My sailors’ playlist – January 2022
It’s no secret that I read/watch/listen a lot about sailing. Not that I exclusively follow sailing stuff, but meh, it’s fair to say that there goes a lot of my time. So, here’s a quick review of my current favourite sources of inspiration with the hope to receive further thoughts.
I start today with the list of the ones that actually do what I ultimately pretend to do myself: sail +/- around the world. But the thing is, watching hours of palm trees, turquoise snorkeling and disappointing fishing is not so much fun (to me). So, while I follow many round-the-world sailors, it is often their overall journey that fascinates me, as well as the discussions around their technical choices (e.g. monohull vs catamaran) but not their technical glitches (somehow, the change of an oil filter is not that thrilling).
As well, while the (sailing) fire was always smoldering, it really lit in early 2021, and many of the people here below have been sailing since way before. In other words, while I follow them, I have not watched their whole timelines, and often only focussed on a period of their respective journeys and I might have missed significant parts of them.
Enough said, let’s go with it.
Ruby Rose
Nick and Terysa are undoubtly my current fav sailors. Their “technical Tuesday’s” are a must and I wouldn’t have designed a better selection process for Ruby Rose 2 than theirs: a truly exhaustive, systematical and participative market survey. A pity that I only caught it after the gong. I deeply admire their final choice as it comes really close from my current thoughts with a few caveats: while I am (almost) convinced about the final build quality, I am uncertain about the after sales service of a distant shipyard + giving up on daggerboards is a step that I am not (yet?) ready to take + I would like to hear their views on aluminium catamarans: too expensive? not needed for their programme?
Sailing Millennial Falcon
Khiara and Adam come very close behind. They actually occupy a sweet spot in my spectator’s heart in the sense that Youtube’s almighty algorithms prompted me to look at their videos while my timeline was mainly about Vendée Globe (and non-sailing) stuff, so they were the first ones that brought be back into sailing. While their videos don’t lack turquoise, I fully dived into their technical talks, not the least their discussion with John Kretschmer, Dirk Beaumont or their honest/precise talk about budget. And Youtube learns fast once you’ve clicked the bait, so this was the first of many.
Sir Ernst
Together with the previous one, this is a Youtube algorythm discovery. I already dedicated a post to them and these guys have my full admiration, for their journey and their good spirit.
Les Copains
Any native French speaker (from France) will tell you that Quebec accent is sweet sweet sweet, and this couple is particularly attaching. Another pure algorithmic discovery. No fancy technical stuff, but wonderful and quite off-road journey (specially lately).
La Vagabonde
Blame me for missing that boat, but I’m probably the last one to have joined their whooping 1.64m followers (!!!). Any of their videos gets ~300k views within a few hours: they were pioneers in sailing vlogs, but I guess that sailing Greta Thunberg from her America’s trip back to Europe played a role in their fame. Their videos are neat, clean, well edited, but I don’t follow them daily daily as they mostly vlog about their travels as opposed to technical stuff, though there’s no doubt that Riley’s plea for catamarans (and his book advice) played a big role in my reconversion.
The O’Kelly’s
Discovered only recently, though I had read (and liked less) his book, this channel is as well a regular of my winter evenings. Again, I like very much their technical / comparisons / general advices which are always well structured and full of common sense.
Feel the breeze
This is a very recent discovery so I hesitated to give them a dedicated section, but this channel brings a unique tone (= the typical frank Dutch speak) which is refreshing and their video about making money while sailing is probably the most precise and comprehensive I have ever seen.
And then the others
And then, there are quite a few others that are tagged in my feed but which I still need to discover properly: Sailing Uma, Erik Aanderaa, MJ Sailing, sailing Zatara
Anything else that pops to mind?
