‘If you’re not sure about a partner, take them sailing’: the couple making a living from life at sea

Australians Elayna Carausu and Riley Whitelum, better known by their YouTube handle Sailing La Vagabonde, have made a career out of recording their lives as they sail around the world, Penelope Green reports

Does life on the ocean wave float your boat? Millions of viewers say yes (YouTube/Sailing La Vagabonde)

The first thing Elayna Carausu noticed about Riley Whitelum, as their eyes locked across the town square in the Greek island of Ios, was his distinctive moustache. When he told her that he had a boat, she assumed it was a pick-up line. She was wrong.

Despite having no previous sailing experience, Riley had used his savings from years working on oil rigs to buy a barely-used 43ft Beneteau craft from three bickering Italians. Luckily he had taught himself a few things in the months before meeting Elayna, who was working for a travel company in Greece, but his journey was not without the occasional mishap. He recalls one night in Dubrovnik, Croatia, when the boat – already slowly taking on water from a hidden leak – was swamped by a wake from a fishing boat. Riley awoke to a cabin awash with water and frantically Googled: “My boat is sinking, what do I do?”

Google responded, somewhat unhelpfully: “All boats are sinking. The main factor is, how fast. Don’t panic. Find the source of the leak.”

Six years on, and things are now more plain sailing. The Beneteau has been upgraded to another boat, La Vagabonde, on which Riley, who no longer has to rely on Google, has been joined by Elayna and a stowaway – their 10-month-old son Lenny. And since beginning documenting their adventures at sea in late 2014, their YouTube channel, Sailing La Vagabonde, has amassed more than one million followers.

This is perhaps unsurprising, the couple make for good TV; escapism without the queasy aftermath. They chronicle their life together aboard La Vagabonde in endearing, instructive and sometimes terrifying video, offering a view of life in authentically challenging circumstances; a contrast to the manufactured dramas that YouTube typically invites.

Audiences have followed the pair across the Atlantic twice and the Pacific once; watching them brave storms, maggoty rubbish and broken equipment. We’ve seen the difficulties of life at sea, watching them deal with injuries and the boredom of spending weeks offshore when you’ve read all your books.

Maybe what really compels is simply their competence and equanimity; there is no whinging on board La Vagabonde. Or maybe it’s the accents; both Riley and Elayna are Australian natives. Whatever it is, it’s working: a video posted at the end of May, Our Morning Routine Onboard, has had nearly three million views.

Over time, the videos have become more polished (YouTube/Sailing La Vagabonde)

When I meet Riley and Elayna, they are at home on their catamaran, having been forced to dock in Newport, in the US state of Rhode Island, while they wait for new parts for their broken engine. Luckily they were offered a spot at Gurney’s Newport Resort & Marina, when the dockmaster, Sean Kellershon – who has been following their adventures for years – saw them heading north after months in the Bahamas. “They just seemed like really cool people,” he says.

As we chat, Lenny gnaws on an apple and plays with a USB cord. He has barely any baby gear, and even fewer toys – a Jolly Jumper; a baby seat; a stick, a triangle and a pair of tiny cymbals. “To explain the obvious,” Riley says, “boat living is enforced minimalism.”

Riley wears what looked like a Star Wars T-shirt, except that Mark Hamill’s face is replaced with his own, and Carrie Fisher’s with Elayna’s. Under Darth Vader’s helmet is Lenny. Designed by a fan, it’s La Vagabonde merchandise made by an ecologically conscious company in Los Angeles. The couple sell shirts, hoodies, totes, sailing guides and cookbooks they have written from their website, all mailed in compostable envelopes.

I had always hung around guys who didn’t have any goals, and here was this sailor guy who just got stuff done. I knew he was going to go far, and I wanted to be a part of that

Elayna

But most of their income comes from patrons – about 3,500 subscribers who pay between $3 and $10 (£2-£8) for early access to the videos, plus other perks, like the chance to meet the couple for dinner and a sail, perhaps, if La Vagabonde comes to their town.

Living costs aboard are moderate, with Elayna estimating that they might spend $400 (£310) on groceries every two weeks, to supplement the fish they catch themselves, and the same amount every two months or so on diesel fuel. They run their engine as little as possible and charge their batteries with solar and wind power.

Still, boat maintenance is expensive. Conventional wisdom says that, once a boat is more than two years old, it costs 15 per cent of its purchase price every year. Their elegant and airy new boat, a 48-ft Outremer, is about two-and-a-half years old, and lists at over £600,000. Having seen one in Los Roques, an archipelago off Venezuela, Riley wooed the company, and a boat was specifically designed for the couple, and a lease arranged so they could pay monthly at a slightly discounted rate.

On forums like Reddit, fans debate the couple’s good fortune. Have they sold out? Are they still relatable? Could you learn the craft of sailing from their videos if they’re in such a high-end craft? But as one poster notes, “ People think that just anyone can get a GO PRO and do a YouTube Channel, get on Patreon and make hay. It just does not work this way. It actually takes quite a bit of on-screen talent and editing skills to get viewers ... I’ll admit it. I just like these people.”

Riley and Elayna did not set out to be YouTube personalities. Riley skipped university and started a business digging trenches for the Australian Phone Company before going to work on oil rigs for eight years. Between three-week shifts, he backpacked around the world, intent on saving his money. At the start of a trip through South America, he broke his neck in the surf at Rio’s Copacabana beach. The surgery temporarily paralysed his vocal cords, and he couldn’t speak or work for six months.

Despite having sailed only once, a miserable three days beating into the wind off Southern Australia, Riley says it was his dream to buy a boat and learn how to handle it. “OK, so you’re going to be alone forever, then,” a friend predicted darkly

Elayna, meanwhile – a tomboy with two older brothers, who learned to ride a motorcycle before she ever got on a bike – had learned to drive a motorboat during high school, where her curriculum included marine studies and aquaculture. She then worked as a divemaster in Queensland, living in a Kia van that she had painted and fixed up – until the fateful trip to Ios, where she met Riley.

The couple’s young son lives with them on the boat (YouTube/Sailing La Vagabonde)

The pair had known each other barely more than a month when he said, “It would be great if you’d sail the world with me.” Elayna did just that, selling all her belongs and leaving her job in Ios two weeks early. “I had always hung around guys who didn’t have any goals, and here was this sailor guy who just got stuff done,” she says. “I knew he was going to go far, and I wanted to be a part of that.”

“What about the waves? What about the sharks?” Elayna remembers her mother asking. “Deep-ocean sailing, for her, was a combination of Jaws and The Perfect Storm.” It was one reason why Elayna began posting reassuring footage of their trip.

I thought people would be interested. I wanted to put our videos up on YouTube but Riley wouldn’t let me

Elayna

The first videos are very much like home movies, charting progress south from the Mediterranean to Cape Verde and then across the Atlantic. “I saw something good in what we were doing,” Elayna says, “and I thought people would be interested. I wanted to put our videos up on YouTube but Riley wouldn’t let me.” But by the time they reached Malta a month later, he had relented. Within a few weeks of its posting, their first video had reached over 70,000 views.

“She was flipping out, and I was like, ‘Cool, but what does it mean?’ For five months, it was still a hobby,” Riley says.

Funds were low after their first Atlantic crossing, and they were broke by the time they reached Grenada. As they prepared to fly home to work, having hauled the boat out of the water, they announced their plans in a video to let their community know that would be the last for a while. Subscribers turned into paying patrons by the hundreds. It took some time, however, for Riley to wrap his head around the idea of being crowdfunded. “That was really hard for me,” he says, “taking money from strangers.”

These days their videos are more polished, thanks to the use of a drone plus multiple cameras and editing help. The filming process typically takes three days, and since Lenny’s birth, Elayna has hired an editor to make the initial cuts, although she puts the finishing touches on before posting. They hope to keep sailing, boat-school Lenny and continue to make videos – Kardashian-like, but wholesome and afloat.

Elayna has also designed a swimwear line, Vaga Bella Swim, made from recycled, ocean-harvested plastic trash, and plans to donate the proceeds to a charity. “I’ve always been dreaming of the perfect bikini,” she says. “Something that looks a little bit sexy, but that you can spearfish and dive in without having a body part fall out.” The couple also hope to turn their boat into a vessel with zero or low emissions.

They are currently sailing to Charleston, South Carolina, where they will leave the boat with friends for two months so that they can return home for Christmas. They’ll then return to take the boat through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to Australia, a first for them, and circumnavigate their home country, with all the challenges that will bring.

“One year on a boat is like 10 on land,” Riley said. “Now, it’s as if we’ve been married for 50 years. If you’re not sure about a partner, take them sailing.”

© New York Times