We are David and Mary Shih and together we made 4 little humans ranging from the ages of 9-3. We currently live in Houston, TX trying to sell, donate or trash everything in our house so we can move onto our boat and sail the world! This adventure started for us while we were on a road trip in our Ford Transit in California driving up and down the PCH discussing how we could make vanlife possible with 3 kids and 1 on the way. We watched hundreds of videos about either making our current van more livable for 6 people or possibly getting a bigger van altogether. And if you’ve ever watched YouTube, you know that YouTube will suggest other related videos. This took us to sailing channels. We never even knew this life existed!
David and I had never been sailing before. We’ve been on the lake in Austin with a speedboat pulling us through the water in a floaty. We’ve rented a 65-foot catamaran for our wedding in Cozumel that took the wedding guests snorkeling, but we didn’t actually sail or go very far from land. And the only time we’ve actually been off the coast was on a Carnival cruise from Texas to Cozumel for 3 days. But living on a boat??? What in the world???
So naturally I said to David, “Why would we get a bigger van when we can get a boat?”. This idea of course was shot down quickly because we didn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on a boat. We didn’t even know anything about boats or sailing for that matter! But I still went home and looked at our budget spreadsheet and came up with a plan that would require selling practically everything we owned to get a boat.
And for the next year we continued to be inspired by Brian and Kazza from SV Delos, Colin from SV Parlay Revival and Nikki and Jason from Gone with the Wynns. Every weekend David and I walked the marinas in Kemah looking at all the boats while eating Burger King whoppers and just dreaming. Dreaming of the day we would find a boat, move our family aboard and sail away.
In 2021 after a year of dropping every penny we could into a piggy bank, we found our dream sailboat…a 2013 Lagoon 450F named “OUPS” (yes its literal English translation is “WHOOPS”) located in Martinique, which was off limits to travelers due to COVID. So we paid to have her moved to St. Maarten where David flew out to get a survey done. During the survey, David voiced his concerns about possible broken bulkheads, but the surveyor chuckled and said David needed to trust him and that every new boat purchaser is nervous and worried about everything. Of course we’re worried! We’re about to spend our life savings on this floating home.
We get the final report and it does not indicate that the boat had any bulkhead issues. Whew, what a relief!!!
Well that didn’t stop David. He went back for another look. Since we’ve been watching Colin’s discovery of his badly broken bulkheads, we kept in mind what he said were tell-tale signs of broken bulkheads. Unfortunately every box was checked…the middle of the boat sinks down – check, there are cracks on the walls – check, and the cabin doors were misaligned – you got it, check. You know when you have that gut feeling that something is off and you’re usually right about it? Well David went with his gut feeling and we backed out of the contract.
The owner of OUPS was a French lady who was not very happy that we backed out because based on the survey, the boat was in good condition. When our broker told her about our concerns, she was determined to prove us wrong and offered to get her own surveyor to look at just the bulkheads. Well guess what??? The surveyor she hired was the same surveyor we hired that already said the boat did not have any bulkhead issues! Well sh*t!
During this time, David tried to reach out to Colin through every social media outlet to ask for his advice. We were complete strangers, but it was worth a try. And to our surprise Colin replied and asked us to send pictures. While we waited for Colin’s opinion of the boat, we emailed the surveyor and practically begged this expert that told us to trust him if he would consider looking at the floor and cracks in the walls and the misaligned doors.
The final report comes back from the surveyor again. In his email he apologized to David that he was WRONG in his initial survey of the boat and confirmed that the boat did, in fact, have BROKEN BULKHEADS!!! Wow!!! Not only was David’s gut feeling right, but how often does someone admit that he was so wrong?! This could’ve caused us so much money and stress.
Now we had to make the tough decision on what to do. We thought we would definitely back out if the boat had broken bulkheads, but we had the upper hand to negotiate a really good deal. At this point, Colin still hadn’t replied and we were coming up on our deadline to back out of the contract before the option period ended. So we guesstimated how much it would cost to get the boat repaired and made a counter offer. She accepted. And just like that, we became boat owners.
In hindsight, it was definitely possible for us to do vanlife with a bigger van. But if we stopped there, we wouldn’t be boat owners looking to give our family a new lifestyle of living and exploring the world. Look at what we can accomplish from not giving up and always going with our gut feelings!
Thank you for joining us on this crazy adventure and I cannot wait to share more about us and the boat with you! I have a gut feeling, you’re going to laugh and cry with us as we navigate this new life we have chosen to live.