise sales or sponsored videos. But the real money if you ask me has to come from their patreons.
For those of you that don’t know what patreon is you can check it out by clicking the link. Sailing the La Vagabonde patreon account has 3,400 subscribers. The levels of membership are from $3 to $200 per video (approx 3 vids per month) and have varying levels of swag that is handed out to each different level of contribution. Some of the benefits include early access to videos, beer coolers, entry in to competitions to stay on board and many more. Based on the lowest contribution $3 per video there is an income of over $10,000 per video or between $30 and $40 thousand a month. There is no way to know how much of this goes towards sailing, saving, running the business or so on but it is quite a healthy income no matter which way you look at it.Get a health insurance quote now!For those of you that don’t know what patreon is you can check it out by clicking the link. Sailing the La Vagabonde patreon account has 3,400 subscribers. The levels of membership are from $3 to $200 per video (approx 3 vids per month) and have varying levels of swag that is handed out to each different level of contribution. Some of the benefits include early access to videos, beer coolers, entry in to competitions to stay on board and many more. Based on the lowest contribution $3 per video there is an income of over $10,000 per video or between $30 and $40 thousand a month. There is no way to know how much of this goes towards sailing, saving, running the business or so on but it is quite a healthy income no matter which way you look at it.
Some notable points.
(6 months in hospital)(6 months in hospital)Riley broke his neck (6 months in hospital), in one episode he bumped his head on the table and had a scary recurrence of the symptoms that he had when he first broke his neck. He has to live with the possibility that one day he could be back in hospital suffering with the same paralysation that he had during his first injury. Lucky for him the symptoms passed quite quickly when he bumped his head on the table.
Riley seems to be quite accident prone, there are a number of videos where he is either in need of medical emergency assistance or some detailed triaging on the open seas.
When Elayna gave birth to Lenny she went back to Australia and lived ashore until he was old enough and strong enough to start living onboard the La Vagabonde.
You too could live aboard your ship!
Indeed it would be a lovely life to live and if you like me have spent a few hours just watching and fantasising how nice it would be then you have what is one of the most important elements, the dream.
These days there seems to be an unlimited thirst for video entertainment from all genres. So why not you?
If you are prepared to film what you do on a regular basis and post it to social media then you too could be getting paid to live aboard your boat while traveling all over the globe.
If you really want to get out there and live the dream ask yourself the most important question. “Why Not?”