Salty Podcast #25 | 🌴 From Dreams to Sails: Retiring to the Caribbean on S/V Oceanaire- Adventures & Mishaps Unveiled 🌊

Join Capn Tinsley for a captivating live episode! Meet the adventurous couple, Chris & Renee, who retired to their 52-foot sailboat, S/V Oceanaire, spending years cruising the #Caribbean. Hear thrilling stories of exploration, unexpected mishaps, & realities of life on a boat. #sailingpodcast.  Audio from Livestream June 12, 2024:  https://tinyurl.com/SaltyPodcast25

#saltyabandon #SailingLife #Liveaboard #SailingAdventures #CaribbeanCruising #SVOceannaire #SailingPodcast #RetirementGoals #BoatLife #OceanStories #CruisingLife #SailboatLiving

Chapters

• 0:00 Retired Couple Living on a Sailboat
• 6:48 Early Retirement and Cruising Lifestyle
• 10:42 Sailing Adventures in the Eastern Caribbean
• 16:28 Boat Maintenance and Learning Experiences
• 25:56 Sailing Community During the Pandemic
• 35:19 Simplified Living on a Sailboat
• 42:13 Transitioning to a Sailing Lifestyle
• 51:34 Boat Refrigeration and Power Systems
• 1:00:23 Sailors Sharing Writing and Sailing Experiences

Transcript

Capn Tinsley: 0:00

Good evening everybody. This is Captain Tinsley, salty Abandoned with the Salty Podcast, and this is episode 25. And my guests tonight are two folks, a couple that retired to their boat, and it's a 52-foot 1980 Irwin. So I'm going to bring them out. Let them tell you all about it. And hello, Renee and Chris, how are you, irwin? So I'm going to bring him out. Let them tell you all about it. Hello, Renee and Chris, how are you? Hello, thanks for coming on tonight and telling your story. I appreciate it, thanks.

Renee Schramm: 0:34

Thanks for having us.

Chris Schramm: 0:36

Yeah, glad to be here,

Chris Schramm: 0:47

Tell us about your boat just real quick so people know kind of what box to put you in.

Chris Schramm: 0:49

So we it took a long time to find her but it's a 1980 irwin um 52. She's a catch rig. Um, she had been owned by we think we're the fourth owner and she had been really well cared for. Um, when we bought her we probably paid too much and had to spend a lot to get it right. But we spent three years or so getting it refit before we went full time.

Chris Schramm: 1:11

And you know, it was sort of an accidental. We weren't looking for a number 152. And we found her and we just couldn't be happier with our decision. Well, what were you looking for? Well, we were looking sort of for, uh, you know, 45 to 50 foot monohull, definitely a monohull. We weren't looking for a catch and having a catch rig is fantastic. Um, we weren't looking for, like I said, hey, I've worked my whole life, I don't want a project boat and she's not a project boat, but you know a lot of work. Um, so we were looking for something a little smaller and you know the size, like if someone's out there looking for a boat, the size it does add cost, but man at anchor at sea. It's, you know, living in the world full time. We love having the space we really do.

Capn Tinsley: 2:06

Yeah, it's definitely more stable out there, handles the waves. When you're sitting at anchor other boats can't rock you as much, okay, and also when you're sitting at uh, even when you're sitting in a slip, right same thing yeah, there's a couple things about her.

Chris Schramm: 2:22

Like she's got all her sails are on furlers, so you know, even the mains on a furler, the miz is on a furler, and so we can control everything from the cockpit, which we love, so it's super easy for two of us to run her.

Capn Tinsley: 2:40

Okay, great. So what inspired you to retire on a sailboat and cruise the Caribbean? You've been cruising the Caribbean, haven't you? We?

Renee Schramm: 2:49

have. We've been married 32 years. Congratulations, thank you. We were water people all along, but mostly inland lakes, and we had said when we were dating that we wanted to retire on a boat, and we had no clue what that looked like, but it was just something that we had in the back of our mind and then, as Chris was contemplating closing out his career, it just became something for us to well, particularly for him, to research and figure out You're not so enamored with the day-to-day role anymore. You need something that gets juice in your sails, so to speak.

Chris Schramm: 3:32

So we started doing a lot of research.

Renee Schramm: 3:34

We decided it was saltwater. We decided it was sail over power. We changed a lot about our previous lifestyle because we had long range cruising as our ultimate goal. Once we started reading everything, we could get our hands on watching YouTubes. You know that was probably 2014, 15, we started looking. So the whole concept of influencers and things of that nature. You know there were the old school YouTube videoers, thank goodness. Then came a lot of new channels and we just soaked in everything we could find. We started doing ASA courses. We started. Chris had a sailing background. I was a lifelong power boater, so I asked him to go do the sailing courses with me so we'd be on the same page. So we did that. We did some charters in the States, in the BVIs, and the more we looked into it, the more we just fell in love with it. So we decided on a long-range cruising.

Capn Tinsley: 4:34

You mentioned that you were in inland boaters. Where was that?

Renee Schramm: 4:41

So I grew up sort of split between Alabama and Florida. So the first part of my childhood was on the Tennessee River and so a lot of loopers are familiar with the shoals. Florence, alabama. So I spent my years growing up there on a boat, learning how to water ski, do all the things there, summer camp and such. And then we moved to Florida so it was all around the state of florida, icw, mostly the lakes and that sort of thing so so you, so you, you moved there as a, as a adult or a child moved second half of my childhood okay whereabouts.

Renee Schramm: 5:18

My dad is from pensacola, uh, but we lived out. We lived in orange park, we lived in brandon, melbourne, jacksonville all over yeah, so I'm east and west coast.

Renee Schramm: 5:34

Yeah, yeah, so I'm salty by nature. Chris grew up in vermont. He did more snow skiing than water skiing, but he also sailed on Lake Champlain there and had a smaller lake for summer camps okay, so the northeast, that's the, uh, the mother ship of sailing up there, right and then when we met, we actually met in Atlanta, and so we had a boat on the lake there for 30 which one Lake.

Chris Schramm: 6:02

Lanier Lake.

Renee Schramm: 6:02

Altoona when the when the kids came along like I remember literally heating up bottles on a camp stove in an empty baked bean can. Like we, you know, we've always raised our kids on the water. When they got old enough that their activities interfered with getting to the lake for the weekend, we just moved to the lake and then we'd do soccer down the road and still be able to get to the water after practice or whatever. So we've always been around the water, um and so this has been really a dream come true for us.

Capn Tinsley: 6:34

So what year um, chris, did you start wrapping up your business, your career? So?

Chris Schramm: 6:40

um. I retired at 58, I'm 62.

Renee Schramm: 6:44

So I retired at 58.

Chris Schramm: 6:46

So 2020. But you know Renee was right Like I was fed up, you know, and I'm sure there's folks listening that are in that boat, right, and we were, and we retired early and we said, All right, how can we make this work? And so part of the calculus was, you know, get stuff paid off, buy a boat with cash and then sell everything else. That causes expenses. So we sold our cars, our house, we, you know, we have a small storage place but we basically divested everything we had so that we could retire when we did, divested everything we had so that we could retire when we did.

Chris Schramm: 7:29

And you know, and admittedly early, but we're just super careful about it and, and you know it's, at first I was worried. You know, I'm going to retire, what am I going to do? We don't have that paycheck every two weeks, you know. And, honestly, if you look at the numbers, what we did from a, from a financial perspective where we were, versus what we're spending now, the pretty dramatic change. It wasn't painful at all. I mean, it really wasn't, you know. So we're not buying the really expensive bottles of wine, we're not going out to really nice meals, we're not traveling like we used to, but we're having a hell of a lot more fun. And you know, and it's just like, if you look at the numbers you go oh my God, that's a really big change, but it but it you mean like what your income?

Capn Tinsley: 8:16

Yeah, yeah, you know what we spent, but you're spending less too, right? Well, we were really good at spending money.

Chris Schramm: 8:25

You know, when you get in that groove, the Amazon truck shows up and it wasn't painful at all you know, it wasn't painful at all, all right.

Capn Tinsley: 8:37

Well, we'll ask for some tips towards the end of this about how to do that, because the people, people are always asking about that and they're always everybody are always asking about that and they're always, everybody's always thinking about it. So, yeah, anything we can offer to anybody watching it is.

Chris Schramm: 8:54

It's not as big a deal as I know. I made it you know I made it. I was really worried about it and I always thought like well, what the heck, I just you know, I'll go back to work. I need to. I always thought like, well, what the heck, I just you know, I'll go back to work if I need to. Right, I'm not going back to work.

Capn Tinsley: 9:08

You know I work for myself and I think I'd be unemployable now. Yeah, I think I would be too.

Chris Schramm: 9:15

They don't want me.

Capn Tinsley: 9:18

All right. Oh, and what made you kind of move towards cruising the Caribbean?

Renee Schramm: 9:26

We started out on the east coast of the US right. First we did a jaunt down to Buki.

Capn Tinsley: 9:34

Yeah.

Renee Schramm: 9:36

We hung out there for a bit. We got our feet wet. We spent a season over in the Bahamas with some friends and met a great group of people, Came back that year and went up the East Coast. We wanted to be sure that our ducklings were all on their own track and settled in that you know. So we weren't too far away in the beginning and we did the cool things like anchor off of the Statue of Liberty, go through New York City, through to Long Island Sound, All the picturesque places you hear about.

Capn Tinsley: 10:17

As a southerner was really cool to me to see Martha's Vineyard, that sort of thing. Well, can I just say that's cool, you were anchored by the Statue of Liberty.

Renee Schramm: 10:21

Yeah, For this southern girl that was really a dream. It was really nice.

Capn Tinsley: 10:24

I'm Southern too.

Chris Schramm: 10:27

You dingy into Chelsea Pier. You go to Chelsea Market, which there's every food in the world there. It was just really cool.

Capn Tinsley: 10:35

New York City smells like food.

Renee Schramm: 10:38

It's kind of town.

Capn Tinsley: 10:39

Oh my God, I just get hungry walking through there.

Renee Schramm: 10:42

So once we did that, we went back down south and back to the Bahamas, and then we met a group of people that were talking about going south and we said, yeah, we're interested too, because you probably know that so many cruisers from the US and Canada get to the Exumas, they get to Elizabeth.

Capn Tinsley: 11:03

Harbor Elizabeth.

Renee Schramm: 11:03

Harbor, get to Elizabeth Harbor, aka Chicken Harbor, and everybody comes back north and we wanted to go and see them do more. And it was an amazing decision. We just wanted the cultural changes, the language, the food, the people. We wanted to see it and do a little bit more, and so that for us was a pretty easy decision. Yeah.

Chris Schramm: 11:23

Yeah, the Eastern Caribbean was a really great adventure. You know, we have we have friends that did 12 years in the Bahamas, or I think they're on their 14th year now and we started like how do you do that, don't you get bored? But the reality is the Bahamas, yeah.

Chris Schramm: 11:38

So like we get it now we've done two trips and we haven't even scratched the surface. So, like the bahama, there's nothing wrong just going to the bahamas every year. It's so beautiful, right, and it's easy. Um, you know it's, but you don't get that, that cultural sort of shift that when you go down island you really get. You get the french islands, you get, you know, um, the english netherlands yeah, dutch islands, the English Islands, dutch Islands, you get Dominica. You know, there's just.

Renee Schramm: 12:09

And you get international cruisers. Yeah, that's right, it's just a different scene.

Chris Schramm: 12:14

You meet a lot of people from all over the world.

Capn Tinsley: 12:17

Yeah, so when you crossed from, say, the Turks and Caicos I guess Turks and Caicos to Dominican Republican, is that how you went?

Chris Schramm: 12:28

We went so we decided we sort of did a hybrid. We didn't want to do the 40 path If we were late. We left kind of the 1st of March from Georgetown and so we waited for a weather window and and motored basically for four days dead East in calm conditions like it was a lake out there more like the i-65 route yeah, and so, and then our plan was, when the winds picked up, to turn um, and so it took us six days to go from georgetown to fajardo, puerto rico, which is on the east coast of puerto rico and the first four days were easy.

Chris Schramm: 13:05

The last two days were like going east is ugly hard. The last two days were 25 knots of wind, 12 foot seas on the nose and and like in six second periods, like it was a. It was brutal for two days but then we were there and once you're in sort of the vi's or fajardo, you know, on that eastern side of puerto rico, then it becomes really easy. You know everything's close. So we we went to, we went to culebra, which is the spanish vi's part of puerto rico. Then we went to the usvi's um that the first time we it. We skipped the BDIs and did an overnight sail to St Martin. Once you're in Fajardo, it's island hopping, it's fantastic. You wait for the right weather and it's easy, easy sailing. Getting there is hard, yeah, no question about it.

Capn Tinsley: 14:04

Yeah, like the mode of passage yes, yeah, yeah wow, okay, well, um, you guys look, so you're like yeah, yeah you gotta go like it's.

Renee Schramm: 14:18

It was such a great experience and even the hard moments you go. Oh, okay, I get it. Now, that whole like say reef, early reef, often thing or not bearing the rail, like you learn, you know, we came out of South Georgia's, where the boat was based. We were either South Georgia or North Florida, aka the horse latitudes, right. So there's they're sailing here, but there's not a ton of reliable wind, and so we felt like we were finally sailing Once we got down there. We got trade winds, we've we can move this big old heavy boat. She's 52 feet and 60,000 pounds. So we did a lot of motor sailing up here. When we got down there, it was just oh wow, this is what people talk about you saved some fuel, didn't you?

Chris Schramm: 15:09

we sure did well and you know if, if you're out there looking at new boats or you're gonna buy a boat, be patient with yourself, because it takes a while to get to know how to sail her. And it took us I don't know a good three years. Before we were really good at it and now I think we're not expert level, but we're really good at it. Yeah.

Capn Tinsley: 15:33

I felt like when I had my island pack at 27,. When I sailed it from Orange Beach to the Keys and back, I felt like I really learned the boat. It was by leaps and bounds, you know, right. Okay, so what were some of the biggest challenges or mishaps you faced while cruising? People learn from the mistakes, so I always share all mine. Sometimes people ask me for them.

Renee Schramm: 16:05

Right, we learned people called it freshman year, first year, and it's true, because there's just a lot of little things add up to a good or bad experience, right. So we didn't have a lot of horror stories or big mishaps, but we definitely had some freshman year issues.

Chris Schramm: 16:28

Yeah, we almost got knocked down off a hatteras. I'm taking over for Renee and I've got a lot of cloth out, and so it's midnight, right, and it's pretty brisk, a little stormy, and Renee goes, she's going to bed and she goes. You know, you got a lot of cloth out. I'm like, yeah, I'm good, I'm good. And not 30 minutes later I was screaming like a three-year-old get up here and help me. And yeah, so that happened, and you know. So I was more aggressive than I should have been, which you learn right. We had, we lost our center board between Martinique and Dominica. It snapped off.

Renee Schramm: 17:17

We kept hearing this banging underneath and we didn't understand what was happening. You know what's driving that noise. Nothing made sense and finally I got a tether, a bicycle helmet, my mask and fins and went under and figured out that the center board was just gone. We had dropped it in 7000 feet of water. There was no recovery. Yeah, so, and it was what were the seas then it?

Chris Schramm: 17:41

was not good, probably six feet.

Renee Schramm: 17:43

It was a pretty rough day to be doing that, so that kind of sketchy, yeah, but we made it. You are a beast right before I can say anything.

Chris Schramm: 17:52

She's running, she's coming back up the community way. She got her mask on, like you gotta do it all right. Good on you mechanically, the boat's been really good to us. We had a? Um. We lost a water pump off the coast of trinidad um last summer or last yeah, last summer and um, but it happened on a day that was so calm like we couldn't sail because there was zero like zero knots of wind, it's flat.

Chris Schramm: 18:19

We were a little close to shore. There were some venezuel fishermen around, which is a little unnerving, but we called in and they came and got us and towed us back. We had it fixed, stuff like that. Who came and got you? So a local fisherman turned towboat operator that night. Okay, I saw a picture of the boat that he towed us in with.

Capn Tinsley: 18:44

It was like the african queen, it was but after five hours we were glad to see him, and he did great so you, just, you just called out on the radio and someone said uh, I'll come get you well that in trinidad there's all kinds of resources.

Chris Schramm: 19:00

So there's a there's an organization that sort of watches over cruisers resource. So there's a there's an organization that sort of watches over cruisers. And they were, they're on, they watch you on AIS and and so we hailed them and they, they took care of us.

Renee Schramm: 19:11

Yeah, it was. It couldn't have happened at a better time in terms of weather, location. Where we were for support, trinidad had had some issues with the Venezuelan fishermen and they nipped that in the bud, so we had the Coast Guard right there. We had a group called North Post Radio and YSAT watching us, monitoring our position, and there's a port host there, and so he had it all figured out for us. Somebody towed us in. We got in at one in the morning. Some other cruisers were there to help us hook up to a mooring ball in the middle of the night. Like it just couldn't have been any better. Um, it was really no big deal. Yeah, freshman year we also got pinned to the dock sideways. That was awesome. We um underestimated the current. Right in georgia you can get eight, nine, ten foot tidal shifts and you can get four or five knots of current in the marina easy. And you know we're coming out of the lake with big boats, but also multiple motors, big motors, and here we had this heavy boat and an 85 horsepower motor.

Renee Schramm: 20:14

So, um, that was a big learning experiences well, sometimes that can't be helped well, you can choose your window and we learned that you know sit and wait for Slack. There's devil. User error, yeah.

Capn Tinsley: 20:30

One time I was trying to leave a dock in Apalachicola and I was by myself and I knew this was going to be a problem. But I tried to pull a couple of tricks, you know, and I was like I'm not going to get away from this dock and all of a sudden here comes Cito. I said hey, and he didn't even charge me. You know, I got Cito. He just threw me a line on the bow and pulled me right off and threw me the line back.

Renee Schramm: 20:55

We've had someone nest on our boat in a slip since then in St Augustine. So it happens, we learned, we moved on. It hasn't happened again. That was probably 2017.

Capn Tinsley: 21:09

Now did you have anybody close by that could help push you off there?

Renee Schramm: 21:15

was no pushing off.

Capn Tinsley: 21:16

There was no pushing it, we just waited.

Chris Schramm: 21:21

Three hours of shame. We had to sit there. In fact, the marina manager's a friend and he's calling me on the radio going hey, you're looking good down there there's violence. But just you know, it's a thing you know.

Capn Tinsley: 21:38

Sometimes you just can't leave right. Yeah, that's right Right.

Chris Schramm: 21:41

You know, and that was a good like that, we did some damage to our dinghy. That was probably the worst event we had, you know, but it really wasn't, wasn't that big a deal.

Capn Tinsley: 21:53

Well, the, the, the centerboard. Yeah, Now is there a way to avoid damage to the centerboard? Yeah, Now is there a way to avoid damage to the centerboard.

Chris Schramm: 22:04

Well, so it's a 40-year-old boat and it had been cracked Like once. The top part of it was still intact and the board is six and a half feet long, so most of it was gone and we could see that it had been cracked a while and there's a little user error. We were using it to sail, also to steady the boat in a bmc, and it's not. It wasn't designed to do that and so I think we probably caused it over time. Yeah and um, it cracked. It finally said enough of you, you know okay. And what did you do we? Well, we were headed to trinidad and we had a new one made in trinidad.

Chris Schramm: 22:48

It was four grand to have the thing made and it's better than the first, you know, better than the original and this is a big you know, the whole thing is seven feet long or eight feet long, you know, and it has lead weight in the bottom like it's a engineering thing and he you know the guy down there, the, the craftsmen down island are fantastic and especially, especially in trinidad, for sure, and it's, you know, it's reasonable, it's Pricing is you get better service, you get better quality and you're paying, I don't know. A third.

Renee Schramm: 23:24

I'd say oftentimes a third of the US price.

Chris Schramm: 23:26

Yeah, a quarter, a third, really yeah, because the labor's, you know the labor's like 20 bucks an hour instead of 150, right, okay, yeah.

Capn Tinsley: 23:39

So you're good to go for quite some time on your center board.

Chris Schramm: 23:43

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, it should never need it. It should go another four years. But I'll tell you you know, if folks are listening to their.

Chris Schramm: 23:54

You know the boat maintenance. You know people talk about the 10% a year of the value. It's probably not far off. I don't really look at it too closely because I don't want to know. But one of the things we've done is, every time we've had something that needed to be upgraded or fixed, we've made sure that we do it exactly the way you should, with the best stuff right, and that's really served us well. I mean, we've not had we had the water pump issue but we've not gotten stranded. We've not had. You know the issues and we have a 45-year-old boat and I can tell you, cruising out there with our friends that have, you know, brand new boats or 10 year old boats or 20 year old boats, we had fewer problems and, knock on wood, put it in the table.

Chris Schramm: 24:48

Knock on wood, that's good, um, but you know don't when you're thinking about a boat, and age isn't so important, it's how she's been taken care of.

Renee Schramm: 24:58

Yeah, I really didn't expect some of our friends to have the same kinds of problems that we did, but we have found newer or even new. Brand new doesn't mean problem free. We had friends, new boats, having to get freezers cut out of their boats because they weren't installed in a manner in which it could be replaced cut out of their boats because they weren't installed in a manner in which it could be replaced. We had people with the same kind of pump or mechanical issues that we had when they were new and shouldn't have faced those problems. So I think it's all about maintenance, staying on top of things and just taking care of what you need to take care of, whether your boat's old or new.

Capn Tinsley: 25:35

Right, okay, how did living on a sailboat change your perspective on life and retirement? That's a good question sailing community.

Renee Schramm: 25:56

Keep in mind that when we left we legitimately drove to our boat as the world was shutting down, flights were stopping all that good stuff around this pandemic, so we didn't know what that was going to look like. But the world was not, People were not nice, you know, it was very much divided states of America. It just was common sense, common courtesy, political divide. There's just all these things happening and I just said get me out of here.

Capn Tinsley: 26:31

Were you worried that was going to affect how, like if something went wrong, you needed help or needed to come back?

Renee Schramm: 26:40

Were you worried. I knew that we'd be okay in the big picture, but I didn't know what it meant for our travels, because we had friends who were ahead of us in the process, who were already out there, and so we did watch them very closely to see what happened in St John, what happened in Grenada, and we did definitely have to keep an eye on that. But the really neat thing is what I learned from leaving and going and doing is I say this often to people is that the sailing community, the cruising community, restored my faith in humanity. And that sounds corny, maybe, but I don't say that like I get it. I was. I was just fed up with people. I was looking forward to being on my boat doing my own thing with my bestie and screw y'all if you're going to be ugly. And then our very first opportunity to experience that was actually in St Augustine, and I will forever have a special place in my heart for the St Augustine cruisers community because he was still trying to work, finish out his career.

Renee Schramm: 27:43

I was on the mooring ball by myself and my dinghy acted up where it never had. I had to get to a store, you know, to get parts without a car and I just all those things I had heard materialized Support, assistance, guidance, driving, whatever you could think of. I couldn't even ask. Somebody was offering before I could ask, and so what I found over the course of that time frame three years is it doesn't matter what country it was, it doesn't matter what country they're from. This group is a phenomenal group of human beings. We're all like-minded, we're all a bit adventurous, we're all a bit, hopefully, able to roll with the punches right, but we all know what it takes to be out here and we all help others when they need it.

Capn Tinsley: 28:39

I've done most of my sailing by myself and I can't tell you how many people have stepped up Right and uh, and I got a credit card. You know I can pay for it too, and and but there were there was a lot of free help too. You know other cruisers, other boaters that stepped up in all different ports. Um, some people were traveling on their boats, some people were just staying in the marina, it's just like you said. I mean, I'm echoing exactly what you're saying. I needed something. It was there.

Chris Schramm: 29:12

Right, yeah, we, renee, mentioned that group of people that were going south from Georgetown and we were in the eastern caribbean for two years and that group of people, we, we went south together and they became lifelong friends. We, we hung out together for two years. We still do, yeah, and it's every walk of life, every boat, like you know, there's, there's we all the barriers that exist between people here in the states.

Capn Tinsley: 29:42

that just doesn't exist right, let me do one thing um, introduce tonight's sponsor, which is me. In case you didn't know, my name is tinsley myrick, I'm remax of orange beach and I sell gulffront condos, uh in Shores, orange Beach, alabama, credo Key, florida homes as well, non-waterfront as well. And, if you like this podcast, I also have the Gettin' Beachy Real Estate and Lifestyle podcast on Thursday nights at the same time, 6 pm. If you want to hear about real estate and lifestyle here, just tune in and be glad to talk to you and tell you all about the real estate here. Appreciate you letting me do that. Got to pay the bills. That's a beautiful part of the world. We love it. Yeah, so I get to sale and sell Gulffront properties. So that's a lot of fun, awesome. I have a question.

Capn Tinsley: 30:38

So I went South on uh in 2020. And when I got, I mean I was trying to get down to, say, captiva and Fort Myers and Marco. Then I started running into all the boats that were couldn't get into the Caribbean. They couldn't go any further Like they were. They were all. The slips were way overbooked. Of course I was trying to find a slip. You know they were all stuck in the keys. And the big yachts too, the big ones you know. So how did you, did you just kind of get down there first, before things started shutting down, or Well?

Chris Schramm: 31:16

so we went to Marathon. We got it was after the, it was November of 2020. And so we got there early enough in the season that we were able to get a morning ball there. But the short answer to your question is we don't stay in marinas, Right? We spent three years on anchor and so you just go the Bahamas. That year there were some. You know it was a little harder to get there. You had to do a COVID test 24 hours before you left, a COVID test when you arrived, and then another COVID test after you've been there five days, and then another COVID test after you've been there five days, and so there was some protocol that you had to get managed through.

Capn Tinsley: 32:10

But once you're through that, it was easy peasy. Okay, so because you?

Renee Schramm: 32:18

were staying on Anchor, do you think you could have gone at?

Chris Schramm: 32:22

any time? No, I think it well depends on depends on where right.

Renee Schramm: 32:24

Some areas, like we had friends in St John and the park service suspended fees for mooring balls because they knew people couldn't move Right. There were some areas even like when we did make it to the Bahamas. There's some areas like Abacos and Luther, we didn't go to because they had even additional standards beyond the Bahamas framework. So I would say the answer just depends on where you tried to go. Some places there was almost no movement of boats. We had friends that said you know, they would go honestly, to visit their neighbors on a paddleboard at night because they couldn't be seen leaving their boat even during the heat of the pandemic. They were to stay on that yacht period, end of story. So they'd, they'd, you know, maybe go visit by paddleboard at night and get off their boat for a little while. So I think it just depends on where you were.

Chris Schramm: 33:18

Right, and you know, when we went to the Bahamas the first time, the pandemic was sort of almost a year old. So the people that had been there the season before they really got locked down. But by the time that next season came around, the Bahamas sort of had figured out a protocol that would work, and you know. But I'll tell you one thing we did around the Bahamas sort of had figured out a protocol that would work. But I'll tell you one thing we did the whole time we were in the Eastern Caribbean is we never left the boat both of us at the same time and flew home, because we heard so many stories of folks that during the pandemic had gone to wherever they were living and left the boat in Trinidad or Grenada or Martinique or wherever, and couldn't get back to it for a year and a half. So we just, like you know, if one of us has got to go home, one goes and the other stays with the boat because it's squatters well, because it's our home right, so we need to be able to get, we need to be able to, you know take care of her, yeah

Capn Tinsley: 34:27

she's okay, move her if necessary, be sure she's not dragging, you know whatever the case may be, okay, I thought maybe there was squatters there that would just, oh, this looks like a good boat. These people, none of these people are coming back.

Chris Schramm: 34:35

So well, I think it was some of that too, you know. I mean, um, it was a weird time, yeah.

Capn Tinsley: 34:42

Okay, um, perspective on perspective on life, um, you know, I've heard a lot of people say they realized how much, how little they needed after getting rid of everything. Right? Can you share on that a little bit?

Renee Schramm: 35:02

Chris talked about the Amazon truck coming right. Well, first of all, when you're long range cruising, it's a whole lot harder to hook up with that Amazon truck. When you live on a boat full time, there's a whole lot less storage space. So we honestly tried to provision this boat not just with food, but with the equipment, the things that we thought we would need in advance the things that we thought we would need in advance. So we are both avid divers. Part of the reason we're doing this is to be in the water, not just on the water.

Renee Schramm: 35:42

So, we tried to be sure that we had the right photography equipment, the right scuba gear, things like that. So it's not that we bare bones did and we didn't come with anything. I mean, our boats got a lot of stuff on it, but once we, um, once we made that shift right. So there's no more golf clubs, there's no more tennis rackets, there's a bit of a trade, right.

Renee Schramm: 36:05

So we'll focus on our diving gear. We'll focus on spear fishing, um uh, poles and things like that, right? So once you get out there, hopefully you're good. You know you're a turtle with your home on your back and you're going, and then when we would go home, someone would fly home. We'd come back with a suitcase and it would have you know we need to update the medical kit, we needed a new pair of goggles, that sort of thing.

Renee Schramm: 36:35

But we tried really hard not to get sucked into the consumerism and I would say Chris said it was kind of easy for us and I say I think it's largely due to the lifestyle, not because we're so good at it, I just think it's a minimalist lifestyle to some degree. Clothing gets trashed, zippers get trashed, hats get trashed Every. You know the ocean's hard on everything. The salt air things wear out and therefore A why buy and bring? You know the really expensive stuff. You've got to find that value proposition of things that are quality and last. But there's no reason to go overboard out here. You know you're not showing off for anybody. There's no reason to collect possessions. I collect sea ships, I collect sea beans. You know that there's no reason to collect stuff out here.

Chris Schramm: 37:25

You can always tell the cruisers, because they've got a stained shirt, they got flip flops. They're probably not good, because you can't have nice things out here. You just can't. We each have sort of one set of nice clothing. It just doesn't matter.

Capn Tinsley: 37:48

I go south once a year on my boat and I'm pretty much taking the same clothes with me.

Renee Schramm: 37:54

We did have to reload after three years out there. You know, we've been ever since 17. Some things on this boat are wearing out and need to be replaced. That's seven, eight years of use. Okay, the clothes, yeah, after three years out there full time, we're going to be replacing some things while we're home, but it's just not that hard.

Chris Schramm: 38:15

Yeah, and then you know, and then you think you know, in the retirement the transition around money like it's just not as and it you go from having that nice paycheck and you know folks that want to do this, generally have a nice job and they're leaving and the reality is that that transition is and if you looked at the numbers, what we did, it looks pretty dramatic but it's, it wasn't hard and and it's part of what.

Chris Schramm: 38:43

Renee said is that you don't need anything out here Like we eat better, we eat healthier. You know we eat, we don't eat. You know pre-made food because you can't this doesn't work on a boat. You know pre-made food because you can't this doesn't work on a boat. So we eat better and then we're just. You know. I think the one thing that we're doing that's different from before we retired is we're more disciplined about the money, like everything. We have an app that we enter everything into, the budget app, so we know what we're spending and where it's spending. We never did that right. We didn't. You know the checking count got low. We sort of slowed down Right.

Chris Schramm: 39:18

A little more careful, but it's like it's no big deal. No, it's, it's, it's no big deal.

Capn Tinsley: 39:25

The big but a big expenses but repair. So yeah, do a lot of your own.

Chris Schramm: 39:32

We do, we do. But you know there's stuff like we had the boat painted in Trinidad. She's 45 years old and the gel coat was sort of gone and you know. So we had the boat painted but it was a really good value. We've done some upgrades. You know you got to have a kitty to do that stuff. You don't underestimate that. I don't think we're spending 10 percent of the value every year, but a couple of years we have, you know. And the one thing I I'm really big on just whatever you need to do, you do it like any maintenance item. You do it because we're going to sea and the sea is not kind Like I'm not going to do something. You know sort of halfway. And so if I can do it and I know it's done right, I'll do it. If not, we hire somebody.

Capn Tinsley: 40:25

Well, that's a good philosophy right there. Yeah, and salt is hard on a boat.

Chris Schramm: 40:30

Oh, yeah, yeah, and the sea is hard, like you know, there are days when we're getting beat up pretty good and that's hard on the boat.

Capn Tinsley: 40:39

Do you have regular inspections? Like you know, a rigger come and inspect, oh yeah.

Chris Schramm: 40:44

Oh yeah, yeah, we do. Our insurance requires us to do a rigger every two years, but we do a re-inspection every single time we go out. You, but we do a re-inspection every single time we go out. You know we often not every time, but we often go up the mast.

Capn Tinsley: 40:58

you know we're really careful about that stuff okay because it's you know it's largely on us, yeah well, you need your mast, you don't need it to fall down we did some things, we, when we bought her.

Chris Schramm: 41:19

People that buy this vintage boat will say, oh, have your chain plates X-rayed and they're fine if they show up, fine. We didn't trust it. So we had the chain plates replaced. We had all the standing rigging replaced. You know, we, we just weren't going to screw around with because we still had a paycheck when we were refitting her, so we weren't going to screw around with being out there at sea wondering is that chain plate going to let go? You know, right now, I know they're brand new. Now I know they're brand new.

Capn Tinsley: 41:54

Right, what advice would you give to others considering a similar lifestyle change? You've covered a little bit about that, but is there anything else? Do it Go small, go now.

Chris Schramm: 42:07

Yeah, and that's it. All those things you're worried about. They're small. We've met so many people out there and every one of them will tell you almost all of them will tell you I should have done it sooner.

Renee Schramm: 42:25

We've lost several friends along the way, a couple that didn't launch, they didn't get out here Even they faced a big illness in the process of transitioning. We've lost people while out here in our sailing posse. Um, so for us, the fact that we did go a bit early, um, it worked for us and we try to encourage people, knowing that everyone's got to do what works for them. But just, you know, we don't want, we don't want to see you dying at the cubicle right. Um, the other thing I mean seriously you know, you know, I love that until the end.

Renee Schramm: 43:04

That's just.

Chris Schramm: 43:05

That's not cool yeah, we're at that age where that stuff happens. And sure you, I think people worry about do I have enough? Right, that's always that. Do I have enough? Yeah, I can tell you, there are people out there, a lot of them, a whole lot of them, that are living on $500 to $1,000 a month, and they're just fine.

Capn Tinsley: 43:27

Social security.

Chris Schramm: 43:29

What's that? Is that social security? Well, or just young kids that are scraping by, young families that want to be there. They're eating beans, they're figuring out how to make it happen. They're on a boat that I wouldn't want to be on, but they have the same view.

Capn Tinsley: 43:51

I've interviewed some of those folks on the channel on the Salty podcast, so check it out.

Renee Schramm: 43:58

I think, the other thing for people that are considering something like this. You know, we've seen so many different types of people out here doing this and, by and large, people I would say people love it and find that it's pretty much in line with what they expected. But we've also found people who didn't love it and I think you've got to want to do it for the right reasons. And we had some people out to the boat last week friends of ours from Atlanta, who hadn't seen the boat before. And it's just so fascinating to me to watch people's faces when they see my boat, because they don't know if I'm camping, they don't know how I do laundry. You know, there's just there's a big variety out there in this lifestyle between people that use a five gallon bucket and a plunger and people have washing machines aboard, people that do laundry ashore, people that farm their laundry out Like it's a great example. This lifestyle isn't one size fits all, so you've got to figure out what works for you and if you can make that work and for us we could, I'm like you.

Renee Schramm: 45:19

There are a lot of people who think they want to do this or they view it as a means of travel, but they don't particularly care for the water or they're not boat people or they're not fix-it people, and then they find themselves spending a lot of time or money or both, on problems and they don't have the satisfaction because it's not their happy place. Right for me. I grew up on the water. I went inland to raise my family, you know, go to school, those things have a career, and now I feel like I'm back to me. So I couldn't be happier. This is where I want to be, but we found that that's not true with everyone.

Capn Tinsley: 45:53

Mike Wag. I put this comment up here. Can you see that? Mike Wag, who interviewed a couple weeks ago Captain Tinsley. This is a great interview. I agree with every word they said about chain plates. I've redone chain plates on two island packets. Yeah yeah, he's from this area, he's from Orange Beach. And as soon as he gets the boat. We both lost our island pack at 27 and Hurricane Sally. When he gets a boat he does everything to it right at right at the get go. I saw him do it twice.

Chris Schramm: 46:25

Yeah, I know, you know.

Capn Tinsley: 46:26

Yeah. So I'm like you, you know like sometimes my husband will go. There's so many problems, you know, with the boat and I don't view it that way. You have to really want to do this, you have to want to be there. You want to take the uncomfortableness of a crossing I do the Gulf crossing and it has to be worth it to you, Right, and it has to be worth it to you, right. I'm gonna end, okay, I'm uncomfortable now, but in a minute I'm going to be, you know, anchored out in in the beautiful water in the keys on the west coast of florida. That that's the mindset that has to come about, but not everybody has that, and that's okay. They, if they, they they'll find something else, right, right?

Chris Schramm: 47:12

you know, go ahead. I would say is that there's a there's a pretty significant learning curve, but the only way you get through that is going right. Right, you know, learning how to sail the boat, learning how to maintain the boat. You know, it took me, I don't know. I know this boat pretty well after seven years, but I still, once in a while, learn something new about it, you know, oh yeah, because if it's, if it's not broken, there's no reason.

Chris Schramm: 47:39

That right, it's just not a priority so if you're worried about what you don't know, don't worry about that, because you're going to find you're going to figure it out. And but if you I think renee, what renee said is right you've got to have that sort of fix it mentality, like you've got to be able to look at a problem and thankfully you know we've youtube right, so everybody's done it before, so you just dial it up and now we have starlink on the boat yes, information yeah so you know game changer game because I'm still working, you know.

Chris Schramm: 48:11

Yeah, so you know, you figure it out and I'll tell you, if you do the maintenance on this stuff, you avoid the big problems, right? So, like diesel engines, diesel engines die because they overheat. Right, do the maintenance on the cooling system and that diesel engine is going to run forever. Right on the cooling system, and you're, you're gonna, that diesel engine's gonna run forever, right, it's you know. So dig into the books that, like, don't be too find out what's is recommended by the manufacturer and then follow it, do it, yeah.

Capn Tinsley: 48:45

So gabby couric um says especially the thorny patch route. I'm not sure what that's. I know you were talking about the the thorny path um, but I'm not sure what that's. I know you were talking about the the thorny path um, but I'm not sure what that reference is too. So maybe gabby it's a great.

Renee Schramm: 49:02

It's a great route.

Capn Tinsley: 49:03

You know a lot of our friends have done the thorny path or well, we should probably say I've asked for a different route because I think it's cheaper to go a different route.

Renee Schramm: 49:12

The thornless path that sam came up, you know, is what everybody's aiming for, and I get it and that's a great way to go. But for us we just chose the opposite, because we have a big beefy boat, we are on the saltier side of things, we're not scared of a passage, and so we had six days out there instead of six weeks hopping along the island. So we didn't do Turks and Caicos, we didn't do the DR you know we've done them before but we didn't stop on this passage because we felt okay with the weather forecast. We got to go straight and our friends who did do the thornless path took six weeks to catch up to us. Now depends on if that's you could see that as a good or a bad thing. Right, right?

Capn Tinsley: 50:02

Yeah, they're taking their time, not in a hurry.

Chris Schramm: 50:06

We mentioned the boat like just big and beefy, we also carry 250 gallons of diesel, yeah, so if you're out there, let's talk about boats. Yeah, the older boats, like your island pack, they're big tanks, right. So the big tanks, you know we have big tanks, water tanks, big tanks, diesel tanks, water maker, so that you've got sustainability out there. You know we have solar with lithium batteries we can go weeks on the hook and never run the generator. I need the generator to make water because it's an old, big electric hog watermaker. But think about that self-sustaining. The newer boats we have a friend that's got a beautiful new boat and they carry 40 gallons of diesel. No, and it's a 45 foot boat, you know. No, wow, that's not enough.

Renee Schramm: 51:06

Not for us, not for what we want to do.

Chris Schramm: 51:08

Right.

Capn Tinsley: 51:08

Right. So Mike has another question. He asked this before. We never got it up on a former podcast, he, he wants to add he's got a 1987 Island Packet 29, I think, and he needs to add refrigeration to his box, you know, yeah.

Renee Schramm: 51:29

We did, do you have any feedback.

Capn Tinsley: 51:31

You do OK, great so ours had.

Chris Schramm: 51:34

We had a sea frost engine driven system and an AC driven electric system and so you could run either one.

Chris Schramm: 51:44

And we had a big fridge and an icebox and it was inefficient, it was old, and so we did a couple of things. We switched over to DC refrigeration and, and did that, we converted both the icebox, well, we converted the freezer to DC with like a Ventrofigo compressor and then we replaced the refrigerator with isotherm drawers, um, that are dc, so we have all dc refrigeration. We also added because when we were doing the refrigeration we were living on the boats we bought one of those dc coolers, fridge freezers, and so we and we're like we'll keep this, it's the beer fridge. So we have that, plus the two refrigerator doors, plus the freezer and our 840, you know amp hours of solar or lithium batteries and like 1200 Watts of solar supports. That just fine, and so we can be on the hook and you know, we cover all of our energy needs for the for the refrigeration and it's like it's it's plug and play, like it's super easy. We got to defrost the freezer. In fact we did it yesterday Every once in a while.

Renee Schramm: 53:07

But it had been three months or something.

Chris Schramm: 53:08

Yeah, a while you know, because in the humidity you get more frost. Yeah, it's been a while you know, because in the humidity you get more frost. But I would encourage you to you know, and there's, you know, if you're handy you can buy those systems. I think Seafrost has them, where they come pre-charged, ready to go and you just you mount it Into the existing space without a big overhaul. Right.

Renee Schramm: 53:38

So my limit on three Gulf crossings was ice and diesel. Ice was the biggest problem. We are fortunate to have an ice maker aboard. We had a fabulous couple that on this boat before us who made sure that the creature comforts were aboard. So washer, dryer, ice maker, huge water maker, 16 kilowatt generator we have all the things for comfort. So we're fortunate that we do have an ice maker. Now we don't run all the time because of the power draw. We oftentimes use the silicone ice trays that make the big cocktail cubes. We find those work really well on the boat for cocktail or otherwise because they last. So a lot of times we'll do ice cube trays in the freezer and leave it at that. If we're going to be on anchor for a while, we'll probably. You know our friends are around. We tend to have the crowd over to the ocean air. We will fire up the ice maker, right.

Chris Schramm: 54:31

Yeah, it's. It's sort of the ice maker sort of the tipping point of our power. If we had another 200 amp hours of lithium and another 200 amp hour or 200 Watts of solar, we could run it all the time. But it's sort of the tipping point that if it's a little bit cloudy for a day or two, the ice maker kills us. So we ended up running the generator. So we generally, unless we have a party or something, we generally don't run it.

Capn Tinsley: 54:58

I don't worry about ice, it's just and I don't miss it. But I have one of those ice boxes that are inside of the original ice. You know, the freezer box? Yeah, and I think that's what he needs. Is he just has a refrigerator box and he has to put ice in there? Yeah, but just one of the. I just had it replaced the ice box. Right, it just went out.

Chris Schramm: 55:26

A lot of folks now are using, like the Dometic or the ARB. We have an ARB. That's what I have Dometic yeah and like it comes at you know, that's what I have, dometic yeah and it's a cooler and they're $600, $700. The bigger ones are like $1,000. But that's a lot cheaper than boat refrigeration and they work awesome. They work great.

Renee Schramm: 55:51

You're talking about the standalone cooler. Yeah, the standalone cooler right. Yes, engel or Dometic ARB.

Chris Schramm: 55:56

Right, those are a lot of folks we know. You know they got them as a backup and they've kept them. We did the same thing. It's the beer fridge. You got to have a beer fridge right.

Capn Tinsley: 56:08

So Mike was saying, yeah, he's got 130 watts of solar. I've got two 375 watt solar panels and I've got two I forgot the brand Two lithium batteries, the big ones, it's a lot of, it's the Rolls Royce of lithium batteries. And I also have wind generator what else? And I also have a wind generator what else? I also have a 5,000 watt generator, but I have yet. I took it all the way south down to the Marquesas and I didn't use it, but I had it there just in case.

Chris Schramm: 56:48

Right, you know we use ours to run the water maker and if we have a couple days, if it's cloudy, we do that. But we have three 375s, those LG 375s, and then we have 840 amp hours of lithiums Battleborns. So there's eight size 31 batteries, which is like a big car battery, and we've had them since 2020. There's eight size 31 batteries, which is like a big car battery, and it's we've had them since 2020. The lithium is life-changing because you can run it all the way down, you get use of all of the amp hours and really it's, it's really life-changing. And then we carry, we carry. We had a Honda 2000 generator that we carry with us and I'm glad we did.

Capn Tinsley: 57:37

I think mine's 2,500. The one at home is 5,000.

Chris Schramm: 57:42

It's one of those portable, yeah, the. Honda one and we carry that with us and we've only had to use it twice. But I'm darn glad we had it Because we were able to, you know, charge the batteries when we needed, when the generator I don't remember what was wrong, but the generator wasn't generating- yeah, so tell us about.

Capn Tinsley: 58:05

we're almost out of time here. We've been on 58 minutes. Tell us about the new business adventure and why you started it.

Renee Schramm: 58:11

Well. So we had made it down to Trinidad and thought we were going through the Panama Canal and continuing on, and we had several family events come up. This past year my mother was end of life and in hospice and passed away, so I came home to do hospice care with her. Our middle son and daughter-in-law had the first grandchild, so we have a new sweet baby girl and they requested us home. And then our youngest son graduates college in December. So between all of those things, we felt the pull to come home and since we're going to be home for a bit, we wanted something to do to stay busy, stay on the water we don't like begun the process of moving boats for people while we're home this year. So how do people?

Chris Schramm: 59:22

find you for that. What's that? So if you go on Facebook or Instagram for that matter Sailing the Ocean Air, we have a page for the boat right, and then you'll find links for the delivery business there, and you know find us Ocean Air Yacht Delivery.

Capn Tinsley: 59:43

Speaking of, that's our boat. I wanted to show just a couple of pictures before we go. What was this video?

Chris Schramm: 59:54

here while you're looking tinsley, if folks are listening and they have like. We're an open book. So if you have questions and you want to talk to us, send us a dm on facebook. We'll find a time. Like if you got, if there's something about this that you want to know more, dig into we. We're always happy to help. So always have you know this is not a. It's a big transition. So if you need, if you need some coaching or advice or want to share an idea please please do.

Renee Schramm: 1:00:23

Yeah, I'm also in the process of writing my first book. While we were out cruising, one of my goals was to get published, write some articles. I did some writing in my career but wanted to switch gears to the sailing world, and so I was able to get something published in the Caribbean this year, and I've also been working on a book. So it's a cruiser's resource and I look forward to getting that out. Hopefully it'll be helpful to people that would like to get into the lifestyle as well.

Capn Tinsley: 1:00:53

Hopefully it'll be helpful to people that would like to get into the lifestyle as well. Yeah, there is Go ahead.

Chris Schramm: 1:01:01

This is part of one of the most wonderful things about sailing. Those moments are the best ever.

Capn Tinsley: 1:01:04

The dolphins like to swim with the boat.

Renee Schramm: 1:01:06

Absolutely Riding that bow wave.

Capn Tinsley: 1:01:10

So yeah, I was going to. Actually I was thinking you're such, you have such a way with words. I was thinking I bet she's an author. So there's a lot of sailors write books. I'm happy to hear that you have a book. Yeah, it's underway, all right, so they can go ahead. They can find you on on youtube and instagram sailing ocean air and at, and there they can ask you about the.

Chris Schramm: 1:01:35

If they need a boat moved, or they can ask your advice on how you guys like we're we're our jobs to be helpful, like that's.

Capn Tinsley: 1:01:43

that's kind of our thing. So that's my job too is to bring you to the people. There you go.

Renee Schramm: 1:01:48

There were a lot of people that helped us get out there right. We were, we were new at this at some point, and so we're happy to share the knowledge.

Capn Tinsley: 1:01:56

All right, well, we'll just wrap it up with that, okay and um, I usually like to end, let me. Let me find my little outro video with salty abandoned out Music, music, music, music.