Mothership Adrift Podcast

A liveaboard boat is the biggest buy most people make after their house, and we nearly got it badly wrong. This is our boat search in full: six months of broker silence, a catamaran undone by its sea trial, a £16,000 deposit that vanished in the Caribbean, a "free" boat in Panama, and the 27-page survey we signed anyway. Next time, whether the perfect boat even exists.In this episode:• What a realistic budget looks like for a liveaboard blue water boat, and why ours still fell short• Why brokers ignore cash buyers who ask too many questions• How hurricane-wrecked boats get cosmetically rebuilt and sold as immaculate• The catamaran we nearly bought, and the sea trial that changed our minds• How a £16,000 deposit vanished in the Caribbean, and how we got it backChapters:(00:00) First, the book(00:36) Why a cruising boat is a different beast(01:31) How much do you budget for a blue water boat?(03:14) Is the UK the wrong place to buy?(05:17) The Bay of Broken Dreams(05:57) Why no broker would reply to us(07:16) Boats polished up to hide the truth(08:48) "It's perfect", and 27 pages of faults(10:05) How filming boats became our YouTube channel(10:30) The one that got away: the Nauticat(11:34) The catamaran, and the sea trial that killed it(14:20) The deposit that vanished in the Caribbean(16:16) The "free" boat in Panama(17:35) Where we should have looked all along(19:02) The Amel Super Maramu, warts and all(20:35) Next time: does the perfect boat exist?Sponsors: This episode is brought to you by the book it is based on, until a sponsor takes this slot. Interested in sponsoring Cockpit Sessions? Get in touch: [your enquiry link]Featured by The Telegraph, BBC and Amazon Prime's "Adventure in Wonder".Related episodes:Previous: CS3E01 Find Your Steve, the accountability buddy who got us off the dock.Next time: CS3E03 She's Perfect, what actually makes a boat the right boat.Cockpit Sessions serialises our book, one section at a time, as a conversation between the two of us.The book: https://www.alanwoodywood.com/books/doitPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mothershipadriftWebsite: https://www.mothershipadrift.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mothershipadriftFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/mothershipadrift

We spent years talking about sailing off with the kids and doing precisely nothing about it. Then came Steve: a friend with a deafening motorbike who turned up every week to ask what we had actually achieved since last time. He was our accountability buddy, and he is the reason we stopped dreaming and started looking for a boat. This one is about finding your own Steve, dodging Someday Isle, and why a big plan lives or dies on whether you keep it moving.Cockpit Sessions serialises our book, one section at a time, as a conversation between the two of us.The book: https://www.alanwoodywood.com/books/doitEverything else: https://www.mothershipadrift.com

Eight years sailing round the world, three kids aboard, and the bare minimum of insurance backed by our own emergency fund. In all that time we never withdrew anything close to what full cover would have cost. Irenka's broken finger in Martinique that should have been €1,800 and came to €200, the dinghy claim we regretted, the bilge pump that could have voided a total-loss payout, the rabid dog I only worried about months later, and why healthcare outside the US costs far less than most people fear. Insurance can be a safety net. It shouldn't be a set of handcuffs.Cockpit Sessions serialises the book, one section at a time, as a conversation between the two of us.The book: https://www.alanwoodywood.com/books/doitEverything else: https://www.mothershipadrift.com

I don't think anybody is born practical. Irenka and I talk about learning to fix our own boat: the pub conversation I couldn't follow, the dead outboard I bought for 25 quid, the mechanic who rang me from a bar at nine at night to argue, and the time I asked ChatGPT how to wire a switch and fried the unit. Irenka also tells me why she was really in tears in Malaysia.Cockpit Sessions serialises the book, one section at a time, as a conversation between the two of us.The book: https://www.alanwoodywood.com/books/doitEverything else: https://www.mothershipadrift.com

Irenka can get an eight-year-old sailing in 16 hours. She taught for years before we left, and she's blunt about it: the sailing was never the thing standing in anyone's way. So we spend this one on what actually is. Where to start with no boat and no money, why a flotilla beats a course, the honeymoon couple who stopped speaking on day one, and what skippers really look for when they take on crew.Cockpit Sessions serialises our book, one section at a time, with both of us arguing about it.▷ The book: https://www.alanwoodywood.com/books/doit▷ https://www.mothershipadrift.com