Why traveling on a sailing boat?
As soon as I researched how much would cost me to visit every country in the Caribbean using ferries and planes I figured out I needed a different solution.
Logistics in the Caribbean islands are pretty much complicated for budget travelers. Any short flight will start at 100 USD and any short distance ferry at 50 USD. Hostels are a rarity and the cheapest would start at 25 USD per night. How could I travel the expensive Caribbean on a budget? And there was a light in the end of the tunnel! I needed to find someone doing similar trip in a sailing boat and join this person! Luckily there are plenty of communities out there connecting sailors and crew members; the biggest one is called findacrew.
How to get started?
I created an interesting and complete profile showing my interest to travel the Caribbean starting anywhere in the Americas. I had really few experience sailing small boats, but most of the boat captains are more looking for attitude than anything else. Basically people who has sailing boats are always looking for crew to help with daily duties such as cooking, cleaning, help with sailing and so on.
Whats the deal?
Generally, they offer you a place to sleep in the boat, and ask for a fee to cover food expenses and sometimes other boat expenses. Some of them offer salary but you must have experience for that.
My deal was great, I found a boat that was starting a round the world trip in the USA and heading to Trinidad and Tobago going trough most of the places I wanted to visit in the Caribbean. The captain, a married retired American engineer would cover all boat costs, marinas, fuel and would offer me a place to sleep in the boat. In exchange I would help him to sail and do some daily duties.
My food, drinks, flight to the USA, and nights out would be on my own responsibility. His family and wife were not into sailing and he didn’t wanted to travel by himself. I had an hour interview trough the phone and got approved to the position.
How the crew websites work?
It is important to notice a few important things about this community. To create a profile is free but to be able to fully communicate with someone either the boat profile or crew member must have a premium account. The website allows you to send a “wave of interest” even if none of the members is premium, if the wave is replied one of them can upgrade the account to premium. In my case I sent “waves of interest” to a few boats and one of them replied “very interested”.
His premium account was expired and I risked a cost of 50 USD for a month premium account to be able to enter in contact with him. It was definitely worth in the end. There is a document verification process that comes with the premium account which guarantees the the person is not a fake profile, considering that findacrew team has access to a copy of his personal identification. Other websites might not charge you but you will have a smaller range of options and maybe less safety.
And after all how was the experience?
I met the captain on the 12 of January 2018 in St Augustine, where he was doing the lasts upgrades in the boat to enter the water. We spend a bit more than a month to make the boat ready. In between this period, I asked for a week off to travel to Canada an New York. In the 25 of February we set sail to the Key West and after to Bahamas and other Caribbean countries. Duties included night watches for other boats and hazards meanwhile captain was sleeping, cooking, cleaning, helping with the lines, anchoring and repairing things in the boat.
I strongly recommend traveling in a sailing boat as a life experience!
