6 Months Later… Was It Worth It? (Q&A)

Don't be fooled by the farmer fit. I'm not a farmer and I'm having to catch a chicken for this thumbnail. I'm standing on so much chicken poo right now. Darwin would easily be able to grab one. Yeah, where's Darwin when you need him? You have to grab it now. Oh, it's so weird. Settle down buddy, settle down. It's okay, it's okay. Okay, come closer.

You stand... you stand there, I'll stand here? With a chainsaw? This is pretty annoying. Okay, let's move this way. Everyone can see I'm not lying when I say farming is well outside my comfort zone. I'm too scared to even pick up a chicken. Yeah. That's pathetic. That's alright. I can get the chickens. You dug a hole. Okay. In the wrong spot. We got this, we don't.

join us for a Q&A. We figured that it was finally time to answer some of your questions that you've been sending our way, especially since we've hit pause on sailing and we've started to build a land home for our growing family. We're doing that here in this little slice of paradise called Vanuatu.

Anyone that hasn't seen us before, Elena and I have been sailing around the world myself for I believe it's 13 years. A third of his life we figured out the other day. Yeah, just short of and yours is just over a third of your life. Yeah. We met in Greece, I convinced her to come on board my boat, she then started making

YouTube videos. We've had two kids on board and recently have decided to sail instead of 10 months of the year, maybe bring it back down to about four and we've got a home base here in Vanuatu. That is probably what a lot of the Q&A will be about because our audience has seen us

sailing for the last decade and we've made a big change recently. Yeah it was super important for us to finally have a home base. We had storage sheds all around the world. We can't keep a lot of stuff on the sailboat so yeah it was time we like set up a solid land base and we thought... As much as you'd try. We just thought why not set up a sick home base and also challenge ourselves in a way that we've never been challenged. Like we are not builders and here we are in Vanuatu about to build an off-grid farm.

Is our kitten's bell a bit loud? Before we get into it we actually just wanted to touch on a couple of things from the last episode. First, a lot of you pointed out that Riley wasn't wearing chainsaw chaps and you're absolutely right. We didn't fully appreciate how important they are and after reading your comments we realized how serious that risk actually is. Some of you guys shared horrific stories of accidents

And although a few comments were pretty blunt and brutal to be honest, we knew that they came from a good place. So thank you for looking out for us and I've already ordered him a pair. Riley will definitely be wearing them from now on. And second thing is Cedric. A lot of you were worried about him, which we completely understand. Looking back, buying a goat before we'd sorted out a reliable water supply on our land

wasn't the smartest move. And as soon as we realized it was going to take us longer than expected, we brought him back to our house. We built him a shelter and made sure he had plenty of food and water. And the very next day he was moved to our friend Emma's farm where he'll stay until everything is ready for him back on our property. And the nice thing is he's actually back with the same goats he used to live with before we adopted him from the agriculture center. So he's settled in really well. Long story short, Cedric is happy you guys, he's healthy and no goats were harmed in the making of the last episode.

He was our number one priority from the moment we bought him like we love animals and we're just trying to do our best as we're learning So, please try to understand that and yeah, just thank you for always caring. Alright, so the first question is why Vanuatu? Why Vanuatu over Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or anywhere else? Most people that we meet they say oh so you must have sailed there and fallen in love with it and well I actually know it was just

close enough to Australia. We'd been hanging out in Bali and we liked that but in the end it wasn't for us to build a farm on for a whole bunch of reasons. We made an entire video about that. Vanuatu, it's close enough to Australia. I know for sure there's fish here. We flew into town with only five weeks worth of

clothing and a couturement to get by. Yeah, not expecting this to be the place and after three days Riley and I looked at each other and we were like this is it because we always wanted to live in a place that was still really alive and nature was still in charge. We don't like overpopulation and the pollution that comes with that and

like unclean air. The locals here are so cool. Like they're living in jungles, they're growing fruit and they're just being, I don't know, authentic old school village dudes. It's really cool to have around and for our kids to grow up around that. Yeah, I think because of the religion here too, they're mostly Christian.

There is this like... There's some Mormons and some Muslims. Yeah, and also a cult which is super interesting to learn about. I haven't seen the lady around town but there's this cult that moved from Australia. We've seen the dudes in their get up. Yeah, I've met one guy in the supermarket actually. Something here for everyone. Yeah.

But because of that Christianity, everyone is like, when you pick up people in the car, they're like, God bless you. Like, they say love you. We just met. And they're like, love you. And I'm like, I love you too. Anyway, to be welcomed by the Ni Vanuatu people so quickly, like, that was a huge selling point for us. We feel very comfortable living here. That's why Vanuatu. That's why Vanuatu. Have you actually processed... Oh, can I **** on Australia? Sure. Yeah, so...

Australia, I like you, Australia. You're an okay country. But there's enough there that is too annoying for me where I just, I would prefer to be elsewhere. Like rules? Tax?

Well society's okay, like I don't mind laws of some description. But there's massive government overreach. This is my opinion about Australia. I think that the culture is so strong that it's difficult for people to become their own person. The tax situation, government overreach and then that.

absolute mismanagement of funds within Australia. When you go there you just feel like you're back on the hamster wheel and Elena and I have been away from that and mainstream media and all that sort of stuff for so long. It's really jarring when we get back into that and so that's a big draw for us to be

elsewhere. As much as I love Australia and I owe everything to it, they're some of the drawbacks. But then there are two schools, the Ni Vanuatu people and many of the expats speak three different languages, English, French and

The hospital situation here isn't great but there's enough people and stuff just going on that Elena and I will feel not isolated. Our cup is filled in that way where it probably wasn't whilst we were sailing. - We've spoken for nine minutes about one question. - Yeah, keep that in the movie.

I am re-reading The Brothers Karamazov and like any Dostoevsky reading performative prat, I'm going to inform as many people as possible. You'll notice with zero segue, you'll further notice the really obnoxious ones emphasising the re in re-reading so that you'll know that it is indeed not my first time reading this novel.

Anyway, at the core of the book lies the question, what do we do with ourselves when we finally figure out we're a meatbag filled with internal paradoxes that has free will. Horny and angry and impatient with a beautiful soul, full of self-loathing, arrogant, kind, dependable, petty, noble, inspirational, aspiring to be a good person and failing every day. If you feel like this sometimes, don't worry, Dostoevsky thinks that we are all of these things.

So you have at a fundamental level the unavoidable conflict within us, the light and the dark sides of the force. The four brothers deal with this in different ways, but today here, students listening under my tutelage, I'd like to focus on Fyodor, the father, who is what we call in Australia a

a piss head. He parties and he beds women and now pay attention because I'm actually nearing my point here. He stays busy and he uses humour to avoid any close examination of his life at all. He turns his attention to anything but the contents of his consciousness. Which struck a chord with me. I'm extremely familiar with this archetype in Australia and I know you're probably thinking "oh yeah I know people like that"

But what about you? Do you yourself doom scroll or drink alcohol or work too hard to avoid thinking about how deeply flawed you are as a human being? I do. I truly believe that all of this is incredibly important and BetterHelp, who are the long time paid partner of our show, they're really good at helping people unpack these types of feelings and coping mechanisms. It can give you a safe space to explore all those different parts of yourself and a credentialed therapist to help guide those conversations.

to listen and provide tools to live with these infinite paradoxes that exist within all of us. So you can head to betterhelp.com/sailing which is linked in the description box and also in the top comment and everywhere you'll easily be able to find it. You'll get a discount on your first month there. We think that it's incredibly worthwhile. What I would say is that if you want to live a deeper more meaningful life you need to set some time aside to think and to talk about these things.

You owe it to yourself. You beautifully flawed, delightfully wretched human being. - Have you actually processed how much your life has changed from living on a boat for years to buying land, getting engaged, putting the boys in school? Have you had time to process it all? Not really. My whole life just feels, well, since I met you and started like traveling more than I ever could have imagined. - Blast on brother, don't think about it. - It all doesn't feel real. It's all a dream to me still.

So no, we haven't had time to process it all, might not ever. When I say it doesn't feel real, I wake up every day and I'm like, "What the actual F?" How? What did I do to deserve this? This is... I think you can say f***. Like... We'll just beat the f*** up. Every single morning, I think I'm the luckiest person ever, really. Well, you are. I am. Yeah, I know. How? Because I'm so great. Okay.

What's been the best part of living on land? Oh, I know the answer to this one. Sleep. Oh, sleep's a good one. Yeah, solid sleep. Not worrying if your boat's dragging anchor. On a sailboat, I was never truly at ease. See, if the wind would blow, it would rain, something would happen, I would be bolt upright in bed and assessing the situation. I've never slept like I have since I've been here. Yeah. Just...

very deep, very long, uninterrupted bliss. Same, like eight solid hours. Waking up so energized and just ready to just attack. Yeah, that's so, yeah, I feel that. Also for me, it's the ability to move my body so easily living on land.

Like I really used to struggle on the boat to be motivated to work out and I found myself just sitting a lot in different places on the boat. Like yes, we sail to a lot of amazing destinations and we have huge beaches and hikes we can go on but the majority of the time is spent on the boat moving very little and I didn't like being sedentary like that so much. It like, I could feel it after a while. So I just wake up, I can walk, I can run. It's just the novelty of that. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Well, what's been the hardest adjustment? Less of a sense of adventure and freedom. Same. Like nothing awesome is really easy. It's difficult to cross an ocean but when you arrive you're just like, "Wow, we just did something really gnarly." And so, I think I, am I off topic here? No, that's, maybe. I think I just segwayed into it. Yeah. The freedom is the same for me, especially

Especially when stuff with the uh ******* recent war and world conflict was happening I was like for the first time I didn't have a boat that I could just escape on

I was like what are we gonna do now? But I can get into doomsday like phases It's great to see you acknowledge that in front of these people you haven't acknowledged that in front of me I can get deep into like a doomsday phase So we don't have that anymore but my theory is we can try and grow a lot We can we can buy some cows to survive off milk some goats. We can plant a garden real quick Are you gonna do a bunker? I don't want anything to do with this but are you gonna do a bunker?

No, I do want a cyclone safe room though which could also double as a bunker, dig underground. Do you miss sailing and will you sail again? Yeah, so I think we were sailing too much. I would encourage anyone out there that's thinking about sailing to maybe you could go halves in a boat and do 50/50. So for Elena and I, at the start it was amazing and then it was just probably a bit too much and we didn't really acknowledge that or you know we were probably making movies and working really hard but

10, 11 and even at the start 12 months of the year is just too much to be on a boat. It's absolutely crazy. Although we do have a powerboat coming soon so we'll be in the water a lot which I'm really looking forward to. I think eventually we'll sail for probably three months of the year or four months of the year. I think that that is a wonderful lifestyle for the children.

and it would be mean of me to take that away from my kids so I want to give them as much of that as I can. So we're going to set up the off-grid farm and then take off on our first sailing mission on a sailboat we haven't bought yet. We still haven't sold our trimaran so it might be on the trimaran if we can't sell it by then. Yeah, does anyone want to buy the boat?

We've got a, it's a beautiful dry marina. It is legit the sickest boat. - It is. - Maybe on planet Earth. - Yeah, I kinda hope no one buys it and we have to keep it. And we'll just grow old with it. How are the boys adjusting to land life? Sorry, how are the boys adjusting to life on land?

Really well. Yeah, they ask about the boat all the time, especially Lenny. He loves it You get to spend all day on the boat tying knots helping out data fixing the electricals Yeah, and I think more for Darwin the youngest one. He he's a social butterfly He loves having friends here. He's been going to birthday parties surfing skating like he's really enjoying land and Lenny

maybe a little bit less but he will definitely return to the ocean yeah 100 million percent for sure yeah how are they finding school friends sports and social life yeah i'd just say it's really well really good they love school they don't complain about it i complain so i got to get up at 5 45 every morning to drive them to school for 7 30. that's cruelty uh what do you hope that the kids will gain from growing up on a farm that they couldn't get from growing up at sea i think

- I think they're gonna be a lot more in touch with nature. I think a cat is vomiting. - Martha. - Go away. - Martha. - You okay? - Skills, well they're gonna be helping us out with everything on the farm that we build. - Was it skills? - Yeah, they're gonna be helping out-- - Sorry, sorry, can you say the question again? - Okay, what do you hope they'll gain from growing up on a farm that they couldn't get from growing up on the sea?

I don't know. To me the boat is sort of the ultimate if you can pull it off perfectly. Elena and I did that for a very long time but we needed a rest and I think it's good for the kids to go into school. So maybe that's the thing is the socialisation for the kids. Where we are it's only 20 minutes into school and friends and other kids and stuff like that. So I think that would be the answer to that question.

For me, they're gonna be helping out with everything on the farm. They love building and have like, they go up the farm and they steal the boys machetes. We've got the guys working from another island, Tanna. The boys steal their machetes and go and cut down the trees and help and they love hammers and hammering. Anyway, I think they're gonna develop a whole bunch of hand dive motor skills that they might not have otherwise on the boat, maybe. - Yeah, learning from other people 'cause I'm not very good at fixing . - Not yet.

Family and future the big one baby number three. We've spoken about it a bunch

but i honestly i can't imagine finding out uh as much as you guys you literally said to your mom the other day you said i could be convinced like you're pretty easy right i loved being pregnant but right now i'm also loving being so fit and healthy and it's a real like of course you get the reward of a beautiful baby and i do really want a girl i'd also be happy with another boy but girl would be a dream elena you've spoken a lot about adopting yeah there's we've

contemplated the idea of adopting here we know of a lot of families living here that have done that yeah we've seen some really good examples of that done well so it's something we're thinking about yeah anyway if I was to have my own baby right now whilst building the farm that kind of sounds like a nightmare to me but when is the right time to have another baby? There is no right time. There's never a right time to be decided. How did you know Riley was the person you wanted to spend your life with? Because you're so funny

Honestly, I don't know if there was a moment where I... Come on, give me compliments. I don't know if there was a moment... I can give you lots of compliments if you want, but it might be weird. Okay.

You're really funny. We've been able to grow together and you've encouraged me to be the best version of myself. You support me through whatever weird phase I'm going through. You got me into reading books all those years ago. You're just the bomb. You're my best friend. What are your wedding plans? Should we tell them? So we have...

Three days, very roughly planned. We're not gonna get married for like another... Well, we said until we build the house. It'd be a shame to have everyone come over here and for them to not see the farm we've set up. So maybe in like one or two years. But anyway...

Everyone arrives, we thought the first night we could do a big fire show There's these locals that do an incredible fire show so we could have that and we could also all drink kava Have a big kava ceremony because it's a great way to get to know people and you just you're really grounded and it's amazing We absolutely love kava First night and that way no one's hungover for the next day Which would be the wedding up on our property with the waterfall behind us We could have horses everywhere. Not sure if we want to do like a CNN Lucas can DJ

Not sure if we want to do like a we stand in front of everyone and they watch us situation but we'll see. And then that night it can turn into a bit of a bush doof and we can have a DJ and a couple of tents and we can get the radium dolls to come rage on through the night. And then the next day we can all go to the waterfalls because there's heaps of beautiful lawn and we can just like have a big barbecue and we can be really hungover and just chill by the waterfall.

That's a rough plan. How many people? I have no idea. We've got 5,000 patrons. We've all promised you guys that you could come. So it's going to be an expensive wedding. I think it was like one of our tears at some point. Like, you're invited to our wedding. Oh. Yeah. We better make good on that. We didn't think we were ever going to get married, but here we are. Yeah.

Anyway. How are you integrating into the local community? Well, we're kind of friends with a lot of locals living here. It's like predominantly Niivinawatu people so I mean yeah we have heaps of friends. We visited a couple of villages. We're gonna learn Bishlama soon.

which we've been putting off because we are so busy but we need to do that. Yeah, I've got the email for the guy. We should get onto that. Once we can speak with Vishwama. I'm really looking forward to that. What's your vision for the property? House plans, layout, animals, horses, water, solar, farm plans? That's a big, big one. That's such a big question but I'm currently interested in...

street appeal. I want to have the forward-facing fence really nice and then a potentially even over-the-top sort of gateway. Nice road, beautiful fields so we'll need to clear and weed and just there's just so much work to do.

We've got a lot of tidying up to do. And then the house which we are yet to select the final location for but we're getting very close. Our house is going to be insane you guys. We're still working with our architects. They're from Belgium. Maybe nearly 30 year olds and they're so like motivated and... They're legends. They're cool. We had so many architects write in and say that they wanted to work with us and you...

I looked at all of them and thank you guys so much for reaching out and in the end I went with these guys because what they have created in Europe so far each and every design is it has something that makes you go wow yeah and I really wanted that for our house like we didn't want just a box of a farmhouse we wanted something maybe a little bit more modern because we found out we couldn't have the terracotta roof tiles that would have fit and

fit the original farm. Exactly, we didn't know they work with cyclones. But anyway, we're still modifying it with them but already I'm going like well.

wow, there's something amazing to see around every corner. With the right engineer to check over the structure and the right materials which Liam is very familiar with having built houses here. Lots of solar panels. We're thinking about hydro generation as well because we do have that flowing river and huge waterfall like that's a lot of energy that we could harness but the waterfall is quite a distance away from where we're gonna have our house so then like maybe is it worth it?

Zooming out, what sort of animals do you want? I want to wake up and be able to see my horses from my front window. That's my goal. I want a horse like stable. I want fruit trees everywhere. I want a big lawn. We want two big ridge back dogs that I'm still trying to organize. I just want to drive around in my tractor and/or excavator with air conditioning and just listen to lectures on philosophy and maybe do a degree. And then four months a year sail. Sick.

That, I mean that's a dream life if we can pull that off. Yeah. Goats, I want to make goats cheese or try to. There's a very, there's a big lack of goats cheese on the island and so many expats now have told me you need to make goats cheese so I'll try. It'll just be like try at your own risk kind of vibes. I'm not going to sell it in stores. Maybe we'll get a few cows but like mostly just for pets and grazing. Chickens, lots of chickens and ducks. That's kind of the vibe so far. Okay these are personal questions.

How did you find your way out of burnout? I didn't find my way out. I was forced to like acknowledge that I even had burnout. Like my body literally told me to stop. It completely stopped. My brain would not work all of a sudden. I couldn't function and I would have kept going and I think most people that are leading up to burnout, you do keep going and it's probably pretty impossible to stop because you're so high stress and you're running on like cortisol and adrenaline. And how I recovered?

I learned that it is okay to rest I always thought that was such a crime Yeah, but if you can stop before you reach burnout I highly recommend it because that was not fun Where do you see yourselves in 10 years? Well, not here but just up there

Yeah, just about 500 metres that way up a hill. Well, the kids are gonna be teenagers by then, so I hope they're like having parties at our house when we're not there. I hope all of our animals in our gardens are just like flourishing and we get to go on sick trips with the boys on sailboats and boats and... Do you think we'll still be making movies? I hope so. Have you guys seen Entourage? And there's this scene where drama, Johnny Drama, has been...

They made him rehearse for a movie and he's like, he comes to this realization that that's who he is and he just has to keep trying and grinding. It'd be really funny if we lost subscribers every year and we just kept grinding and just kept doing it, showing up.

Every second Monday with a video doesn't matter We've got two views and we just keep doing it for the love of the game. I know, bless. That'd be really funny. Who knows? Yeah. These videos are also like really great memories for us like we're gonna have a whole catalog of our life to look back on. Every video that I post I think in my mind I'm like I'm gonna get to watch this when I'm

60 or 70 years old. So it's also really nice to make these videos. It's not just work for us. I also really hope the App goes well, See People App. It's currently like doing amazing and we're about to launch a new feature. This is not an ad but like genuinely we are...

- I'm losing my - We have been working our ass off. It's so exciting. There's a real thing brewing amongst the whole crew. We're having more meetings, there's so much time and thought and energy going into this next phase, which we can't really talk about. - Not yet, but this is the thing. - But we are going to smack the pants, like it's just,

You're just not even gonna believe what comes out. We accidentally left the best feature for last. This is gonna blow your mind anyway. It all, but it's not just a feature, it's like everything changes. Yeah, yeah, it's not a feature. It's gonna be the core reason people use it out. Yeah. Okay, this is rapid fire. Did you eat the pilji bug? No, I did not eat the grub. That was so gross. It reminds me of a witchetty grub in Australia. What happened to Darwin's hair?

We cut it off. Is Lenny getting a haircut? No. Do you wear shoes all the time now? Yeah.

Nearly. No, we do. And actually, all our tan's gone, which sucks. Yeah, we're so white. We're wearing, like, I look at my feet and it looks like someone else's feet. He literally says it every few days. He's like, these don't look like my feet. Because they're white. It's so weird. We need a tan. What do you call that? Phantom limb syndrome? I think it's the opposite of that. Anyway, it's very peculiar. Looking at your own limb and being suspicious. Like, I mean...

That's not mine. That is literally what you do. That's so funny. Do you have a social life? Yes, I've got lots of cool horse girlfriends and like it's definitely a different crowd of people but so many lovely things

living here but yeah we feel like we have a family here yeah it's really nice what's your favorite thing about Vanuatu? Carver well that wasn't very rapid fire was it I think I missed my shot what camera are you using? 6D with a 14 to 35mm and a shotgun no hang on what's the... maybe it's an R6 yeah that's what I said you said a 16

And a dead cat. Can you just say we're using a Canon R6 Mark II? No, just put all of that in. It's not a 6D. That doesn't even auto focus. Put all of that in.

- 60's are . Don't ever get a 60, we accidentally did that one time. - No, they were the legit, they were the best back in the day. - The 60 couldn't auto focus. - It was an indie filmmaking extravaganza. - Yeah, of course. - It was revolutionary. - But not for vlogging. Not for vlogging. - Next question. - We'd go like this and we'd have to focus the lens on our face. It was a nightmare. - Yeah, it was the wrong use case. - Have you found a puppy yet? No, I thought I had a puppy and I'm so angry about it. I ordered one and he said it was mine. - Yes, dude. - And he sent me photos of this puppy

- Videos. - Beautiful liver nose girl and said it was ours. Beautiful green eyes. - We had Zoom chats with this guy. It was unreal and then he just sold it. - He was referring to this puppy as mine. Didn't hear from him for a week. Then he said, "Sorry, Elena, I've sold the puppy to someone else." I literally cried.

And then the next day, CEO, our kitten turned up in our yard like an absolute miracle. That little hole in my heart was temporarily filled, but we do really want puppies. We're still working on importing them from Australia. We want some big farm, big healthy farm dogs.

I think that's kind of it. Is there anything else? Yeah, no, read out the questions that you weren't allowed to answer. So we put them into chat GPT and chat came up with a list and then it's like, I would avoid these. Yeah, look, it's like, here's all the best questions out of the ones you screenshot for me. These are the questions I'd cut. Feet pics, OnlyFans, height, Botox, Hong Kong visit, World Cup, green...

Boots, boob jog, random travel advice questions, Henry Cavill questions, Cape Town travel questions. Good work chat. Yeah, sorry we didn't touch on any of those ones. Most of them too, but yeah let us know if you want those answered. I would just like to say that I'm really grateful to our audience for following Elena and I on this big transition.

I think that it's one of the, if you don't mind my saying, it's one of the sort of braver things that we've done. Just because we've built our entire business around the sailing and just to independently come up with the same idea and then slowly discuss it, Elena and I, and then agree and then make that change was emotionally challenging.

challenging and it just took so much energy and time and thinking. Courage. What a risk we just took. And it's so cool that you're here watching still. Thank you guys. Yeah, but I just want you to know that I'm brave.

You're so brave, babe. I'm really brave. You are. And smart and funny and all the things. Yeah. If you're here till the end, well done. I hope you enjoyed the video. Please give the video a like and we'd love to hear from you in the comments. If you've got more questions for us, please leave them in the comments section below. I'm going to be hanging out there after this video drops and I want to try and answer as many as I can. Next week takes a pretty unexpected turn. You're going to be joining us as we head back to our trimaran in Indonesia.

I've got to get ready for something pretty big. Can't wait to tell you all about it in the next episode of Sailing La Vagabonde.