Here’s a video about how to get out sailing – the video demonstrates how you can support us (and we need support!!!) and possibly join us for sail in Britican. If you’re not up for watching a video, I’ve pasted some of the transcripts below.
Link to my Patron Page here.
Transcripts to the video above
Hello, my name is Kim Brown and my husband and I are the owners of the Britican, a 56’ Oyster monohaul sailboat. The boat is named Britican because it’s the combination of the words British and American. Hubby is a Brit, I’m American and our 5-year-old daughter, Sienna, is both.
Instead of having you to watch me talk throughout this video, I’ve pulled in a series of photo’s I’ve taken over the past couple years while sailing around the Mediterranean and Caribbean. The pictures include images of the boat, family, friends and a variety of places that we’ve seen throughout our travels.
In 2014 my family and I left life on land in an effort to choose life’s course rather than have it laid out before us. I was disillusioned with life. After living through my teens and twenties, I spent eight years during my thirties growing a very successful company… but looking back I feel the journey wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought it would be.
Sure, I was financially successful but I wasn’t fulfilled. I felt empty and lost. After doing everything I was supposed to do like go to school, go to university, get a good job, get married and have a baby I felt as if I did the right things but, perhaps, the world wasn’t right for me.
In the end I had a big house, a big car, and loads of stuff but I felt dead inside. I felt like I was surviving and certainly not thriving.
In addition to questioning my personal life, I started to take a deeper look at all our worldly institutions. Before we sold everything and sailed away I felt as if our core establishments were, and still are, totally messed up. The education system often puts individual children’s needs last, the healthcare system focuses on reactive care rather than proactive measures, the banks make billions off our money yet we barely get any interest in return, the political arena is a circus, the news is all about the 1% of bad stuff in the world and nothing about the 99% good and…
And what really drives me crazy is to see so many children aspire to be ‘famous,’ whether through sports, music or movies, when a good majority of our famous role models display anything but honorable values. A sportsperson that cheats on his or her partner, gets drunk, does drugs, makes offensive public displays and is dripping in designer clothes while driving his or her Porche is more valued than a profession of saving lives, helping the community prosper or being a stay at home parent.
So rather than complain about the world being broken, my husband and I left it. We got rid of everything we own and sailed off into the sunset.
To this day I’m still not sure if we’re running away but thus far our lives have drastically changed for the better.
Part of me thinks that the world is still broken and I’m just putting my head in the sand and pretending it’s not there.
However, another part of me feels like I’m a pioneer. My family and I are like those first families that left the old world in search of a new one.
Rather than seek out religious freedom or find roads paved with gold, our goal was to start from scratch to determine what would make our lives more fulfilling…and then do it.
Instead of seeking out new land, we started seeking a new way of life.
We wanted to find a work/life balance instead of work, work, work. We wanted to enjoy time as a family instead of being passing ships throughout the day. We wanted to actually eat our meals together and interact rather than watch mind numbing TV. Hubby and I wanted to find a community of people with similar values that were also eager to push aside what society now deems normal or successful and find our own path. We wanted to take better care of ourselves – to eat well, sleep well, get active and overall thrive instead of survive. We wanted to create an education system that helps our daughter to be the best she can be.
It has now been two years since we left land and embarked on our sell up and sail away adventure. Have we met any of our goals? Have we created a new world?
You bet we have. Our lives now are more fulfilling than they ever have been. We are no longer surviving…we are flowing with life and it’s the most amazing experience we’ve ever had. We wake up and are eager to live!
And notice that I’m not saying we are happier. Our lives are freaking hard. We don’t have it easy. Going on a sailing vacation is one thing, living full time on a boat is another.
We have serious problems often – sometimes life threatening. I get seasick anytime there’s a slight swell and from time to time puke over and over again. If I’m not puking I’m laying in our bed looking green. We’ve been caught in some massive storms where I’ve feared for our lives. Our shower is rarely hot or even warm. We have to make all our food from scratch which can take hours and often we have very little choice. We have barely any possessions – just a sailboat, a few t-shirts, some books and a pair flip-flops – sometimes it’s difficult to have so little. Going to the store to get milk can take hours…and often it results in long-life milk rather than the fresh stuff. We get ripped off often because we don’t know where the non-tourist grocery stores are. Sometimes things break and we’re stuck somewhere for weeks at end.
I could go on and on about the difficulties of living the life of a full time sailing cruiser HOWEVER although it’s not easy it sure is fulfilling. Again – I’m using the word fulfilling. In my old life I was on automatic pilot and I existed. Now I’m awake, conscious and boy am I on one heck of a ride.
So that’s what Britican is all about – it’s about consciously choosing life’s course.
I’m not interested in being famous or being a leader. I’m in no need of making millions. I’ve already discovered that chasing the almighty buck left my life lacking.
I am, however, interested in reporting about our journey so that others can perhaps create a more fulfilling life too. Now don’t get me wrong – we certainly don’t have everything worked out. We mess up all the time and are not the best role models in the world. We are, however, choosing life’s course and based on the hundreds of emails I get every month I know we’re not alone in our ambitions.
On a daily basis I get one of two types of people contacting me. The first are the people that are getting ready to do what we’ve done. They’re putting things in place to sell up and sail away. And the other type of people that contact me are those that always wished they were able enough to do what we did but are now past the age or their health won’t allow them to make a drastic lifestyle change – so, they write to me saying that they’re vicariously living through our journey.
Based on my viewers I feel as if I’m helping to educated and entertain. What an excellent mix! My hope is that whoever is attracted to what I create, whether it’s a book, article, video or podcast, that they are able to take away something that helps increase the fulfillment in their life.
In case you haven’t seen any of my creations yet, I create information, mostly articles and videos, about day-to-day life on a boat – the good, bad and ugly. I showcase various anchorages, moorings and marinas. I record our day trips up volcanoes, down waterfalls and other land-based explorations. And from time to time I publish video’s that show me at my lowest like when I describe what it feels like to live through a Force 10 storm or when I’m at my highest like my video of watching my husband jump off our boat and swim next to a sperm whale.
And the most popular section of my sailing content actually falls under the heading ‘the journey’. Within this area I discuss my thoughts, fears, feelings, excitement and sometimes the meaning of life.
I’d like to think that my content provides something for everyone – whether my reader or viewer is a sailor or not. For me, Sailing Britican isn’t just about sailing…it’s about a family deciding to consciously choose life’s course rather than do what society says we’re suppose to do.
All that being said, I’ve had an increasing amount of people asking how they can best support me on my mission to educate and entertain. Last week one lovely guy wrote to me saying that he loves my content so much but didn’t know how to support me so he has been clicking on the advertisements on my website. Every time someone clicks on an advert I get a few cents. I quickly responded to the kind gentleman saying that too many clicks by one person will get me banned but thank you for the intention!
The same day I received an email from someone that purchased both my sailing related books sold on Amazon. If you don’t already know, I currently have two books on Amazon. One offering templates for VHF communications (you know, how to broadcast a MAYDAY, Pan-Pan, Securite and so forth) and the other book is full of useful checklists for sailors regarding maintenance, cleaning, provisioning, crewing and more.
Anyway, the man that purchased the books emailed me saying that he loved both of them and asked if there’s any other books that I’ve written that he could buy!
I’ve also had several people buy my nautical t-shirts, belts, jewelry and galley spice blends that I sell on my Sailing Britican Etsy store. Many of my customers email me to say that they just had to buy something to support my work.
And recently, I had someone leave a FaceBook comment on my SailingBritican page saying that if I was on Patreon they’d happily support me…and that sounded like a great idea.
Let me tell you what Patron is.
Patreon is a website that allows artists to creatively release their talents online in return for getting small amounts of money from many admirers. Artists on Patreon include fictional writers, musicians, painters, writers, comic story creators, moviemakers, people sailing around the world documenting the journey and more.
Patreon comes from the word Patronage. Back in the good ole day’s artists would seek out wealthy benefactors to sponsor their work. The hope was that the benefactor would help the artist grow in popularity and one day the artist would be able to make it on his or her own two feet.
While I was growing up, I and many others were told, ‘Artists don’t make money! Be an accountant!’ During my generation the whole concept of Patronage was lost but that’s until Patreon came around.
Using the ability to connect with people all over the world through the Internet, Patreon allows artists the ability to create articles, movies, music, podcasts and more and ask followers to contribute a small amount for each artistic expression. A dollar here and there from one person doesn’t amount to much but a dollar from thousands of people can make a massive difference.
With a large following, a would-be miserable-accountants can now explore their creative expression instead and get funded for doing so by the small patronage of several followers.
Patreon offers quality content producers and artists the ability to choose life’s course rather than be forced into accountancy – or any other skillset not suitable. Anything that helps people express his or her true talents has got to be good thing!
So, with Patreon you can choose how much money you’d like to offer the content producer per item, say a video, and you can also cap it so that you only spend a limited amount per month. Some Patrons pledge $2 a video capping it at a total of $40/month and others spend less or more.
Content producers are able to reward Patrons for different levels of patronage. For a few dollars a month entry level Patrons might get privileged access to the creation (whether it’s a video, article or game) a day before it’s released to the general public. And for a higher level, Patrons might receive merchandise, special gifts or invites to special on or offline events.
So…as you can probably see the whole concept of Patreon is totally in alignment with SailingBritican’s notion about choosing life’s course. It’s a website set up to help people explore their nature talents rather than push them aside and do what society says is correct.
Not only do I want to support artists on Patreon I’m excited to become one of them.
Considering that you’re probably interested in sailing, hence watching my video, please check out Sailing Vagabond, FollowTheBoat and SailingUma as these three content creators are similar to SailngBritican are currently using the Patreon service.
And of course, please check out my Patreon page to discover if you’d like to become a patron of SailingBritican. By becoming a patron you will help me to continue to delivery my messages about choosing life’s course while we document our sailing around the world adventures and mishaps.
When I get to a certain income milestone, which I haven’t calculated yet, I’d like to offer the opportunity for a patron (and their family) to join us for a sail. We love having company and we’d love to share our travels with others.
So who knows, perhaps you’ll not only become a patron but you’ll join us for a sail in Britican and help us to choose life’s course?