Trish's new book, Float Plan, is out now!! We talk about the book and why it is one of my favorite sailing, fiction books! She's an amazing writer, inspiring woman and sailor. Give it a listen and go read Float Plan! 

We have been MIA for the past 3 weeks and it's all because we bought Inner Banks Sails & Canvas, a sail loft in Oriental, North Carolina!! Yup, we are swallowing the anchor, but we'll still be putting out content and we'll be talking about all things sailing and now sail work!! We're super excited to take you guys along on this new adventure of ours!

We talk to our friends on SV Badfish who installed synthetic rigging on their Babba 40 and have sailed with it for 4 years, throughout the Caribbean. Eric now works as a rigger in Maine and he talks all about synthetic rigging and when to use it. 

 With borders closed and entry fees rising, sailors are thinking more about sailing close to home. We talk about our favorite places to sail on the coast, here at home. We've sailed Washington, Oregon and California on the West coast and then Florida to New Jersey on the East coast so we tell you all the must-see spots!

Spencer has completed his Wharram 14 foot plywood sailboat build and we talk about the final cost and all the things he learned during the build. We talk about our first sail on the boat in Maui, Hawaii and if we think you should build your own boat!

This week we give you 4 spooky sailing stories and you get to guess which one is fake. We also talk about the time Breena saw a ghost ship off the coast of the Bahamas and Spencer relives a harrowing event when he almost drifted off to sea in the dinghy. Strap in! It's a Spoooo-oo-oo-ky one!!! 

This week Spencer finds 11 ads for sailboats on the market and we go through them with you. We talk about how to judge photos, assess equipment lists, and how to filter through ads to find the boat of your dreams. We set our budget at $50,000 and we find great boats at all price points, including a $7,900 O'Day that is the deal of the day! Follow along by going to our blog post where we link all the ads for you to follow along! https://www.thelitzenbergers.com/post/how-to-judge-a-sailboat-ad-follow-along-with-10-23-podcast

Spencer and I have the honor of interviewing Lin Pardey the legend that built 2 boats with her husband Larry and sailed around the world both backwards and forwards. She tells us what she is up to now and all about her life as a cruiser. She's the most humble badass we've ever had the pleasure of interviewing! We hope you enjoy her quick wit and inclusive outlook on sailing as much as we did. 

With border closures and all sorts of other information flying around sailing facebook pages and forums, it's hard to know what and who to trust. We talk about our own experience trying to find the truth and we even find ourselves guilty of spreading some misinformation of our own. 

This week we talk about the core skills you need in order to build your own wood boat. Spencer has been building his Wharram 14 foot catamaran for the past 7 weeks and is almost done! He talks about stitch and glueing, laminating, filleting and fiberglassing. If you're thinking about building a boat you absolutely need to listen!

In keeping with last week's theme, we talk about our failures in the business world. It's a tough to find a way to make money and fulfill your dreams of sailing around the world. We talk about all the things we've tried to do in order to keep on sailing. A lot of them haven't worked out and yet we still keep trying. We just love sailing and cruising THAT much!

This week we walk you through 10 years of sailing failures, but don't worry it isn't depressing! More of a fun look back on things we should have known and how we've learned from them, or in some cases, have not learned from them. 

This week Spencer talks about the process of getting a diesel motor started. Whether its been sitting for years or you bought it without testing it, he's got your back. He even uses fun analogies that include a flat escalator and a mormon dance. After this cast you'll be able to get your motor started....or not.

Sailing can teach you a lot about weather, trim, navigation and the ocean. But there's a lot more you can learn when you become a cruiser and we talk about how it has helped us throughout our life to remember the little hidden lessons of cruising and how they have benefitted us. 

After listening to our Anchoring 101 podcast a number of you reached out to ask us some more questions so we delve into a further discussion on anchoring. We talk about windlasses, sea floors, how to handle dragging anchor and what to do when someone is the "dick" in the anchorage. 

We get some inspiration for "Wired" YouTube channel and take Google's most searched sailing questions and answer them! It's a fun little practice that actually makes us discover we need to do a bit of homework. 

We interview our friends Ashley and Richard from Desk to Glory. We talk about their trip to South America and how they traveled all of Central America with only $8,000. They talk about how keeping it simple is the key to long term travel and ultimately happiness on the road, or in our case, on the water. Check out their instagram https://www.instagram.com/desktoglory/ and their YouTube channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCocOFNMXTZRsEMEMCvFqkJw

Interested in writing about your cruising; blogging, journaling, selling articles? I'm super excited because I interview Trish Doller author of the upcoming book, Float Plan which takes place on an Alberg sailboat. We talk about how to get started writing and how to go about making a few extra bucks to add to the cruising kitty by doing so. Get your pen and paper, you're gonna feel inspired after this one! Find her at https://www.trishdoller.com/

It's July and so much has happened. We want to clue you in as to our future plans and what we have been up to. We also talk about the boat build we have planned!

It's a controversial topic amongst cruisers; anchoring! Everyone has their way of doing it and we let you know how we do it on Tarka. We also go into the types of anchors and the basics of keeping your boat in one place. 

We discuss our food stores onboard and meal planning. We both have different eating schedules and that makes it hard on Spencer who cooks and plans all our meals. We discuss how people can plan for provisioning and some mistakes we need to remedy. 

We make our way North along the US East Coast. With the weather windows being short, we make a 3 day, 2 night passage and it didn't go great. We go over the pitfalls and mistakes we made as we sailed from St. Augustine, Florida to South Carolina. 

After our podcast with Dave, we evaluate our batteries onboard and make some decisions for changes in the future. 

This week concludes our selling your own boat series. We talk about how to handle the money transfer and some scams you can avoid. We also finish up our delivery job and let you know what we thought about the whole gig. Be sure to use the promo code HAPPIEST when you buy a year's subscription and you'll get my issue free, as well as an electronic compilation of articles on selling your boat. 

We are always battling batteries and energy consumption onboard! Part of that is because we didn't fully understand consumption and charging, but that all changed when Dave and Sheri from Harley Dave n' Sons broke it down for us. This one is a bit more technical than our normal casts, but it is SO VERY helpful!! You wont want to miss it! 

We interview our friends BJ and Desiree who tell us about their first season on Island Pearl. They sail to the Bahamas but amongst the COVD-19 shutdowns they arrive 12 hours too late and aren't able to check in. On their way back stateside, they run into every problem imaginable including having to make a mayday call, which no cruiser ever wants to do. Despite all that they make it safely back to the US and they still love cruising!

We are very eager to leave Vero Beach but Tarka has other plans. Our prop shaft falls off the transmission and we are left altering our plans. We also talk about the time Bee got so drunk she wrote a High School Graduation Commencement speech. 

We interview Shelby this week! She grew up on a sailboat in the Miami and Ft. Lauderdale area. With parents considering raising their kids onboard it's fun to hear it from the kids perspective how being raised on a boat went. 

We make landfall in Florida and it is both disheartening and w wonderful surprise! After 7 days at sea  it can always be a little weird coming back into society. This COVID-19 shit made that even more insane. We let you know how it all went!

Things tighten up in Belize for cruisers and we decide we better get out before we can't. We make a last minute decision to make a 7 day passage to the States. Belize to Florida. Low on all provisions, we talk about why that was the right decision for us. 

We've touched on buddy boats before but we discussed all the benefits! What do you do when someone you're traveling with becomes a liability. Where do you draw the line? We experience just such a dilemma and we let you know how we handle it.  

COVID-19 and Sailing. I know you've all been sick of hearing about this shit, but we have to talk to SOMEONE! and you're that person. We let you know what we are thinking and some of the struggles we are going through. We're not even sure what the right decision is, to be honest. We'd love to know what you think, though! Contact us on our website at www.thelitzenbergers.com

With this whole virus and self quarantining it has us asking, what would be our skill sets in an apocalypse? Spencer sure has some ideas of what Breena would be good for.....

Last week we talked about getting your boat ready to sell, this week we talk about how to actually list it. Creating a free website and posting that to sailboatlistings.com, craigslist and all the Facebook pages associated with that make. After that we talk about the boat we're delivering this week! Spoiler Alert...it's a sweet gig!

We find ourselves in an unprecedented situation and we try and weigh our options. With the caronavirus causing borders to close their doors and us trying to get to Belize it's not the ideal situation. 

A fry asked us to talk about communication aboard and he may have gotten a little more than he bargained for. We are SUPER opinionated about this topic and things get a little ranty!

We're BACK!!!! Sorry about the two week delay, we got really sick after our cruise ship job. We delve into that and then getting back to the boat and how happy we are to be back home!!

It's the little things that make living on a sailboat nice and comfortable. We talk about some of our favorite small cruising hacks that make life easier on a boat. We talk about everything from the versatility of a 5 gallon bucket to period panties. We think you're really gonna love it!

Last week we mentioned that we bought our first and last boat from a Steve, so we talk about tour first season sailing and our first Steve. He also happened to be a shaman and asked us if he could do an analysis of our relationship. The result may surprise you.

We had a Fry write us and ask us what our favorite things were about each of our boats. We thought it would be an interesting podcast topic so we delve into our past 7 sailboats that we've owned over the last 10 years. We try and give you guys an idea of what drove us to buy each one and what we liked about them. We even have some nice things to say about our multihull *gasp*

We had Tarka hauled out exactly where I said we WEREN'T going to haul her. We made some mistakes and we also had a few things we felt we did right in the whole process and through it all I think we may have some tips that would be useful to anyone looking ot haul their bot out.

We've talked about boredom aboard, but we didn't really discuss how we try to fill our time, so this podcast we discuss hobbies and how we entertain ourselves on the boat. We also talk about modern cruising and what that entertainment looks like today versus 20 years ago. 

Cruising in a 3rd world country can bring up a lot of questions in morality, one being how much you pay people. I was a little hesitant to put this one out due to the fact we may sound like pretentious a**holes, but then I just said Ef it! Maybe the Fries will have some insight for me!! So be sure to go over to the podcast's instagram @sailing_podcast and tell me what you think!

We continue our conversation with SV Soma and SV Tanager. We get a bit drunker as we do so, but I think everyone will enjoy the resulting conversations on boats, cruising grounds and trying to convince Tanager to get a motor!

This month, in honor of Breena's article getting published in Good Old Boat, we're talking about selling your own boat. This week we dive into Pricing, taking good photos and cleaning. Be sure to check out her article which comes out this month. Good Old Boat has also been kind enough to offer our listeners a promo code. Use the code HAPPIEST and get one free issue when buying a year subscription and they'll include a free downloadable compilation of all past articles about buying and selling boats. Go check it out! 

We found other Millennial sailors!!! Anna and Ryan aboard their Vancouver 27 named Soma and Phillip and Marjourie aboard their Bristol 29.9 named Tanager. We go over all things cruising and find out how all of us handle different scenarios, our favorite cruising spots and how we all afford to do this. We had so much fun, in fact, that it stretched late into the evening meaning this will be a TWO PARTER! We hope you enjoy sitting down with us as much as we enjoyed having an evening with these new friends. 

Deadlines are important when refitting your boat, but you always break them, so why set them at all?? We're 3 weeks in to our 2 week refit and we give you guys an update and let you know how things are going. Spencer and I also debate how things are different on a larger, more comfortable boat....spoiler alert, we disagree, as per usual. 

We do it, Fries! We delve into the dark side of travel; poop. We talk about why sailing and cruising are made for travel for the sole reason that it gives you a private bathroom, no matter where you are! If that doesn't turn you on to the sport, I don't know what will!

It's a long one folks!! We had a lot to say about buying our dream boat in Guatemala. We give you the run down of getting here and try to sprinkle in some tips for buying a boat abroad. Hope you enjoy!