“We live in a sailboat, here is what life is in the sea.

An Idaho family is in the lifelong adventure after selling everything they have in order to explore the high sea.

Despite never sailing before, Brandon and Amber Morse and their children are now living in a catamaran in the Caribbean.

And, although it has not always been easy, they say that the experience has changed them for better.

The family tells Realtor.com® why they have chosen to live a little different life.

By 2020, the dierns were a typical family who lived in Idaho with parents working full -time and a busy program of educational and extracurricular activities for their four children. However, it was during the Covid-19 pandemic that the family began to play with the idea of ​​”escaping” their normality.

“I was working as a nurse at the time, so there was an incredible amount of stress that she was carrying. In addition, we were also generally fed up with shredding from 9 to 5, I felt that she was stealing the most important thing we have in this life, our time, especially our children,” says Amber.

“We felt like we kissed them every night just to send them to the door in the morning, no actually Seeing -until the next kiss when going to bed. “

So the couple started talking about what life would look like if they left their job, sold one of their cars, rented their home completely furnished, school children, and then packing everyone in an RV to travel around the country.

Then they turned it into a reality.

“When we were three months after our trip with RV, we started thinking about returning to the state Quo … and almost felt like waste because it had taken so much work to reduce links with our previous lives, “says Amber.

She was the eldest daughter of Amber and Brandon, Jadyn, who actually began the sailing conversation because she had had a friend of the middle school whose family had done it for a few weeks.

They found themselves “down a rabbit hole on YouTube and finding families who lived full -time in their sailboats, sailing around the world.”

“What I have learned is the courage that courage has, and it was only because of the steps of the baby that took it to do it, we could even see ourselves doing something else,” says Amber.

Selling everything to earn a life full of adventure

The walrus had bought their Idaho house only nine months before the RV voyage of the pandemic year.

The five-bedroom house with a pond in the back and a neighborhood pool in its sack was the largest house they had ever had.

“The cooler cars, a more pleasant house, did not feel full,” says Amber. “I dreamed of traveling with our children and experiencing adventures that really stretched us beyond our comfort zone.

“We knew we would need the equity of our home in order to allow a type of sailboat that could adapt to six people comfortably,” says Amber.

They put their home on the market and sold it in three weeks.

Transition from a house to a living boat

The next step, apart from sending Brandon to the sailing school, was to buy a boat.

“Boats are like houses in the sense that you can find a boat that matches your budget, from the style of the trailer park to the Super Yacht,” says Brandon. “For us, as we knew we were using our equity in our country to buy a depreciate asset, we wanted to go to a used boat, as most of the depreciation occurs in the first five years.”

However, they also knew they would need a large enough boat to “house” a six -family.

Ultimately, they chose a 450 lagoon, which is a model of four cabins, with each cabin that has its own bathroom and shower.

“For our six -year -old family, this felt as a size we could manage for navigation, but also for family living spaces,” says Brandon.

“Because older children have their own cabins, they manage to have their privacy and treat them -as their room, so they contributed the most special things to them,” says Amber. “Brandon and I also have our own cabin and, luckily, we all have lock doors.”

Along with the four cabins, they have a main “berlin” area that includes the galley (kitchen), the navigation desk and its “living room”, which houses a sofa in the form of a L. There is also an area of ​​the cabin containing a dining table and additional seats. The Flybridge of the ship (an elevated observation point and an observation point) is on the upper cover and includes a lounge pad more seats for eight people.

Cause finance to work for a family of six in the sea

Finding out how to make their new lifestyle a financial planning, especially since Brandon and Amber left their job. However, being entrepreneurs and sustainable, they will go ahead.

To begin with, the walrus used the money from the sale of their home to pay cash for their catamaran, which eliminated a mortgage payment, property taxes and public services bills.

Now their only “utility bill” is diesel for engines and ship generator, but they can spend months without having to “fill”. Brandon also installed a massive sunblock system that charges a large battery bank, which allows the family to live outside the network.

“We do not go to the sports doors and we rarely have to work our generator,” says Amber. “We do everything with free solar energy, from the kitchen, to water with our manufacturer of salt water desalination water, to the management of our water heater.”

For money, in addition to living their savings for a while, they also rent a duplex they have.

More recently, they have begun obtaining content creation of some companies and brands (thanks to their great follow -ups on Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube), and they have an Amazon page for “essential articles for the life of the ship” from which they win a small commission.

“Cooking in a small galley has its challenges, but I also did not realize what I would like to use the resources we have on hand as a creative exit,” says Amber. “I even took on the pasta bread for the first time and, in fact, before the life of the boat, I had never made bread throughout my life.”

Amber says there is something really magical, almost like a “recovery”, which has passed with time to make homemade food and then sit around his posterior table eating -together as a family.

“This is the contrast with the occupied life we ​​lived on Earth, eating Granola bars in the car, moving from one activity to another,” he adds.

High and low low ones when everything is on the cover

Although their lives are definitely picturesque, the diets say that, like life on Earth, they have good days and bad days on the boat.

“Something we learned very quickly is that they gain every romantic moments,” says Amber. “It is a hard work to maintain and manage a self -sufficient and floating city.”

All the operating systems of the boat are quite complex and Brandon must oversee two great diesel engines and a generator.

“When a system does not work properly, it can put a dampeer in our life situation,” says Brandon.

In addition, there are meteorological problems to fight.

“Our lives are completely dictated by this,” says Brandon. “We have resisted several tropical storms now and we have had to overcome hurricanes.”

But on the side, their days are filled with wonder and new experiences. In the mornings they usually start with a snorkeling and the children, now 19, 14 years old (the twins) and 8, have made friends from all over the world.

“Although the ocean was so foreign for us, it has provided us with some of the most magical moments I have been able to understand as a family,” says Amber.

“When there is no land in sight and you have a dolphins power swimming in a playful way to your bow, how can it be covered? The ocean has really changed us and living on a boat has changed us.

“When the wharf lines throw, you leave all the amenities of the earth and you are contributing for the most difficult thing you will ever do.

“But the coolest, after four years, 15,000 nautical miles and 21 different countries, our children have grown so much and created a character in ways that we would never have if we only stayed in our little-cul-sac.”