CAMPBELLS’ QUEST

Jay & Karen Campbell— liveaboards, bloggers, photographers—weren’t always full-time Bahamian cruisers. Jay explains, and shows, the reason that this lifestyle became an essential step in their lives.

If there are “good” cancers, the one Jay had was not one. He walked into the hospital and rolled out weeks later, and life went on. But his cancer ate at both of us, even after it was gone. It imprinted an insistent, even immobilizing, fear that life would end and we would have missed it sitting at our desks. That was cancer’s gift to us. Freedom.

In our fifties, without great resources, we planned a responsible escape. The short version? We bought a large but older cruising trawler, learned to run it, and rebuilt it to “off grid” status. Once the last child was in college, we sold the house and cars and sailed away, having worked out how to work virtually. That part of the plan took two years.

Now, three years into our full-time cruising life, we do not look back. We live on the hook in some other country’s water or at the dock in some other country’s marina, and find our life aboard to be affordable, calm (interspersed with moments of terror), and exciting.