The Quiet Realities of Living on a Sailboat Long-Term

Boatlife is often shown as a collection of perfect moments: stunning sunsets, empty anchorages, coffee in the cockpit, dolphins on the bow. And those moments are real. We’ve lived them. We still do.

The romantic image exists because there is something deeply beautiful about this life. Waking up surrounded by water. Being close to nature in a way cities don't allow. Letting days unfold without rigid schedules or having turtles drift past the boat while you eat breakfast.

None of that is exaggerated. It’s just incomplete.

Because what makes boatlife meaningful over time isn’t the spectacular moments, it’s everything that happens in between. The parts that don’t fit neatly into photos, and often don’t get talked about at all.

Over the years, we’ve learned that the quiet realities matter far more than the highlights. But they also slowly wear people down. It’s not the storms, the long offshore passages, or even living in close quarters. Those are intense, but they’re temporary.

What wears you down is the accumulation of small, constant frictions.

It’s doing groceries in a new country and never knowing where the basics are, or if they exist at all. It’s nights that roll endlessly because there’s no truly protected bay nearby. It’s the boat jobs that never quite finish, because fixing one thing always reveals two more. It’s weather that quietly cancels your plans again and again, without asking how motivated you feel.

Boatlife never stops. There is always something to repair, improve, or rethink. You always want your boat to be a little safer, a little more comfortable, a little more reliable. There is always a new island to explore a new anchorage to find. And while that can be satisfying, it can also be exhausting if you don’t allow yourself pauses.

Many people imagine that the challenge of boatlife is learning to sail well enough. In reality, the challenge is learning to live well enough within constant uncertainty. Accepting that plans are suggestions, that progress is rarely linear and that some days feel small, repetitive, and confined.

This year made that especially clear for us.

Between February and September, we sailed over 6,800 nautical miles offshore on a catamaran that wasn’t ours. She had been sitting in a boatyard, prepared to be sold, empty, unfamiliar, and far from ready for offshore life. Turning her into a liveaboard boat and taking her to sea meant building systems, routines, and trust from scratch. It was a huge project, technical, physical, and mentally demanding.

When it was over, we did feel proud and accomplished, but also tired in a way that couldn’t be solved by sleep alone.

So we went back to land.

There were weddings to attend, and renovations to start on a house we had bought. Suddenly, we weren’t living on a boat anymore and with that came an unexpected silence on this channel.

Whenever we’re not living on the boat, sharing feels difficult. We don’t want to pretend we’re somewhere we’re not. And we didn’t want to turn house projects into content either, not because land life is wrong, but because it doesn’t reflect why WhenSailing exists. WhenSailing has always been about Boatlife and helping people dream and prepare to take the leap.

Once you stop posting, coming back isn’t easy. You start questioning whether people will still care. Whether you still have something valuable to offer. Whether the pause erased you. It’s tempting to either rush back with noise, or stay silent for too long.

But the silence we chose helped us notice things we often overlook when constantly moving and sharing.

We appreciated the comforts of landlife: long, uninterrupted nights without worrying about anchor dragging. Not checking the weather every morning. Long showers. Easy access to city life. Spontaneous coffee with friends instead of seeing people only at big, planned events.

But we also felt what was missing.

We missed being close to nature. We missed the rhythm of boatlife. We missed the quiet sense of freedom that comes from needing less. We missed the small, daily adventures that never feel small when you’re really there.

That distance reminded us of something important: boatlife works when you allow it to be imperfect.

Boatlife is sustainable when you let yourself dislike it sometimes. When you stop chasing miles and start valuing familiarity. When you choose safety over “fancy” destinations. When you accept that the next beach probably looks a lot like the last one.

It works when you know one place well instead of rushing through many. When you give your body and mind time to recover. When you stop treating discomfort as failure, and start seeing it as information.

For us, that means allowing ourselves to step back, reflect, and then return with intention. We’re not back on ForTuna just yet, but we are back on WhenSailing, ready to share this life again. The beauty, the challenges, the quiet moments in between, and the tools that help make boatlife possible.

We want WhenSailing to remain a place where you can dream honestly, learn what it really takes, and feel supported when you decide to take the leap; in your own time, and in your own way.

Because Boatlife isn’t rough seas, long offshore passages, or big flotillas.
Boatlife is calm mornings with turtles as breakfast neighbours.
And for us, that’s always worth coming back to.

Stay Salty,
Greta and Michael