A Boater's Story of Finding Meaning in Bluewater Cruising

All right guys. Uh, welcome back to another episode of the Bluewater Cruising Podcast. Uh, super excited today to have Dr. Slash Captain Brett Robowski here with me. Uh, I've known Brett for, for a while now. Hey, for maybe even over a year that we've, uh, yeah, we, over a year ago we met, uh, Brett was. One of the first, uh, students, one of the first clients we had when we first launched the Bluewater Cruising Program. Uh, he is a captain and a doctor, and he's got some bluewater cruising experience under his belt. He's got all kinds of wild and wonderful and somewhat painful stories I'm sure that he is gonna share with us, uh, around, uh, around cruising, um, and a bunch of other stuff. So, uh, Brett, I'll, I know you, you, your, your story, even leading up to cruising, uh, is, is quite an interesting one, um, in the way that you got into it and your medical background and then your background in the, I think it was like the Coast Guard auxiliary or something that you were with and you know how you went through that process and then ended up cruising. Um, I don't wanna steal your thunder on that. I want hand that over to you to, to share that. Cause I think you do a, a great job of explaining it. Um, and so, yeah, I'll pass it over to you and maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got into cruising and. Um, yeah. What brought you to it? Well, thank you. It's almost te how do I get 90 minutes into like four or three to make it exciting, but I was born in south Florida. You look at my balcony, that's, uh, the Fort Lauderdale boat show takes place right behind me. That's the International Swimming Hall of Fame tower right over there that the people jump off of. I've been living in South Florida. I've been a boater since, well, before I was driving a car, I was water skiing and taking people out. 12, 13 years old. So went boating my whole life. Tried out for the Cypress Gardens Water ski show. I didn't get in when I was 17, so I went to college instead. And you to say moved on college, medical school, uh, practicing, uh, foot and ankle surgeon podiatrist in South Florida. Originally worked for the Cleveland Clinic, set up my own office. Been doing that for quite a while and for life gets boring. You know, you have kids and you know, things get. Mundane and routine. So I said, what would be fun and exciting? I like boating. Uh, my spouse at the time was a dermatologist. She hates the sun. She hates going boating with me. So I, I, I decided, you know what, let's join the auxiliary, the Coast Guard auxiliary. It'd be fun. I'll get to hang out with boating people. And it's kind of cool to stand 15 feet under a helicopter, you know, five miles offshore. The wind is, you know, 85 knots or so under the helicopter. It's spinning you around. Hurricane force winds kind of fun. So we used to do all these fun exercises. You see the Coast Guard people come and rescue people on a sailboat or anywhere. They'd practice somewhere. Well, I was the guy they used to practice with and me and a bunch of friends, and we became good lifelong bodies. Well, one day while I was volunteering with the Coast Guard during national safe boating week in 20. The guy driving the boat had a schetoma, a blind spot. He crashed into the jetties. Going into one of the inlets here in South Florida, I was knocked unconscious, broke most of the bones in both feet, both ankles, my knee, my hip, L one, L two, L three, herniated, a bunch of discs in my neck, broken ribs. Concussion, left me about a year in a wheelchair, in and out of surgery. I finally got done. I lost my practice, my hand tremors ever so slightly. Couldn't be a surgeon anymore. Now what do I do? Well, one, I don't let anyone else drive the boat. Let me get that real, especially where they can hit stuff. I don't let anyone else go. If you can hit something, you ain't touching my boat. If we're out 20 miles offshore, you can drive all you want, but close no chance. I can't even get in a cheap Uber cuz I'm terrified of the guy driving. If I'm gonna take an Uber, it's gonna be somebody with a little more experience. So I got more into. And I have, I've owned boats most of my life, uh, power boats. I've been, uh, I have an Aquila Power. I have an Aquila Power Cat. I just, I I wanna stop you right there for a sec, just because I, I'm like, you tell me the story about how you're in the Coast Guard auxiliary, and then you guys, this guy drives into the jetty and you're in the hospital for how long? Almost a year, almost a year in the hospital from a boating accident. And your decision when you recover from that is to get more into boating? Well, I, I, true. Well, let's be reasonable. We're boaters. Okay? We're not smart people. You know, boat, we're not smart people. Smart people don't do this part. People don't leave land. I mean, if you, I can tell you, you're out there on your boat. Amazon does not show up. Uber Eats does not show up, you know? These are like big inconveniences. So we're not smart people. We're adventuresome people. And again, boat is spelled b o a t t, break out another 10,000. And we, I recognize that we've, we've, we've, we've upped that from the, the, the old school break out another thousand. Oh yeah. You've added another team. Yeah. We can thank our another t We gotta change, you know, our environment has changed. So I got out, we, I liked boating, I wanted it escapism, let's say. Okay. I mean, that's probably the ultimate level of escapism. So I was saying I had an akila power cat. I bought that boat, uh, thinking, okay, I'll put in the charter program. I'll use it six weeks a year. It'll be a lot of fun. I got delivery on it on a Sunday in Clearwater, Florida by Tampa. I helped the captain bring it across the state of Florida. I got off the boat, it went off to the BVIs. I came home. Three days later, the wife comes down with pancreatic cancer. So the next four years has spent, again, she was a dermatologist. So spent, you know, we traveled, we lived in Johns Hopkins, which is Baltimore, Florida. We lived in La Jolla, California, wherever there were treatments to try to prolong and save her, we did. Unfortunately, we lost the battle after just about four years, which is a long amount of time. But now I'm here, I am, I own a boat in the BVIs. I'm ready to start doing something. And while I had a lot of boating experience, I have a hundred ton captain's license. I've had the, for a long time master captain's license. You know, I have book smarts, I don't have practical smarts. And how do you get that is my secret to life is I can either figure it out or I can find somebody as a coach who's done it before and milk their brain. I met Keith, uh, probably five, four or five years ago, uh, at the Miami Boat Show. And then we hung out. We went to a couple events together afterwards, and him along, we got along reasonably well. And then when he started doing this class, I got intrigued and joined this. I didn't know Chris at the time. I didn't know Chris was more fun than Keith. That's at you, Keith. Just want you to know that. But you know, when you have a problem, you have a question. These guys picked up the phone, they'll, you know, they're there to be your coach, let's say through the next environment. And we're talking about things I've done. I, I originally flew to the bvi, spent two to three weeks trying to get my boat ready with the mechanics, taking it outta charter. Learning so much about what can happen, what can go wrong, how they put lipstick on a pig. You know, when they paint over rust and then it rusts again and they paint over rust again. And you're looking at rust lasagna. When you start going in and picking off stuff, you start finding things and you make sure when you buy your boat there's things you want to check out. And I break it down to there are. Items that are critical and items that aren't. Like I have three bathrooms on my boat. If one goes bad, I got two others. It isn't a mission critical item for me, but if the windless thing that pulls up the anchor doesn't work, how do I get the anchor back up? I mean, it's not a sailboat, so I don't have wees, you know, you need to have backups for everything. What can go wrong, cellinoid. So I like to approach this and Chris, and I'm sure we'll talk into that for a while. I don't know if people have seen my medical video, the thing we did about six, eight months ago on that. But you should let people do that. I hope that was valuable for people. But approach this, you know, the anal doctor brings all this equipment with him and the real, the real reality to all this is that it's none of it's gonna help me. Because I'm, if I get the injured one, nobody else knows how to do it. So the reality in medical equipment and stuff you bring with you is how do I keep you stable enough until I can get help? Yeah. And that's the purpose of the other video we did of talking about, you know, you just need to buy a day. It's a day into somebody gets to you. Yeah. There's, for the most part, unless you cross the Pacific there, there, there's a lot, there's a lot. I want, I want to kind of, uh, slow it down a bit cause there's a lot we can get into there. You've talked, you've touched on a number of different things. You know, your, your background getting into this, um, from the accident that you had to going through the cancer with your wife, losing your wife, which again, my condolences on that. That's, uh, I can't imagine that going through something like that. And I just think hearing your story, you know, every time you, I hear your story, I'm just like, you have this resilience about, Where you're just like, it doesn't matter what happens to you. You, you go through these things like almost like back to back, yet you're still, you were still like, alright, I'm gonna do this. Um, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get on the boat and I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna start cruising. You know, we haven't even touched on the most recent like, bomb Chris note. Chris knows where we're going this, but I got you thought that was bad. It get, it gets a little bit beyond that. I mean, nothing. I mean, I'm happy that she, I mean, you know, the cancer's a miserable thing and by the time you get to the end of it, her passing away is a blessing because the pain is gone. Right. But you know, you now I'm a single doctor with hair who has a couple boats. You know, it's not that tough to find people to hang out with you. I'll give you that. Sounds good. So the boat, the boat that you ended up, cuz you ended up with a boat before we, before I met you, I mean, you knew Keith, but you had a boat before I met you. That then that's, is that the same power cat that you're talking about here? Or is? Yes. That's the same power cat. Yeah. So that boat was in charter. It's the same power. Yeah. I bought it in 2017 right before I bought it in 2017. You know, and it was, I liked the concept, the power ca you know, I always like the sailing, but you know, I'm 60 years old Yeah. After I got injured. There's some strength factors that go with this. There's, you know, you know, everything looks really good when the, when the electronic wenches work, but when they don't, it's a different game. Yep. And you gotta be prepared for that. You gotta know how am I gonna handle the unexpected? Yeah. Because if you're not expecting it, it's going to happen. Guaranteed. So let's, let's talk a little bit about that, cuz I think that'll be interesting for some people. There's a lot of people that, that, uh, That have this question, should I go with a sailing catamaran or a mono hole or whatever kind of sailboat, or do I go with some sort of a powerboat, whether that's a power cat or a trawler. Um, and you've just alluded to a, to a, a couple of reasons why you did it. Is there anything else there any other reasons why you chose to go? The power cat road is pros and cons. Obviously pros and cons. If you look at all the people who have bought Flemings and outer reefs and big trawlers, they all tended to be sailors earlier in their life. So I re And so when you talk to them, why don't you buy a sailboat now? It's too much work. And you get to a point in life where you don't do it. I mean, if you're 40, you know, early, 50 year old, great shape, you know all that stuff, you like doing this stuff fine. I'm pretty mechanically inclined in a little space inside of somebody's ankle or foot. But you know, now I have to get big wrenches and big tools and. You know, and then of course you climb in the hall. I, you know, I'm not a small guy, so it's hard. You gotta do boat yoga to get into the spaces. I mean, these boats are all built in Asia by people who can fit in these little things. You know, Keith does, I mean, you watch Keith Fit in the the Room. I wanna see the video from Renee of him trying to get in and trying to get out. It'll show you that video on his webpage of him grunting and he has he fit and all those things. So it's that own issue. I think the second thing is, is that if you're planning to cross an ocean, you need a sailboat or you need a Fleming, or you need one of these explorer boats that are gonna hold 2000 gallons of fuel and then you're gonna spend a lot of money in fuel. Unless you're really rich and you've Yeah, right. Unless you've never done this before. I think when you, when you really put it out, and Keith and I did this, I think when we did the class originally, that if you were gonna stay, you know, east Coast, United States, The Bahamas, the Caribbean, Come back, you'll probably break even between a sailboat and a motorboat. Yes, you're gonna pay for fuel, but you're not gonna pay for sales. You're not gonna pay for all the blocks that are gonna go bad. And all the lines of DMA that go bad along the course of all this so breaks out. And with a boat, a motorboat you point where you want to go and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah. There isn't a lot of this weather constraint. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't, I don't disagree. We'll talk about some of my trips. Yeah, yeah. About, I I, I'd like, I'd like to dive into a little bit of that. Just, uh, and some, and you, because I know some people have questions around, even I have questions around, it's like when you do it with a powerboat, cuz I, I have a, you know, a sailing cat as well. That's how I did it. Um, but when you do with the power cat, what are you really looking at? You have a powerboat with sales. That's true. I do have two engines. Yeah. You have a powerboat with sales. Yeah. Yeah. But I sailed a lot. Um, and that's the thing I think you need to be really clear about. Just how much you actually plan to sail. Cuz I, I know people that buy sailing catamarans that don't sail them, they just motor them everywhere. And if you're gonna do that, then why, why would you just not buy the, the power cat? Um, but I do, I do have, uh, I do have some questions around like, you know what, what do you actually spend in your fuel burn to get, let's say somewhere in the Caribbean and back? Like, what are you, what are you looking at? Like, yeah, about a ga, about a gallon. I did about a gallon a mile. A gallon. A mile, okay. There's no real reason to go fast unless you have to go. Right? Okay. There's no, I'm sorry. There's no real reason to go fast unless you have to go fast. Right. So if I'm only, if I don't need to be there, I can still, I mean I can still going eight to 10 knots burning 10 gallons an hour or 10 10, you know, somewhere in that if I cut down to six or seven k. I'm getting 1.4, 1.5 miles per gallon. Nautical miles. Nautical miles per gallon. Also, be careful when you get these reports from people who sell your boats. Oh yeah. Very often they'll give you the range and the distance in stature miles, remember, it's 15% greater. Yeah. Nautical miles. All of a sudden, all of this boat gets 1.8. Be be real careful of that when you're looking to buy a boat and or use one watch, you know, the boat obviously looks much better for you stature miles. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so, you know, uh, just to keep in mind, so it's cheaper to run, relatively speaking fuels expensive. I paid, you know, at, I think my high was seven 60 a. Yeah. Okay. And that, you know, that's pretty high when you, that's super high when you start putting in a lot of fuel. Yeah, right. I mean, now it's, today it's running, you know, five something here in, uh, Fort Lauderdale, and I'm sure The Bahamas, I heard it was 6 60, 6 70. So it isn't that much less, but it's still a lot of money for fuel. Yeah. The dock space looks cheap after you by the fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. So, okay, so maybe, um, you, you, you, me, you mentioned a couple times this, uh, this medical, um, workshop that we did together within, in, in the course. Um, and that's inside of our course. Um, but I think the people that are watching this, they, some of them, well this goes up on our YouTube, so those people aren't necessarily in the course. So, um, for the benefit of the people that aren't in our course. Do you wanna share really quickly, I don't wanna spend too much time on it, um, but just a couple of things that you've learned along the way. High level stuff that's like. This is okay. The, the, these are the do not, uh, leave homes without, or the do not leave homes without doing when it comes to cruising and, and healthcare and being prepared. Okay. Okay. My position as a physician is I gotta keep you alive and stable until help shows up. I mean, in some capacity, somebody falls and slips their back. You need to be able to splint them. Somebody breaks an arm, a leg. You need to be able to splint them. You need to wrap up an open wound so it doesn't get infected. You want to be able somebody, you know, passes out. You want to be able to start an intravenous. I also help teach the m medical person in command course at, um, M P T Medic, um, maritime Professional Training here in Fort Lauderdale, and I would find some sort of one day class or two day class how to start an iv. Again, as I, as I said in this other workshop we did, the best thing to do is to bring a doctor or nurse with you on your voyage. Best safest thing you can do is bring somebody who already knows what they're doing. The big things you're never gonna say. I mean, I had, you know, bottles of Novocaine, lidocaine to make things numb. I had sutures, I had wound care kits. I brought things for punctured wounds of the lungs. I mean, I had my medical bag. Looks like most people's carryon bag when they go to the airport. It was stuffed with stuff. I have an a, e, d one of those automatic, you know, defibrillators put on your chest and yell. Clear. I defibrillators. I had a, an intubation kit so I could put a tube down your throat. The funniest thing is, is that none of that stuff's gonna save me because if it ever went bad, who's gonna do it to me? Yeah. I'm kind of stuck. Yeah, it's a, it's okay. When the last wife was a doctor, I could probably survive. So you can have the gear, but if you don't have the training, there's no point in really having the gear, which is why you say that the be the best thing is to, to have a doctor or a nurse on board. Maybe the second best thing is to have a doctor, a nurse. A nurse in the buddy boat pod that you're traveling in, buddy boat. Uh, and the third best thing is if you don't have that, have a doctor or nurse on, in somewhere in shore support that you're able to call. Right. And have some training. I mean, we live. If we live in a world today with your Iridium phone, you can call anybody and you know, if you have starlink or K V H or one of those systems, you're gonna video with somebody so you can show them what's going on and they can help you. You just need to not be squeamish, which is actually hard cuz some people see blood and they pass out and some people see things and you know, people step up. It's interesting, but when I was at the Veteran's Hospital as a resident, we used to track on the board who would faint Marines, army, air Force, and it was a thing. Marines by far fainted more than anyone else. When you drew blood on 'em, they were the ones, and they would tell you stories about bayonets and stuff in World War II in Korea that they would do. It was strange that they were the ones who would pass out more commonly, almost two to one Air Force was second worst. And all that. It'd be interesting to do a study on why that is. Well, you know, everybody's different. You have the tough alpha male ego, high adrenaline, high vi, see something, oh shit. And it's a lot different when it's you. Oh yeah. I mean, if you're not used to seeing blood, you're not used to seeing blood. And few people are used to seeing blood, you know, so a fireman or policeman, those kind of people have seen these sort of things. Right. The great news about the cruising community, especially if you stay with, there's a lot of boats. There's somebody who can do everything. Yeah. You will find, you go to Georgetown Exuma, I mean, you know everything from getting your taxes done to your teeth pole. Hopefully not by the same guy, but it's, there's somebody there who can do everything. There's a dentist, there's a lot of pilots. There's, you know, I was shocked. Uh, somebody who owned an oil, uh, a gold mine who had the coolest boat. He had the only boat. I always, he had a leopard 45. Tricked out more than anything I've ever seen. I should send Chris the pictures. He had a cup warmer to keep his coffee cups warm because he didn't wanna pour espresso into a cold cup. He had a Malay cup holder, m i e l e, the expensive brand. His boat actually looked like it was a foot underwater because he had so much weight on it. Oh, that's funny. And you contact me, I'll give you his, uh, you can follow him. He's actually now heading for the Panama Canal after having his engines changed, he had 'em upgraded because they weren't strong enough for all the weight he put in his boat. Right, right. They do these things. Okay, so back to our medical thing. Let's get to the things you're gonna see. You're gonna, people don't think sunburns insect bites. These are things that you're gonna deal with every single day, especially if crew. Sea sickness, I think we talked about in the class, you should have, if there's a medi, a treatment for sea sickness bias. Because as you know, Bo nine might work on somebody, Dramamine on somebody else, vodka on somebody else who knows what it is. But you want to have everything, the wristbands, the patch behind the ears, the scopolamine, all that stuff. You know, finding a doctor who you're friendly with, who will write you a stack of prescriptions and then go to something like Good R. If you're in the States, go to Good Rx and look up each one of those and say, which place can I get all these prescriptions the cheapest? Because insurance isn't gonna cover 'em cuz you don't have a diagnosis for this problem yet. Right. So, you know, you can find a lot of this stuff generic and stuff and you don't need a lot. I mean, you need some things to, you know, stop your stomach from movie you get, you get stomach poising. You want some bentel to slow down your stomach. Things you need a couple, you need two or three antibiotics, band-aids, waterproof dressings, you know, things you think you need a lot of, there's a lot of sources and I think Chris, we worked on a list together of a whole bunch of stuff. Glass has, yeah. Yeah, we, we got a list for a first aid kit to put a first aid kit together, a proper first aid kit. Um, and there's the sources that you can buy those just off the shelf too. Uh, so, okay. I mean, that's, that's awesome, man. I mean, that's a really great, just lots of gems and golden nuggets of, of, uh, things to consider and think about medical wise. I wanna come back really quick to your story. So, um, you, you know, you, you, you went through all, you went through these, these challenging experiences. You got the boat. Um, and then what, what was it like, what, what was it that made you decide to work with us? Just outta curiosity as far as, you know, you had your boat already and you'd had this co guard experience, had a captain's license. Yeah. Yeah. And I had a captain's license and I had all this, yeah. Why would I do this? I'm a firm believer that success leaves clues. Okay. So I wanna find somebody, you know, you can either figure out how to do something and bang your head against the wall 10,000 times and you will figure it out. Doesn't matter what the problem is, you will figure it out. Or you can find somebody who knows the road ahead. They've been there. And I think the ability, time versus money is, you know, money you will be able to earn, you know, the government will take it from you, inflation will kill it. The stock will fall, but your time, you never get back again. And until you get hurt and you re and you have a loss of a, a dear partner, you don't realize how precious every moment is. And while, yes, I could learn and I could go crew on a couple people's boats and get a thousand or 2000 miles that way, that's gonna take time where I can accelerate it is effectively, you know, learning is, they think knowledge is learning from your mistakes and wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others. And I'd much rather become wise learning what Chris and Keith did wrong. I mean, you know, at some point Chris and Keith didn't know what they were doing. It's very, I mean, we're all still learning. Um, right. Every, everybody's still learning. That's the great thing. I, I think, I mean, to me, it's one of the coolest things about the sailing, the, the whole lifestyle of bluewater cruising is you, you could do this for the rest of your life and never figure it all out. You're just constantly learning more about better ways to do it, more efficient, ways to do it, more comfortable, ways to do it, more cost effective ways to do it. What do you value in this lifestyle? What do you not value out of it? So, I'd like to believe that everybody's an absolute master at a very small slice of life. Yes. And if I could dent, if I could add a couple more slices to my knowledge by having Chris's brain and Keith's brain and trout men's brain from Delos, like a bunch of other people's, I get a nice piece of cake. Yeah. Or pie. Yeah. That's a great way to look at it. So you know you're never gonna know it all. And as soon as you think you know it all, God will mess with you. That's very, very true. That's in my experience as well, the instant that I think that I've got something figured out, the plan is, uh, it's like a sledgehammer to the face. Hey, you shouldn't be thinking that. Okay. So you, um, yeah, you came through the course and then you headed out. So we start how I, how I start to do this? So I got my boat, I brought it back, I went to Tortola. I spent oh, couple weeks there figuring it out. I flew some friends to come join me for a ride back. Okay. And I've done some delivery captain work in the past, but that was, you know, you won 24 7. You know, you sit on the boat and normally they're new boats, so nothing goes wrong with them. Not always, but nothing normally. And if it something goes wrong with them, it ain't your problem. Mm-hmm. You, you get towed in, you fuck show up somewhere, you fly out and somebody else has to fly and fix. And help deliver the boat or something and goes that way. When it's your boat, you have to be responsible for each one of the steps along the way. You're responsible for everything that goes on on the boat. You're worried about, you know, trying to go to sleep and let somebody else drive is terrifying the first time you do that, especially if there's near shit you can hit when it's your boat. You know, when it's your boat. It's a different thought. I mean, on a cruise ship, I don't worry too much. I assume they know what they're doing, but we, but in the last two years, we've had, what, three cruise ships run a ground in a Dominican Republic. You had one. You know, we've had a bunch of cruise ship people who know what they're doing, no longer doing it anymore because they really didn't know what they were doing. Mm-hmm. So you can't always depend on anyone else. So you're getting ready to leave. What do you need? I need everything that's mission. What is mission critical? Well, I realize I got two engines, so if one goes bad, I can still make it on the other engine, so I gotta, they're kind of redundant. The fuels were separate. I'm not worried that much about that. The bathrooms, as I talked about, I got a backup. I needed something. What if the, I can't pull the anchor up? What if the air condition goes bad? What if the refrigeration system goes bad? Uh, which I, which was problem number one on my trip. I had the refrigeration guy come out, check my refrigeration system, my isotherms, they said they were perfect. He charged me $500 to tune 'em up or whatever. And we left from Fort Lauder. They had to go to bi. And the second day, the air, the electric, it stopped working. Now, fortunately from Chris in class, I realized I needed a backup. I bought one of those Dometic things as a. But I was playing to be out for a couple months. That's not, I mean, I got thousand dollars in meat probably sitting there and I'm trying, I had a part flown in. We, I tried to be my own mechanic, put it back together, didn't work. So I actually came home from Bimini back to Fort Lauderdale, back across the Gulf Stream, back checking through customs. Uh, and my boat's not as far unregistered. My boat was made in China, and if you bring it to the United States, there's a 25% tariff added to it. So it would cost $200,000 in taxes to make it a US registered vessel. So it's registered in Jamaica, but if you come back into the US you have to go through that whole process, which is a lot more convoluted. Yeah, it's a whole other video on how to get through that system. But you know, now you leave again, so back here for four or five days, you lose a weather window. I get the mechanics to come fix my refrigeration and off we go back to bi. And good time. And then from Bii we move off to, you know, crossover to the Berry Islands over the ba Bahama Flats. Beautiful. Uh, I got some videos that, I mean really breathtaking, you know, you can't put into words the experience of like, I did this. Mm-hmm. This is really a cool feeling. And there's a couple moments along life when you do that. I remember the first time I pulled into Nassau Harbor where all the cruise ships go and I'm driving to park my boat in Atlantis. There was a really cool feeling. I kinda wish my dad was alive cuz we used to go on cruisers when I was a little kid and now I'm actually driving my own boat into that area. I mean, you know, sometimes you get to feel that vic ring of de of victory. First time you don't see land behind you when you turn around is a pretty scary thing. Yeah. I used to, I told everyone on the boat, listen, we're never more than two or three miles from land. And they go, how can that be? I said, look down. You know, we're never that far away. It's all relative to your attitude. You can either wake up in the morning, decide to have a good day, or you can wake up and listen to other people and have a lousy day. And as you get a little bit older, you decide not to give control of your life to other people. So you go and you enjoy all these things and I don't know if you want to go into it. You see things, you know, you spend more money than you think you're gonna spend. But I, once I got there, I wound up buddy boating with all these guys who are sailboats. I met, uh, some YouTube people. I met some non YouTube people. I met some ludicrously wealthy super yacht people who would let, would come on my boat for the afternoon to ride around and have their super yacht of 160 feet catch us later because they had more fun with me than they did on their super yacht. Now, I asked them if we could switch, and that didn't happen yet. So who knows one day. But we, you have a good time. Yeah. There's something about being. At the helm, even though you never drive here, both the autopilot does. Yeah. You know, having two autopilots, that seems a little crazy for me being in The Bahamas and where I was planning to go. But if I had to cross an ocean, that's a redundant system. You absolutely need, like how you have to have a way to fix a sale the way you have to have, I had extra water pumps, I had extra starter pumps. I had, I mean, I probably have $5,000 in pieces of equipment I've never touched and never used. And yeah, you're prepared. That's what insurances were. Yeah. You're prepared. And then when you get to Georgetown, somebody always wants the parts that you brought. Yeah. And then you're in this thing. What I kind of, I don't wanna sell it to them, but yet the same token, I don't want to give it up. Yeah. But I feel bad for them that they need it. But, but you're prepared. I I don't wanna be without it. Yeah. I don't wanna be without it. So it's like, okay, when can you get me a replacement part? How long will it take you? Can I go 10 days without it? Okay, here's my starter motor, or here's, you know, the backup part for the outboard engines, or here's the, you know, the, the cooling system or the water filter system or all those things, you know, keep the things that keep you alive. Yeah. That's important stuff. Yeah. So you, um, you're always prepared. So you did it, you were out there. I love I love what you said about that. I do. I love what you said about that, that there's moments in your life where you have those feelings and those are, I mean, they don't come that often. Uh, you know, for some of us that go out and do this stuff, they come more often than others, I think. But those are the moments. Well, think of what your life is at the end of your life. I, I kind of believe it's, it's, uh, a bunch of pictures, not a video, and there's gonna be those moments. You remember the day you got married, you remember more the day you got divorced, but that's a whole other story. You remember your chi first child being born. You remember the drive home from the hospital with the baby the first time, scariest drive of your life ever. These are moments that you will never forget. And I think the first time you leave sight of land on your boat mm-hmm. Is an experience like shit. Now the problem is if you don't know what you're doing, you're terrified. You can't let anyone know it. Yeah. So on the inside you're, yes, we did it in the, oh shit. Yo. Yo. I'm aim, you know, the first time you aim for an island and you hope it's really there. Yeah. That it shows up over the horizon at some point the right, the chart shows it's there. Everything looks like it should be there, but you don't really know if somebody screwed with the GPS stuff while you were gone and Russia or somebody played with the satellites and you're following your GPS coordinate so you think you're there and it's not. I mean, I remember when Keith was in. Oh, somewhere in Southeast Asia or something. And he's showing the chart that he's writing right over an island somewhere. Yeah. Cuz the, the charts aren't that good. The GPS isn't that good. It's like where I live you also learn how to Yeah. Where you live. How, how to read the water. Yeah. I mean you learn to see what the water looks like. You, other thing you need, if you wear glasses, you better have two pairs. You better have two more than two, one or two pair of sunglasses. Especially if they're prescription, you're going to the third world. They ain't gonna be able to get 'em for you. Yeah. You know, it's not like you're going to places where you can get things and then to have things flown into you. I meant a lot. I mean it's kind of funny, but I have a bunch of friends now who are still stuck in Exuma, I shouldn't say stuck. They're loving the life in Exuma, but I keep mailing them part. I've had seven different starlings sent to my house apartment. Really? Yeah. And I then I bring them over to Maker's Air or Daniel Key Air, and they fly 'em over to The Bahamas for them. Because they can't get 'em any other way. Yeah. And now everybody's switching to starlink and Yeah. Yeah. The whole, the whole Caribbean is switching to starlink. It's funny. Um, so, um, we've talked a bit about, you know, the, the challenges you had getting into this, the amazing experiences that you've had in, in the life. Um, let's chat a bit about where you're at now, because Keith and I talk about often, you know, that cruising is a series of highs and lows. There is these amazing, wonderful moments that are these, like, I love the way that you put that, these picture moments that you'll remember when, when you die, you'll go back and you'll look at like, you know, I, I love that I did this, you know, it's the best thing that I ever did in my life. Um, and, but in order to get there, you have to deal with these. And I think that a lot of people don't, often, they underestimate the potential severity of the lows that they can go into when they get into this life, and so that's why I want you to share a bit about where you are at and some of the lows that you're, you've gone through and are going through recently. Okay. Well, concurrently, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen? Your boat catches on fire. Sure. You get a check, you fight later. You get a check from the insurance company and you start again with what you've learned. Yep. Okay. Then you then to me, the lowest thing is do is something happens to your boat that you're not covered for. Yep. Now it's a whole other story. I was going between ex Exuma and a Lutheran. We were buddy boating with a sailboat, and so I'm. 1900, 2000 RPMs, pushing six knots, no big deal. Beautiful day. Two foot seas, uh, coming off the quarter beam. You know, I think we're sitting on the front drinking, uh, pina coladas or something, and all of a sudden one of the engines overheats blows up. Something doesn't work, right. Smoke is coming out of it. I go back, none of the alarms went off. I look at the gauges. They're not everything. The boat's getting. So first thing I do is I turn off the port engine and I realize that the temperature's getting even more warm. Now, I don't know if the gauge is bad or what it is, so I stop the, i, the other one in neutral. I restart the engines. Maybe it's cooling to go in. I climb down into, you know, the, going into the engine room is fine when it, the boat's cool, try to go in there when it's hot. Mm-hmm. And you don't wanna touch anything and you're wearing shorts. That's why the mechanics all wear long pants if you didn't know that. So it's an interesting thing. I would, I would keep a pair of like scrub pants or sweatpants nearby. You could throw 'em on if you have to get in your engine room when it's hot. Uh, lesson learned. And you do that. And I realize that this smoke the water, the radiator cap is smoking and all that stuff. So, well darn it, I'm turning off the engine. I keep the hood up. I try to get the temperature down, and now I'm halfway between Exuma and Eleuthra. Which is, you know what, a 45 mile ride. So I'm 20 miles from land. I have a buddy boat, you know, I can get me on the radio and we're talking. And so I go on one engine, we get into the Maria. Now how do you park a canand with one engine? It's difficult. Bumper boats. It's difficult. Bumper boats. Yeah, so, so the girlfriend is, you know, getting there and I'm telling her, you know, you gotta throw the line. And we practice throwing the line. We did all these things before. I said I got one shot to make the throw here cuz I turned the boat. The wind's blowing me the wrong way. You gotta get it to the person on the dock and they gotta tie it fast so that the wind can push the boat back in. So she stands there, she gets ready, she throws the line and she misses and she goes, I broke a nail. And I'm like, well grab the line. You gotta roll it in the throat real quick. She goes, but my nail's broken. I'm like, I don't care. Which was, I think our only fight on the trip was like, throw the effing line. So eventually we got to dock and all that. So now you gotta, you're in the third world. I'm in South Capu, which is southern part of all Luther. It's a beautiful place. Uh, when your boat works, when your boat doesn't work and you're there for a while now you gotta find somebody who can help you. Well, they help, they find me the local mechanic guy and oh, it's the cooling pump. So he takes the thing off and they can't fix anything in the Luther, so they have to fly it to Nassau. Oh my God. So $600 to flight apart to Nassau. It comes back. I think they spray painted it. I don't think they did much other than doing that. He hooks it on. We start everything. We put coolant. Engine works fine. Everything's going. I'm excited. We start going again after I li I let an idle for about two, three hours. Everything looks good. So we're ready to go. We pull out of the marina. I'm feeling good. I'm like, okay. I had my one hiccup. Mm, for this trip. Well, about 35, 40 minutes later now, sirens are going off on the boat. Ah, ah. Warning overheating. Engine lock, you know, error code. Well, they give you like 30 error codes. What the hell do they mean? I don't know. You know, at that moment in time, shut off the engine, wound up the whole thing, locked up, lost all. We check the oil. You check the oil, you can see it's now creamy, which means that the coolant leaked into the oil. So we go, we get, we come back into NASA on the one en or back into Eluthra on the one engine. I call the other guy, the mechanic. He meets me at the dock. A nice guy. I mean, he means, well, he says, oh, the header, you did something. You warped it. So they take off the head of the engine and this is 260 horsepower engine. I mean, it looks like heart surgery. I don't know what they're doing, but there's a lot of parts. And they do that. They take this whole part, they ship it to nasa. Now they only want cash. Nobody will take credit cards. Nobody will take a check. Nobody will take, there's no other way to do it. So, you know, you bring a c a thousand bucks, 2000, $3,000 to cash with you. Well, that goes away really quickly when you start getting repairs. So now they tell, well, there's a bank in, um, one of, is it, uh, new Rock, red Rock, or somewhere in El Luther, one of the, about 40 minutes away. So you rent a car, you go to the bank, you want to get money. I said, I, I wanna let me wire you money, all that stuff. He goes, you need an account. Oh my goodness. I said, okay. I said, okay, I'll open an account. He says, you have to be a resident. I said, well, I'm not a resident. How do I get money? I said, can I wire it to your account? You're the bank and gimme money? No, we can't do that anymore. And this is about the same time that Sam Bakeman freed with the FTX scandal is going on in Nassau. And so all the banks aren't doing anything. So I'm like, what do you mean? You know, I go to the marina. How can you help me out? He goes, we, we don't carry much cash, you know, everything's done, so I can't use my ATM card. Doesn't work. You know, the credit cards don't work in their machines. They, I called the American Express and they said, yeah, you can put, ill work in an ATM machine in Nassau. I said, it's an 80 mile swim. How is that gonna help me? So I have no cash. So I realized the mechanics were doing all this stuff. I wound up flying in my own mechanic from Fort Lauderdale with cash. I kept, every day I can only Venmo him so much money. So I got him $15,000 and come fly back. So I have some money to do things with. So he comes, he tries to work with the guy. They can't get the engine started. They, it, it, I dunno, hydro locked or hydro sealed or whatever the name is. Their thing won't move even after they put the new thing on. The question is, did they do it correctly? There's a timing off the timing chain. You know, I, Chris and I sent Chris information as we were going through this, as I was ready to, uh, you know, do like Cortez and burn the boats, uh, as you were ready to pop the sea cocks and let her go. That's it. That's it. My luck, only half of it would sink and it would have nothing. So we finally do it. I have to get the, you know, nobody can repair it. I have to get the boat home. Well, $22,500 later, um, yes, 2, 2, 5, 0, 0, uh, the boat comes back. Now here you're on this gorgeous cruise. It took six days or seven days to get a weather window. And you know, you're sitting there, they're towing you. It's 10,000 bucks a day. Best cruise you've ever done. Uh, most expensive, clearly I've ever done. You get back into the marina, you need two boats to get down the new river here in Fort Dale. So now I have to get people to show up and tell me what's wrong with the engine. You know, how do I fix this? How do I move forward? And of course I contacted the insurance company and they, you know, send out inspectors, but nobody's done anything until we know what's wrong with it. Well, it's two and a half weeks till I can get a mechanic to show up and look at the problem. So they look at the problem, they put the computer into the engine and no, there's no error codes that show up. Nothing is determined what's wrong. So nobody really knows what's wrong with the engine at this point. But he says, well, we can, the only thing we can do is we can redo the block and we can put the thing back together and the block will cost you $25,000 and it'll take 180 hours of labor at 180 bucks an hour. So $32,000 in labor. I said, sir, you're gonna take a new block, put all the old parts on it for $60,000 and not know what's wrong with the engine. I said, how much are new engines? That's kind of crazy. So new engines, they originally told me were about 25, 20 $6,000 a piece. And I'm like, well it's a lot easier to spend $25,000 than spend $60,000. So of course the engine isn't available. You know, my boats are 2017, they stopped making that engine in 2019. You can't get it. There's none on the market. You go, there was a place in uh, valley that had one, but to ship it from B is six months. And who knows if it works and there's no warranty or anything from it. So the only smart decision is buy a new engine, but they don't make it. So you have to buy the next si, which is 270 horsepowers. Well, the 270 horsepower won't work with the electronic control thing with the other engine that I have in the Starbird side. So I have to buy two engines. They tell me originally $50,000, 55,000. This is at the Miami Boat Show. I meet with the Volvo app, Penta people, and they tell me 50,000, $55,000. And I said, well, at least I'll be able to sell the engine that nobody else has. Somebody else might need it. At some point I should be able to sell it for the cost of the labor to put in the engines, you know, 10, 12, $15,000, whatever that labor cost is gonna be. So about two weeks go by. They're working on the paperwork. They're working on the paperwork. I don't know how long it takes to do this kind of paperwork. It seems like you fill out a form and your engine shows up and they eventually said, uh, we figured it out. It's gonna be $78,000. I said, 78,052. Don't look like they're in the same family. Well, you know, there were cost rises and all this. Well, they know they have me. I have, I have no other choice. He says, well, your controllers that you have won't work with it. And you, the screen you have, oh my God, won't work the new electronics. And you're getting the stuff and it's like, You know, at the end of the day, I just wrote it. I just wired money. I says they write a check, but now you have to wire money and for $78,000 and I don't have the engines. And then I saw the guy at the Palm Beach Boat Show, which was last weekend from Volvo, and I said, has anybody why I'm paying in advance? Do we know if the engines work? He goes, what do you mean? I said, has anybody turned them on? Started 'em, make sure they were, oh, we don't do that until after it's installed. I said, so if I now pay the installation, have to have my boat towed to a marina two, two tugboats to move it, have them lift it, put the new engines in, put it in the water, and then hit the start button and it doesn't start. I said, what happens? Then? He says, well, then you have a warranty issue. I said, what does that mean? He says, well, you know, you well, we'll figure out what's wrong. We'll fix it. I said, are you paying the labor costs and the dockage costs and all that? No, I said, so if the engine doesn't work, I just bought, I'm on the hook for the whole thing. And then you'll do an insurance claim to your warranty and hopefully they'll cover the problem. That's the world. It is when you have to get a new boat. So I've hit now the low or the low and you know, the good news is I'll have a five year warranty on two new engines. The engine won't be the next problem. It's gonna be the generator of the water maker. It's gonna be something else. It'll be some other pro, the, the washer dryer, but I know the engines are good. So I've taken a mission critical thing and I know that's gonna work. Am I excited to go out and boat again? I hope I get there again. I'm kind of, I'm suffering the knife in the chest wound from this like Yeah. Everyone taking advantage of you. It's, yeah. You know, between everything happening, I'll probably be a hundred, $125,000 into this problem and people say, oh, you got rich people problems. Well, maybe I was rich when this whole story started. I ain't rich anymore. The guy, look at the stock market. The game has drastically changed. The value of the boat has precipitously dropped 20, 30,000 or 20, 30%. I mean, the market is a different place out there. Try to park your boat. They want four to $6,000 a month to park your boat here in Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. So you know you're got a boat that you're parking, you can't use it, and you're kind of sitting there trying to hope you know, what can you do? There's no option. Now, will the insurance cover it? You know, yesterday I found out that they want a diver to look at the boat. What the world's a diver gonna do. They'll let them spend money on a diver. You know, I'm sure at the end of the day when you read through these insurance policies, they have all these things about mechanical problems. And unfortunately, mechanical, if you get hit from the outside world, it's probably covered. If you hit a reef, it's probably covered if you. You have the boat engine overheat, like in your car, if your car engine overheated and melted, nothing covers that. Mm-hmm. It's not part of your auto insurance. So you're in those things and it, I, I mean, I can see if there's a ne a negligent, an alarm went off. I didn't put coolant in, I didn't do things that were appropriate, but they found there were no engine errors. So, right. I, I sit kind of that way. So after towing the boat, it's sitting couple, about three miles the other way over my back. Uh, it doesn't fit where, where my intrepid is here. I, and I'm hoping to get it fixed and I hope to get the love of going out there again. I probably will have to get reinfected by listening to more Keith and uh, Chris stuff and watch more YouTube videos and get the bug again and go. Right. Or I'm just gonna wind up on cruise ships where it's somebody else's problem that's slightly different on a cruise ship. But what, um, I mean out of all of that, what, you know, what would you say are your biggest lessons learned attitude? You can either wake up and be really pen for like 20 minutes. I was pissed off. Yeah. I was like, oh, when the second boat, when it went and I had to get towed in, I lost a hat cuz I threw it overboard. Damn. You know, the four letters superlatives came out of me, was pretty big. And I said, okay, how's this gonna affect it? What's great about this? How can I, you know, there's gotta be some silver lining in this and you know, I got to meet some of the dumbest people I've ever met. It makes everyone else look. Which I think is exciting. I watch things get done. I spent more time in a marina. I got bit by the biggest mosquito I've ever seen in my life. That never would've happened otherwise, and I'm not sure. Those are the silver lining things. You live life, right? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yeah. And that's really the essence to it. If you, if it doesn't kill you, the next time it happens, it, you're ready for it. Yeah. So I have such tough in intestinal fortitude that, you know, you can have an engine blow up. I mean, that's never gonna bother me again. Yeah, yeah. You've been through it. Now, people would say, why didn't you, why didn't you come back with one engine? That was like the biggest complaint of everyone. Oh, just come back on one engine. I said, if you leave the marina on one engine in a vessel that's not seaworthy, you're not covered. If you could have sunk or something could have happened along the way, you have zero coverage. You made a poor nautical decision. Now if you leave in a sailboat, With an engine, you have two, you know, your boat had three forms of propulsion, two engines in a sail. As long as you have two of 'em, like you would never leave if you had no engine. Yet there are sailboats that have no engines that'd leave all the time. Yeah. You know, but it wouldn't be seaworthy vessel if you left with both engines. And those are those little clauses in the insurance policy. Yeah. I'd encourage you to really read 'em. I didn't read my policy well enough, or I would've said, why in the, of course I want this covered and that covered. Right now the reality is, is I didn't have a say in it. Yeah. You know, it's not, it's very much, it's not a buyer's market when it comes to insurance. You're very blessed that they'll even waive their hand over you and give you some coverage. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And And boating is not for poor people. No. At least bluewater cruising is clearly not for people who don't have some extra means on the side. Yeah. Prepare for losing everything and if you're okay with that, then Dan, get out there. Because you're not gonna lose everything. It's gonna be better if you plan for the worst, you'll be ready for anything. Sh less than that. Yeah. Um, okay, so you talked a bit about, you know, where, where you're at right now, which is not, you're not in the highs, you're in the lows dealing with a big problem. Um, you know, and Yeah. One of the worst problems you can deal with, which is a, is a catastrophic engine failure. Um, probably the worst problem you can deal with on a power cat. Um, yeah. Cuz it's yeah. Short of sink, but sinking. Sinking would've been better. Would've been better Cause the boat would've been covered. Yeah. A fire would've been better. Yeah. I would've got a new boat. I'd be, I already be having my new boat. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you, you gotta take what you have. I remember Keith called me up and I think he was in, uh oh, Saudi Arabia or somewhere. He called me up, he goes, oh, you'll get over it. It ain't gonna be that bad. And how long ago? The story he goes, Well, maybe it's gonna be bad for a while, but then you'll get over it. Yes, it, yeah, you're in it, man. So I, I do find the brotherhood of the Bluewater Cruising Group, and especially the, the program you guys have put together, because I think we all feel like hindered spirits on the same mission. Amazing. And I think we feel relatively blessed to have your experience and then you now have this, you know, hundreds of people who have shared their life experience and their little intricacies that my story about the engine might help somebody else. I would never had the opportunity of having intersection with. Yeah, absolutely would. So I think the collective entity, the collective entity of the, you know, it takes a village is really what makes this exciting. You know, I get calls all the time from people I met out. Boating and boatings are the friendliest people in the world. Everybody wants to help each other and nobody cares what your background is. Whether you're the school teacher or you're the guy who owns a gold mine, I met, I the guy with a huge a hundred and seventy, sixty five foot yacht who wants to be a sailor now. I mean, he put a, he bought a 70 sun after riding with me and he says, I'm never gonna put the sales up, but in case it'll look really good in the pictures. So I told him, I think you're gonna put 'em up. And he says, well, yeah, I'll hire a crew. There you go to do this. So I, I think you gotta be prepared. The tools you need to have, I mean, I have thousand dollars in tools Keith talked me into, you know, things you wouldn't think of magnets to pick things up that you dropped. Nobody talks about that. You know, you're dealing with some screw or some washer now you can't reach it. And of course I bought stainless steel screws and they don't come up with a magnet. Yeah. So I had to buy grabbers, so. Okay. Um, so I mean, you've been through a lot in getting into this, getting going. You've experienced a lot of high, you've had some good times, uh, some great times, and now you, you you're in some of the lows. We don't get to pick what happens to us. Um, you know, things we can, we can influence it. And I believe, I, I, I mean, outside of bluewater cruising, I just believe in general, like we have very little control on as to what happens in our lives. We can try and influence the direction that we go, um, to the best of our ability, but ultimately we're on this ride and things are gonna show up in our life. And what we can control is our attitude and how we deal with them. Right. Right. You wanna mitigate the stuff you can mitigate, but the stuff you can't. Attitude. Don't ride the wrong direction on a highway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll get, you'll in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. You've got influence over that. Yeah. You don't wanna do stupid stuff. You don't wanna do stupid stuff. But there's enough stupid people out there. I don't know who, who, from your class or somewhere I read it, it was like, boating is doing repairs in exotic locations. Can we talk about that? Yeah. Uh, right. And it's a big thing. Now the question is, are you the repair kind of guy? Are you the person who, am I the person who, who's gonna get in there? Or am I the person who's gonna call somebody? Yes. I'd rather, you know, it's weird that I used to think my hands were important when I operated, but now I don't do that. So I, but I still think my hands are important or I don't have the strength I once had. I don't have the agility I once had. So some of these things are not easy. And these boats were built by people who were five feet, one who can squeeze into parts that the rest of us can't get into. And there was one where Keith had to change his air compressors, air condition, air. Remember some videos of that. Right. If he didn't have kids, he'd be hot. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He, he had people who were small enough to do the job. Yeah. But you would think when you go to buy a boat, start thinking about how you're going to, how do I get to the mission critical air conditions and mission critical item. Maybe you want to carry a backup air conditioner. You can plug in with an external vent, which I did. I bought one for $160 at Home Depot because air condition was a mission critical. It sat in the cabinet. I never turned it on. Yeah. So, so having gone through what you've gone through, the highs and the lows, what would be, if you had to summarize things into like one piece or two pieces of advice or suggestions for people that wanna go bluewater cruising, um, what would be, what would be the big things? There was, uh, somebody who wrote something, I can't remember which philosopher says, if you wait for all the traffic lights to be green before you leave your house, you're not gonna go anywhere. And I think, I don't remember who said it, but in essence, if you stayed home, shit's gonna happen. I mean, you know, if you stayed home and you know, you know, you get to 60 years old, you know, every week you get a phone call about some friend who has a, a disease, has cancer, gotten a car accident broke. A hip life is going to happen for you. So you might, you know, there's no better time than now. And if you wait again for everything to be working with you, there's no perfect time. I know, I know so many people who spent their whole patience of mine, who spent their whole career saving, saving, saving. They're gonna retire. And when they retire, they're gonna do this. And as soon as they retire, a spouse gets sick. Somebody comes down with a disease, a kid, a grandchild is born prematurely. All of a sudden, all your assets now go to some other place you weren't planning on. Yeah. And they said, did you wanna make God laugh? Tell her your plants. And, you know, so I just can't imagine living your life with the idea that, you know, why, why not? Try what I mean? What if you wait for everything to be perfect? It's never gonna happen. Yeah. If you want a perfect boat, get a, get a canoe. Okay. Because they're pretty much perfect. They don't sit and if they sink, you turn the water out, you start again. Fair enough, no engines. You know, there's noth You want something that can go, nothing can go wrong. Something is going to go wrong and you just wanna try to mitigate all the things that you can take care of. Have a bunch of batteries for your satellite phone. Know the phone numbers or who you're gonna call. Make sure you have somebody at home who's watching you on, you know, get one of the, either predict winds, monitoring system or uh, Garmin's thing so people know where you are. Send float plans. You know, you don't wanna wind up where God forbid they have to take you off in a helicopter because something happened and leave your boat somewhere. Mm-hmm. I mean, how many boats are left a year to float? Yeah. Yeah. Many. And that goes on, that goes on quite a bit. So you wanna mitigate your expenses. And again, if you have, let's take a number. You have a million dollars, don't buy a boat more than 400,000. Yeah. Because if you lost it, you can still live. Okay. But if you buy an $800,000 boat with your million dollars and something happened and you had problems with it, you're in trouble. And you know, you know, Walmart got rid of the people who sit there, who say, welcome, welcome to Walmart with the, uh, you know, the vests on. See, it's hard to find those good, happy jobs. Awesome. Awesome, man. Um, yeah, I, I don't, I don't really have any other questions. Um, I think that that's, uh, it's a good place to wrap her up. Uh, anything else that you want to add that you'd like to share? Well, I would say that I would like to see this environment become more bidirectional. I mean, when I was in your founding group of classes, there's still a couple people I keep in track with. I visited one of 'em when I was in Puerto Rico and I was driving through there and we went out to lunch. I think we sent you pictures. With Josh and I, it was a great thing, but that experience seems to dwindle as time goes on and whatever we can do to keep updating. I know that, you know, time constraints are a big entity, but you don't actually have to be there. There might be somebody in one of your classes who's a master mechanic in something who could help somebody out, or, you know, I get calls from people who have medical issues all the time. We're all happy to help everybody out. I mean, I think that's the essence of this cruising community. And you know, again, if you're in a power boat, you go straight. Yeah. You don't have to go around stuff. Yeah. You just don't go as far. Yeah. So they, they're different worlds. And what's interesting is people on sailboats, like spending time on powerboats and people on powerboats, like spending time on sailboats. That's true. You know, there's, people do tend to move and it's seeing you. You know, you ever watch little kids play soccer? They all tend to be a swarm and they run together with the ball no matter where they're going, they, it's a swarm mentality. I think that's cruising. Yeah. Cruising is a swarm mentality. Well, you got a bunch. Everyone recognizes that going on their own somewhere is doable, but stupid. You know? You don't want to be somewhere where God forbid you have a problem and nobody can get to you for a day. Yeah. So somebody's gonna get to you a couple hours, even if they're 10 miles, 15 miles away. And if you can't get a helicopter or something, you know, some boat, big boat will stop by and help you. You're never a, you're never that far alone. I mean, you go to the Pacific, maybe you're a couple days from help, you're in the Caribbean, you're a couple hours. Absolutely. From help. Absolutely. It's a different world. So don't get worried about the stuff that can go wrong. Worry about the, you know, worry ha. I had this dream. I was going to chat and chill and going to have a, um, Whatever their drink was. I forgot it was some sort of punch something in, uh, Georgetown. I always wanted to go there. I always wanted to go onto that little bridge in Georgetown where the road is, where everyone goes in the dinghy. I watched it in 20 people's YouTube videos. The I did that. Another photo goes in my mental part, in my brain. I accomplished it. Yes, sir. Edmund Hillary climbed, you know, all the mountains, the seven peaks. Yeah. Uh, Dick Bass did the same thing and in his book, you know why? Because it's there. Why in the world miss it? And if you haven't been in the waters of Exuma, you have mi Nassau is not Bahamas. It's what everyone sees on a cruise ship. My daughter who came to spend time with me was so, I don't want to go to Nassau again. Dad, we had a house, you know, you had a, an apartment in that, in the Paradise Island. And for years we went there 30 times. I don't wanna go again. The other, when she finally got to Exu, oh my God, I've never seen this before. Yeah. This is so cool. And there were all the pictures. Record life. A, a life worth recording is worth living. Worth living is worth recording. I guess that's the idea Journal. Write the things you like and you know, anyone can be a YouTube star, even Keith. Okay, that's a great place to end it. Awesome guys. So thanks again Brett, uh, for taking the time to, to to, to sit down and chat with me on this. Um, lots of great little nuggets of wisdom in there that you said I like. I love that piece where you said, uh, what is it? Knowledge is, uh, things that you learn on your own. Wisdom is learned from others. Um, I think I got that right and there's a lot in there. A lot of wisdom in here I think that people can take from your experiences and, and what you've experienced, uh, so far going through this. So I hope the journey, personally, I wanna say I hope the journey continues for you. I hope you get through this bump in the road, though it is a significant bump and you, you find a way to get back out there. Um, cause I love hearing your stories. So, um, and to everybody that's watching, thanks again guys for checking out the podcast. Uh, if you wanna learn more about what we do, uh, the programs that we offered is check out www.bluewatercruising.com. Uh, and, uh, somebody there will get in touch with you. If you find, click one of the buttons there to get in touch with us. We'll get in touch back with you and get you the details. So thanks again and we'll see you guys next time.