Cruising Videos on Youtube

As you have surely gathered already, Margaret and I spend a lot of time learning about, preparing for, and dreaming of cruising. One of the ways that we have learned a tremendous amount and enjoyed ourselves considerably over the past year has been to watch cruising videos on Youtube. There are a wealth of such videos out there on Youtube with everything from professional videos from companies such as Antares Catamarans to the worst of the home movie variety. Similarly, the educational and entertainment value varies widely with instructional videos from the likes of Seasensical to straight up passage narrations. I thought it might be useful to provide a short introduction to some of our favorite Youtube channels (a channel is just a homepage for someone’s account). This is by no means comprehensive. And, in the future, we will try to occasionally post some of our favorite sailing related Youtube finds.

DrakeParagon’s The Real Cruising Life

Drake Roberts’s channel is surely second-to-none when it comes to quality, variety, and upload frequency. For the past four years or so, Drake has been taking videos of his own adventures at sea on his Westsail 32 and, now, Westsail 42. He also has shot interviews and boat tours with cruisers he meets and captains he crews for, all of which offer a great introduction to various boats, cruisers’ perspectives, and cruising itself. Currently, Drake and his partner, Monique, are voyaging from Oriental, North Carolina to Kinsale, Ireland via the North American East Coast, Greenland, and Iceland.

Cruising Interviews by Maritime Business News by Jude

We are not too sure of the origins of these interviews, but they were all shot in Cochin, India in about 2009. They feature a wide spectrum of cruisers from young couples with kids to solo sailors to older folks who have been circling the globe for years. We particularly enjoyed the interviews because they gave cruisers the opportunity to describe the joys and problems of the lifestyle, their biggest fears, and their general concept of what cruising should be about. You quickly learn that cruisers share a certain sensibility, but are a very diverse lot. We put this playlist together to separate out the cruising interviews from the hundreds of other unrelated videos on the channel.

Cruising Albin Vega Velocir

This series of videos by young co-captains Grant and Amelia covers the rebuild of their Albin Vega 27, their cruise from Annapolis to the Bahamas, and various other boat projects and adventures around the Chesapeake Bay. They are now on a cruising hiatus, living and working in Monterey, California. But their videos remain and hopefully they will be creating more again soon.

SV Estrellita 510b

This couple crack us up repeatedly as they chronicle their active lifestyle afloat. They started out on the US West Coast, but have fallen in love with the South Pacific and are currently cruising the Tuamotos. While all their videos are good, the best – and most substantial – is their half hour look at their Pacific crossing.

Seth Hynes

Seth and Elizabeth set sail just after they married on their Lagoon 380, aptly named Honeymoon. They travelled from Virginia to Australia before swallowing the hook, getting jobs, and having babies.

wwwYachtTeleportCom’s Channel

This couple bought a boat and refitted it for a transit of the Northwest Passage. Having completed that last summer, they planned to continue cruising part-time through the lesser travelled parts of the oceans. Their videos are high quality productions that include great wildlife shots throughout.

Cruising Lealea

After retiring from the Navy, Chuck and Laura Rose set sail on their Albin Vega 27 from Hawaii. So far, they have been cruising between their home port, Alaska, and the US West Coast. They create video blogs for every day of their passage, which gives you a sense of the rhythms of a voyage.

Of course, there is always our Youtube channel, which we plan to add more videos to as time goes by.