The Brutal Truth About Cruising on a Budget & Surviving Storms at Sea

⚓ Be The Captain (Book + Audiobook + 10% off Defender & 20% off PredictWind codes inside): 📖 English: https://bethecaptain.com/ 🇪🇸 Español: https://a.co/d/08yiAfse In this video, I’m tackling a list of questions collected from our recent live streams! From my days in the submarine service (yes, someone actually asked if a sub makes a good cruising boat) to the raw reality of catamarans vs. monohulls in bad weather, we cover it all. I’m also diving into storm tactics (heaving to vs. running with a drogue), whether sailboats are truly money pits, advice for sailing with kids, and why I’m currently taking a temporary break from the live-aboard life. Join me every Saturday at 3 PM Eastern Time for our live streams where I give away signed copies of my book! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 — Introduction & Saturday Live Streams 0:24 — Is a Submarine a Good Cruising Boat? 0:55 — The Biggest Mistake Offshore Sailors Make 1:51 — Smallest Boats for a Pacific Crossing 2:42 — Monohull vs. Catamaran for Heavy Weather 3:52 — What’s My Next Boat & Why I’m Taking a Break 6:03 — Is the Scanmar 40 Good for Circumnavigation? 8:29 — The History & Legacy of the Cal 40 10:26 — Storm Tactics: For Reaching, Downwind, or Heaving To? 12:25 — Running with a Drogue: Can You Still Steer? 13:10 — How to Adjust a Drogue (and Jordan Series Drogues) 16:18 — Should You Remove Solar Panels Before a Storm? 17:44 — Junk Sails and Unstayed Masts for Cruising 19:52 — Thoughts on Arrow Rigs & Complex Sailing Systems 21:02 — Can You Wrap a Fiberglass Mast in Carbon Fiber? 22:11 — Are All Sailboats Money Pits? (Buying Under $100k) 23:57 — Best Mid-Size Budget Monohulls for Island Hopping 25:06 — Setting a Realistic Maintenance Budget 26:43 — The Reality of Insuring Older Boats (1980s Hulls) 27:57 — Is 80 Years Old Too Old to Start Offshore Sailing? 29:52 — The Pros and Cons of Solo Sailing 31:29 — Managing Watch Schedules for Couples vs. Extra Crew 33:07 — How to Get Into Sailing (Local Clubs & Dock Walking) 34:25 — Crucial Advice for Sailing with Kids 35:48 — Lightning Round: Lazy Jacks, Autopilots, & Pullman Berths 37:21 — Unexpected Sights & Smells at Sea 38:26 — The Truth About Carrying Weapons on a Boat 40:21 — Why Aren't You Sailing Right Now? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ☕ SUPPORT THE CHANNEL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Help us keep uncovering and telling these stories: ⚔️ Join the Inner Circle on Patreon: Patreon: bethecaptain 🍺 Buy the crew a beer / one-time tip: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/svzin... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚓ RECOMMENDED GEAR & PARTNERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Defender Marine — Outfitting boaters since 1938 with trusted marine gear, expert advice, and refit supplies: 👉 Shop Defender Marine: https://defender.com/en_us/ • PredictWind — The world leader in offshore marine weather forecasting, routing, and departure planning: 👉 Check out PredictWind: https://www.predictwind.com/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 FURTHER READING & WATCHING ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Susie Goodall Interview: A fantastic journey: Interview with Susie ... Be The Captain by James Allan Evenson (My award-winning maritime field manual on offshore seamanship, leadership, and crisis management). ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎬 ABOUT THE CHANNEL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ True stories from the sea — the rescues, the wrecks, and the choices that decide who comes home. You don't have to be a sailor to feel them. But if you are, they might change the way you feel about the water. 🔔 Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next one. 📷 Archival photographs courtesy of press/public archives. If you hold the rights to any image used here and would like credit or removal, please contact [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TAGS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #OffshoreSailing #SailboatRefit #StormTactics #BoatMaintenance #SailingQuestions #BeTheCaptain