Blue World Nomads - Fun and energetic couple seeking crew opportunities as we find adventures sailing around the world
We are a 50-something, adventurous, non-smoking couple. We have traveled both ways around the world together, managed a variety of hospitality and recreation businesses, owned and operated a popular guesthouse, and now are traveling once again. Our motto is "slow travel with no time to lose".
Diane grew up a farm-girl and Alex was born and bred a city-boy, but we have spent our lives together in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. We met while working at a popular ski resort, got married on the border with Alaska, moved to Vancouver Island and now base ourselves in Northern BC. The Coast Mountains are the perfect place for us, because we try to spend as much time on the coast as we do in the mountains.
Our first vacation together was to Hawai’i. While staying at a friend’s condo, we decided to try the snorkeling gear we found in a closet. WOW! We had no idea how amazing and beautiful the underwater world is. We also decided to try the boogie-boards we found in the same closet. WOW! We had no idea how fun and exciting sliding down the face of a wave is.
A couple of years after we got married, we went backpacking around the world a couple of times. It was then that we started scuba diving. We did our Open Water to Rescue courses in Thailand, and then did as much diving as we could around Africa including the Red Sea, Lake Malawi and Aliwal Shoal. We have dived most of Mexico’s main sites over the past decade or so. Alex worked as a divemaster on Vancouver Island for a few years, and is currently working as an instructor in Vancouver.
The travel bug started itching again a while ago, so we packed everything we own into a storage unit, rented out our house and hit the road. For the past few years, we have been house sitting while we make our way around the world. So far we’ve been focusing on the Pacific Ocean, with housesits on the Baja, Queensland, Costa Rica and at home in British Columbia.
For twenty-five years, we have lived and traveled along the Earth’s water cycle. During that time, we worked and played on and in British Columbia’s glaciers, lakes, rivers, coastlines and rainforests. We have also dived and surfed in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and drifted down the longest rivers in Asia, Africa and South America.
Most of our travel has been slow travel on, near or in the water. Starting on the island nation of Singapore in Southeast Asia, we watched turtles lay eggs in Malaysia and learned to dive in Thailand. We got soaked by monsoons in Cambodia, cruised down the rivers of Laos, and hiked across glacial valleys in Nepal.
We followed the subcontinent’s coastlines in India, and bounced from sea to sea to sea through the Middle East. Starting at the Black Sea and down to the Aegean in Turkey, we visited the water wheels of Hama and the oasis of Palmyra in Syria. After floating on the Dead Sea in Jordan and diving the Red Sea in Egypt, we finished on the Mediterranean coast in Morocco.
In South America, we found Laguna Quilatoa filling the crater of an extinct volcano in Ecuador. An Amazon riverboat brought us from Colombia to the jungles of Peru where we also made our way to Bolivia via Laguna Titicaca – the world’s highest navigable body of water – and a trip across Bolivia’s salt flats and alkaline lakes took us through the Andean Altiplano. As we headed east, we visited the wetlands of Esteros del Iberá in Argentina, explored Cataratas del Iguazú and crossed into Brazil, where we spent several weeks surfing on an Atlantic beach.
Back in Africa, after island-hopping down the Swahili coast in Kenya and Tanzania, we enjoyed some freshwater diving in Malawi, witnessed “the smoke that thunders” at Victoria Falls in Zambia, camped on chilly wind-swept Atlantic beaches in Namibia, and went surfing in South Africa. That trip ended with nearly four months in China, where we saw dried shark fins prominently displayed in Hong Kong’s markets and barges laden with coal plying the Yangtze River, and joined pilgrims as they circled Nam Tzo – the largest lake in Tibet.
More recently, we spent several months in Queensland and logged nearly 50 dives each all along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea. And, of course there’s plenty of water to be explored on our own continent of North America. We’ve been skiing the mountains and glaciers of western Canada for decades, traveled the coastlines of the United States, dived all over Mexico and surfed the beaches of Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast.
We've always had the idea of buying a sailboat and sailing around the world. But, the more people we chatted with, the more we started realizing that it might be best to start as part of a crew and get our feet wet – so to speak. We want to learn as much about sailing, sailboats, electrical systems, diesel engines, water purifiers, and everything else as we can before investigating and investing in a boat of our own. It is also a great way to meet like-minded and interesting people.
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