Sailing videos and vlogs explosion

-

There has been an explosion of sailing videos on YouTube in the last few years. It seems that all the young people who have gone sailing are documenting their voyaging with vlogs instead of blogs, which appear to be so passe nowadays. Some have hundreds of thousands of subscribers who watch these videos that can be half an hour long. The best ones for me are under 10 minutes long, any longer and I get bored. YouTube has even created a list of top 30 sailing video channels.



Most of them are done by young crews, often good looking couples. Some are done by aging sailors that are more pirate than celebrity. Many of these cruisers are funding their adventures through paid for videos on Patreon, Paypal donation requests and crowdfunding on sites like Go Fund Me.

What's amazing is that people who are not sailors are watching, dreaming and funding other people's dreams. There have always been armchair sailors who never untie the lines but this is an extraordinary phenomenon. I suspect that the dire warnings about climate change, the political uncertainties, the challenges of workplace in an increasingly competitive market, overcrowding, IT proliferation and generally intense stress and malaise have contributed to the need to dream of escape. And what's even more amazing is that none of the cruisers have a 'publisher' or 'studio'. They are all doing it with equipment and skills they have on board their boats. A new era has been born. Here's a look at some of these vlogs.

Sailing La Vagabond, the largest of the channels, has more than 605,000 subscribers as of March 2019. Their Spearfishing video has amassed 3.2M views.  I personally liked their 4 years of sailing in 4 minutes video. It doesn't hurt that this young Australian couple are two really beautiful human specimens, but their followers have become critical of their vlog since they became more commercialized.

Sailing s/v Delos has more than 300,000 subscribers and their crossing the equator video has almost 5.5M views. It is a very highly rated vlog offering a mix of adventure, sailing, and fun in distant lands.

Sailing Doodles has 122,000 subscribers on YouTube, as well as a website with a photo gallery, podcast and video library. Their video 'Who needs clothes on a private island' has almost 1.8M views. Quite a few of their episodes have more than 1M views.

Sailing Uma has almost 102,000 subscribers and have documented their entire journey from finding the right boat and learning how to sail her on through more than 160 episodes. Their camera, drone, and editing work is outstanding, and the couple, Dan and Kika, are really sympatico.

Ocean Cruising Club Member Rick Moore runs the Sailing Sophisticated Lady channel. With more than 100,000 subscribers, his most popular video Deported!  has more than 2.8M views. It's 30 minutes long! He sails with young people and documents the cruising lifestyle.

RAN Sailing, with a Swedish couple, has almost 75,000 subscribers. Their 1st Episode has clocked up almost 130,000 views. They cover sailing more than the liveaboard lifestyle and so theirs is a more technical vlog that is popular with other sailors, well produced and narrated.

Sailing Yacht Ruby Rose has 57,000 subscribers but their sailing the Portuguese Coast video has more than 400,000 views. Their How much does it cost video had more than 600,000 views.

Here are a few more vlogs I've become aware of:

Sailing Catalpa (family of 4)
Sailing Fata Morgana (by a talented young girl named Maya, English with Bulgarian subtitles)
Bums on a Boat (3 young men)
Sailing Zatara (family)
Sail Surf ROAM (trimaran)
Sail Life
Free Range Sailing
Sailing Nandji
Adventures of an old Seadog
Chase the Story
MJ Sailing
Sailing Into Freedom
Wicked Salty
Abandon Comfort
Luckyfish Gets Away
Sailing Tangaroa
Sailing Kittiwake
Vet Tails' Sailing Chuffed

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 30+ Sailing Movies

-
Image
Wow, what a cool collection! Great ideas for a sailing movie club.  When I started to compile this list, I thought I'd come up with maybe ten movies. But as I got deeper into it, not only did I realize there were more than I consciously remembered over time, but also that the independent film production movement and digital technologies are causing an explosion of very interesting new entries. The work being done by young people is particularly inspiring and impressive and perhaps signifies that sailing isn't dying after all. No, it's actually becoming the saving grace of a generation pressured as none before it. Because it is just too difficult to rate these movies as each one ticks a different box, I've just listed them in chronological order. Enjoy, and please let me know about any I missed.
Read more

Top Ten Books about Sailing (non-fiction)

-
Image
Ocean adventures inspire the spinning of tall tales Sailing is one of those things in life that so many dream of and few pursue. Those of us who have sailed off across an ocean most often started out in our warm beds absorbed in a book of someone else's adventures on the other side of the world. Their yarns spun our own ambitions and fueled our thirst for the sea. So many authors have been inspired by the sea that there are hundreds of books to choose from. So why are these ten on my list? Because they were the ones that told the stories that I wanted to live or taught me lessons that may one day save a life - my own or a loved one's. And now that I have, I can honestly say that their yarns were well spun. There are few things better in life than reading a good sailing book while sailing! To go off watch, curl up in a secure spot and read about your favourite sailing adventure inspires the next adventure of your own. I always ask, where to next? And there's always s
Read more

Top Ten+ Novels Based on Sailing (fiction)

-
Image
Sailing makes a romantic setting There are few novels with sailing as a background theme, which is surprising given how romantic sailing is considered to be. Images of sailboats appear everywhere and dreams of sailing off to an uncharted island abound, yet stories tend to be real, not fictional.  That's curious to me. I've scoured the pages of Amazon and Goodreads to find what I could as the question often comes up, "Are there any good novels with sailing themes."  The answer is, yes, but not many.  As I have not read these all yet, I am simply providing the publisher's descriptions here, mostly as they appear on amazon.com.  From Homer's Odyssey to Christine Kling's Circle of Bones, one thing for certain is that this is an eclectic collection, much like the collection of characters one is likely to encounter at sea. I'm also working on a listing of sailing movies, which of course might have been based on either novels or true stories, so perhaps w
Read more