Ahoy there, Matey. I’m Guppy. As of now, I live in San Antonio Texas, home of The Alamo, the Missions, the Tower of Americas, the River Walk, and of course I can’t go without mentioning our championship winning basketball team, the Spurs. There are a number of other fun things to see and do while in town such as go to Sea World, Six Flags Fiesta Texas, the San Antonio Zoo, and many other places around the city. However, this is not about my life in San Antonio necessarily. This is just where our journey begins. Almost six years ago I married Captain Goldeneye. We have two daughters. Pirate Princess is five and First Mate Scallywag is three on this day in November 2013. Now this is where it gets interesting. We have a dream. Who doesn’t really? Well our dream is becoming reality and this reality is creeping up on us
Well I don’t want to keep you in suspense for any longer so I will just fill you in on all the details. My husband, who is from Italy, and I have decided to sell everything, buy a sailboat, and sail around Europe with our girls. Funny thing is that neither one of us knows how to sail so naturally we will need to take sailing lessons. We will be picking out our boat once we get to Europe. In the meantime the girls and I are going to apply for citizenship to Italy and prepare for our travels. I will be homeschooling the girls so it will be a really educational experience for them. I have never been overseas to Europe, so it will be an equally educational experience for me. Since we don’t have all of our ducks in a row as of yet, it will be months or maybe even a few years until we are able to get to a point that we are comfortable with the move.
You may be thinking that all this must be easy to do if you have a nice bank account. Well let me assure you that we are definitely middle class. We will not have money to eat at expensive restaurants, shop at luxury stores, or even pay to get into the expensive historical sites. At least not all of them. We will be fishing and buying inexpensive long shelf life foods like legumes and grains. Maybe by the time we get our boat I will have developed my green thumb in growing some easy veggies. When we do get the opportunity to eat out it will be at places recommended by the locals.
Since we will not have a lot of money for heavy expenses, then it’s safe to assume that we will not have a lot of money for gas. We all know how much gas can cost. That’s why we have opted for a sailboat with the possibility to add solar panels. We want as much wind and solar power as possible to help aid in our travels and enable us to use the least amount of gas. After many countless hours of research we have found that a catamaran is the type of sailboat that would be safest for our journey.
Now you may be asking why we have made the decision to uproot our family and go with the uncertain. Well the one thing we can be certain of is that everyone works hard so they can pay the bills. Without the bills you don’t have to work as hard. A good portion of our pay checks go to mortgages/rents, utility bills, cars, gas, healthcare, food, and taxes. Obviously not in order of most spent as we all have different lifestyles. If you could either eliminate or substitute each of these, then you will see that it is possible for you also to do as we are doing. Within this website we will show you how.
I want to be able to share with you all my journey and experiences from the very beginning and throughout our travels. It’s my goal to help you learn how you too can do it yourself. Fortunately for you, the mistakes that we will most definitely make will be great learning tools for us all. I will be sharing about our daily activities, photos of the places we visit, eateries and their food, points of interest and their history, homeschooling, and how to do this all on a budget with children.
Stay tuned in with us and follow our main voyage as we take a dive into the unknown on Sailor Tales.