124: Seth Vore–Wouldn’t It Be Crazy If…

Seth Vore joins me again to recap the final leg of his family’s 6,000 mile boat journey. We also revisit the original question that turned this dream into reality. Learn More about Seth Vore and His Family Previous conversations with Seth: 121: Captain Seth Progress Report (June 2023) 112: Checking in with Captain Seth Vore (June 2022) 110: Boats and FIRE with Seth Vore (December 2021) The Great Loop is a 6,000 mile, year-long boating trip Seth and his family are on ‘Loopers’ Say the Great Loop Is Their Appalachian Trail onFIREfamily – Website onFIREfamily – YouTube Credits Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod All songs licensed under Creative Commons ## Transcript *This transcript was created automatically and may contain small errors.* **John:** Alright, we’re back talking to Captain Seth. It’s been a number of months. I want to say this is the final voyage, but I was just joking with him before he started that like there’s— he’s got to come up with something after this so we can keep following up on what he’s up to in life. So Captain Seth, welcome back aboard. **Seth:** Well, thank you, John. It’s good to be back and good to continue to share this journey with you. **John:** Yeah, so last time we checked in, well, according to my site, the last thing I published was from June in 2023. I believe you were in DC. **Seth:** That’s right. Yeah. **John:** And you had 1,000 miles left. **Seth:** That’s right. So to catch folks up, we were on America’s Great Loop. Great Loop is a 6,000-mile circumnavigation of the East Coast of the US. Our particular journey Started in St. Louis, Missouri. We went north first to the Great Lakes and turned around, and in the fall we descended down the rivers. We crossed the Gulf of Mexico around this time last year. We were on the west coast of Florida heading to the Keys, and then we ended up over in the Bahamas. And then last time we checked in, yeah, we were on the Chesapeake Bay. We’d just gone up the Potomac to Washington, D.C., and spent about a week there and we’re about to enter the Chesapeake heading north to go finish our loop. And so like you said, about another 1,000 miles to go of East Coast up the Atlantic and then through New York, Erie Canal, Hudson River, and back into the Great Lakes to finish that loop. Loopers, as they call ’em, call that crossing your wake. When your boat crosses over the wave that your bow made when you started the journey, that’s crossing your wake. And and completing the trip. So yeah, last time we caught up, we were on the Chesapeake and we’ve since finished that journey. And I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit more about that and kind of reentered life at home. **John:** But let’s go backwards. It’s February 2024. How long have you been home? **Seth:** We moved home in September, so So, boy, that time has gone by fast. **John:** But— So what have you been doing? I mean, you don’t have a job. I mean, you’ve probably like run out, you’ve like watched all of the things you can find on Netflix. I mean, what have you been doing? **Seth:** You know, oddly, yeah, life has not been boring. I’ve been doing, you know, opportunities kind of come out of the woodwork when you make yourself available to them by doing something like this. So through some of my connections and interactions from this trip, a job kind of came up to work for a nonprofit that is all about appreciation of antique and classic boats, and that is my jam. I think when we first talked ever on your podcast, you introduced me as Captain Seth, the owner of Portland Boat Tours. Yes. And I had you out on my boat and we floored under the rivers and talked about the history of Portland and the bridges and all things like that. So clearly I am passionate about antique and classic boats. Well, we got to go to the Antique Boat Museum on our trip, which is in Clayton, New York, and just down the street there is the headquarters for the Antique and Classic Boat Society. And I’ve already been a member for many, many years and have actually done some work for them in social media space. But through that interaction and attending the International Boat Show, I was offered a position to do advertising sales for that organization. And I think had I not done this trip, made those connections, and had the availability after this trip to be able to engage in something like that, it probably wouldn’t be an opportunity that I would ever even be approached to pursue or think that I could handle. And it’s certainly outside of my comfort zone. But anyway, that’s the current flavor of the week. Uh, I’m, I’m doing advertising sales both in print and online and, uh, enjoying a new challenge. So that’s, that’s soaking up some of my time. **John:** Very cool. Very cool. So you leave DC, you go up the Potomac, DC, then what happens? **Seth:** Um, we, we re-enter the Chesapeake Bay, we head north, uh, and there’s just some absolutely— you could spend a whole year probably on the Chesapeake Bay just exploring little towns with amazing history. One of our favorites was Annapolis. Just pulled in there and beautiful marina right in the heart of everything, walk to everything. We walked over to the US Naval Academy and got to tour the campus. We attended church in the church there on campus. And our daughter actually just kind of fell in love with that, the rigor that they have there for their students, the discipline, the leadership that they, ingrained in our US soldiers. And so I think it was a life-changing spot for a lot of us to see that. And we were also able to, later in the summer, we cruised right by on the Hudson River West Point and were able to see the Army version of that military academy. And compare and contrast. So, but yeah, the Chesapeake, just so much nautical history, especially like every town has a naval or nautical museum of some kind, and just very rich with tradition and history. And so we made it up through the Chesapeake into the Delaware River. There’s a little thin canal that connects those 2, that was cut for commerce. And so we went in and transited that and got into the Delaware River, which took us into the open Atlantic Ocean at Cape May, New Jersey. And so I think where we left off last time, we talked a little bit about this trip being very protected, very safe, not a lot of open water. And we, in fact, we talked about a couple of the exceptions to that, one being where we went across the Atlantic Ocean. crossed the Gulf Stream over to the Bahamas, and one where we crossed the Gulf of Mexico, at least a little bit of it that we did in a 22-hour overnight journey. Those, those are some of the open waters, but, but this trip from Cape May, New Jersey north is not protected by barrier islands. The rest of the Atlantic is, so that’s called the Intracoastal Waterway. It’s protected by barrier islands, and so it’s a canal cut. mostly natural, some man-made, that gets you all the way from Florida up to Cape May, New Jersey. And when you round that cape, you are in the open Atlantic Ocean. There’s no real other way to transit, at least this size of a boat, on that portion of the journey. And it was actually one of the more epic days, I think, looking back on over a year on this trip. One of the more epic days we had, we, we got started before sunrise because we wanted to maximize. When you get a good day weather-wise on the Atlantic, you want to capitalize on it. So we’ve been pinned down for a couple of days. We saw this good weather day coming, and so we wanted to maximize. And it’s one of those days where you start off with kind of a goal of where you want to get to, and then maybe you have a stretch goal for if the weather’s really looking good. we’ll push on and go to this other place. And if it’s really, really looking good, well, let’s not even talk about that because it’s so out of the realm of possibility. But we, we, we got up before daylight. We made it into the Atlantic. We’ve— it was rough but not terrible. And we passed our goal, which was Atlantic City. We had— that was going to be our first checkpoint. We would turn into Atlantic City. And then there’s not a ton of places that you can escape waves and weather. along that portion of the Atlantic coast, even though it’s densely populated in that area. There’s just not a lot of facilities to duck in. And so once you pass Atlantic City, you’re a little bit committed to a few more hours of boating. And then we, we ended up that would— at our stretch goal spot, weather was still good, and we were still all having a good time. And so we thought, you know what, we can make, we can make it to safe harbor. In New York City, we can make it all the way to the Statue of Liberty, and our plan was to anchor behind the Statue of Liberty, and which still blows my mind that that’s a thing that you’re allowed to do, that you can do, that people do. And so, and so that’s what we did. And everybody has a different impression of entering New York Harbor. You know, I think back from immigrants, everyone, you know, writes about or has this story. And lately, you know, what we were concerned about is traffic, and so much commercial traffic of big ships coming and going, of tourist ships come, you know, carting hundreds and thousands of tourists around New York Harbor. We didn’t experience any of that, and that’s because as soon as we rounded the corner into the Hudson River, still with a couple of hours to go to get really into the protected part, a storm kicked up. And the Coast Guard came over the radio and said everybody off the water, seek, uh, you know, a safe place to anchor, uh, because this is a very serious storm and, uh, we’re concerned about everybody’s safety. So nobody was out there. It was very, very eerie, uh, coming up that portion into, into New York City. **John:** Wait, but why were you out if they said everyone had to go in? **Seth:** We didn’t. We, we looked at our options for a safe spot to go, and we— that was the closest safe spot that we could see to go. Everything else was a, uh, a more difficult option. And there are marinas, but they’re expensive and booked out, and we didn’t want to cruise into somewhere in a storm, try to dock in a storm at a place that we didn’t know if they could take us or not take us, and all of the things. And so we were very lucky in that the storm missed us. It went kind of northeast of us. But we certainly saw the ferociousness of the storm from the boat and could see the lightning crashing and hear the thunder. It was just shaking. And, you know, we were fatigued at that point, having gone, you know, and we were since before sunrise. It was coming on sunset, is right around the time we’d be dropping anchor. We really had 2 choices. One was to speed up and drop anchor before the storm would really get to our position. The other is slow down, take the storm at sea while we were still moving, which in a lot of cases can be a safer way to go, and then, and then go and anchor afterwards, which would mean we’d be doing that in the dark, which isn’t also a very fun thing to be doing. So we chose to, to go slow at our current speed, so we would be anchoring just at kind of twilight where we would have enough light to see, but it wouldn’t be dark. And that actually ended up being the right call. The storm kind of missed us. We didn’t get the brunt of it. We pulled in right as the sun was kind of headed to set, but it wasn’t dark yet. We were still getting some twilight, and we were able to drop anchor right behind the Statue of Liberty. And that eerie calm of no boats being out there, Right as the storm passed, that went away and the tourist boats started firing right back up. They all want to see the Statue of Liberty at night. They’re party cruises. You hear loud music, bachelorette parties. Everything is just raging out there. And the commercial traffic started up again. So it was a very, very unique way to enter such an iconic place. It was really special. I think we’ll all, for the adversity reasons, but also just the epicness reasons, I always remember that day as one of the most epic on this trip because it was just so unique in so many ways. **John:** Now, I remember in an earlier conversation you said that you only drove a certain speed. There’s an optimal speed to not— to get the best gas mileage. Was this one of those times where you just kind of were like, let’s just get there? **Seth:** Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, there were a handful of times where that was necessary to outrun something that we were worried about or get in somewhere at a time that, that was important to us. And this was one where we don’t mind burning a little extra fuel to get somewhere safe when we wanted to get there. So yeah, worked out very well in this case. **John:** So you stop and see the Statue of Liberty, I assume? **Seth:** Yeah. So you can’t just go dinghy over and walk up on the Statue of Liberty. So, so we anchored that night behind the statue, which which was incredible. And then to see the sunrise come up over the city was awesome. And then we moved the boat from that anchorage because it’s very rocky there. You can imagine all these tour boats that are heading over to the Statue and Ellis Island. They’re throwing up waves because they’re moving people quickly. And so it’s not the most peaceful sleep you’ve ever had in your life. It is epic, but it’s not the most peaceful night’s sleep. And then we moved to a marina where that was kind of our home base. And we were able to do all of the Manhattan things. I saw some Broadway shows. All the sites, the 9/11 Memorial, some things that that were really great. And and then we continued up from there up the Hudson River, and so a few more days’ journey up the Hudson River before turning into the Erie Canal, which is a very historic kind of experience. We we had done locks before, but on the inland rivers. These are different locks. They’re you know, they’re antiques for one, and they’re much smaller scale than a lot of big river locks that handle commercial traffic. This is really entirely recreational traffic at this point on the Erie Canal. So we did that. We took a right turn on the Oswego Canal, which dumped us out into Lake Ontario, and then that re-entered the Great Lakes for us. So we actually spent a lot of time right there in kind of upstate New York area. Well, we were in New York from the time we entered the Hudson River all the way until we entered Canada. So Lake Ontario to that Clayton, New York, St. Lawrence River area. We spent a few weeks there in the summer. Absolutely loved that water. And then started our journey through Canada, which is its own whole adventure. **John:** Now, do you have to do anything different with that? What just occurred to me as you’re talking is you’re going from Like regular water to saltwater. What do you call regular water? **Seth:** Just freshwater. **John:** Freshwater, okay. So do you have to do anything different with the boat? Does it hurt the boat to go back and forth between the different kind of water? **Seth:** No, if you’re doing it maybe forever for good or something like that, there are some different things you can do. It can affect the type of bottom paint that you paint the bottom of the boat with because different critters live in each of those things. And so there’s different paints that are designed for one or the other. There is also corrosion that can happen in saltwater. actually can happen in freshwater as well. So what you do is you put sacrificial anodes of a particular type of metal on your boat, and that prevents things like your propeller from getting damaged or your propeller shaft from rusting through and then falling off or those kinds of things. And so the material that you use in freshwater is different than you would use in saltwater, and then there’s a compromise in between that you might use if you go back and forth. And so making sure your boat is set up to, to handle that. But other than that, no, there’s not a like, okay, we’re out of salt, we’re back in fresh, these are the things we’re going to do. To be honest, freshwater is so much more forgiving. Saltwater, you know, it gets crunchy on your decks, it corrodes metal when it gets on there, it leaves a residue. It’s just fairly nasty to, you know, you always are washing the boat down at the end of the day to try to keep that at bay. And it was refreshing to be back in freshwater where None of that was the case. And, and the same when you go swimming, you know, we swam pretty much the entire year right off our boat. And so you get that saltwater kind of crunchiness, you always are going to rinse yourself off. Freshwater, we swam in water that’s cleaner than, you know, any bathwater we have around here. So that was just really a great turn when we got back into freshwater for sure. **John:** How much expertise, how much for someone like me that knows absolutely nothing, I’ve been on some boats, How— like, what’s the knowledge gap that— so for someone like me, that if I really wanted to do something like this, I mean, from where I’m sitting, there’s like an infinite number of things that I would need to know. It’s impossible. I couldn’t do it. How— I have like 3 questions, which is, uh, how, how complicated is it? How hard would it be to learn? And how big is the knowledge gap? Answer whatever question makes the most sense there. **Seth:** Yeah, it is. It is not that difficult to learn it. So much of it you can learn kind of like on-the-job training. You just get out there and do it. **John:** Sink or swim. **Seth:** Yeah. I mean, there’s basic boating knowledge that you need for sure before you turn the key the very first time, right? There are safe boating courses you can take. There’s more advanced things you can do to prepare yourself that way. The organization the nonprofit that puts together the resources for this trip, like the maps and marinas you want to go to, all that kind of stuff. They put on training courses throughout the year. Some, some of them are online, some are in person, like 4 different conferences in person per year in different places around the Strip. So there are ways to learn all aspects of it, whether it’s the boating aspect, the planning aspect, the what kind of a boat would I need for this, the All the logistics stuff, like all the questions that you might have, can be answered in those things. But it used to be very possible that someone with just a moderate amount of any kind of boating knowledge could just get a boat appropriate for the journey and start, and that would be fine. You could, you could do that. The only thing really preventing that that’s changed these days is insurance. insurance over COVID. A lot of people bought boats, and then there were a lot of hurricanes and terrible storms and things, and so a lot of boats had claims. And so insurance kind of got wise and said, okay, well, where’s our risk? Our risk is just that somebody that has a moderate amount of boating knowledge that wants to do a 7,000-mile trip and, you know, enter New York Harbor in a storm. And so they, they’ve tightened that up a little bit, but it only means that you need to have more boating experience on a similarly sized or showing an increasing size boat throughout your boating experience so that they see a trajectory that, okay, this person is someone we can insure and handle this journey. So that’s really the only thing. **John:** But there’s no special license or anything, is it? Like, I could have driven your boat. Not that you would let me, but— **Seth:** No, it’s Most states require like a boating education card. In Oregon, we do it online. It’s kind of like a video game. You answer questions like, you know, there’s a green buoy and a red buoy, which way do you go? And you click the click and then you get your boating education card. Both my kids got them at 12 years old and they’re, you know, ready to go. So that’s, that’s the only level of, yeah, official training that you need to do such a thing. **John:** So in terms of a timeline, like beginning to end for someone that didn’t know anything to going on this trip in today’s world, like we’re talking, I don’t know, a year of like going to conferences and doing stuff or 2 years or like? **Seth:** Yeah, I would think a couple years. I think a year probably in basic boating kinds of things. And then a year when you’re getting closer and serious, probably the year preceding the trip. Go to some conferences. The conferences are actually on the route in season. So like they have one in Annapolis and they have one in Florida and they have one down the rivers in Alabama in the fall. And so you go to those and get that information. So if you don’t have it by then, you pull your boat into one of those and then that’s going to prepare you for the next quarter ahead. So you pick up knowledge, you know, of the local waterways just before you’re going to use it, which can sometimes be easier than learning a whole year’s worth of stuff, forgetting it by the time you get there. And then you’re like, what did they— that guy say? He either said definitely go here or definitely do not go here. Now, which was it? I checked my notes. So yeah. **John:** So you get into Canada. Where did we last leave off in Canada? A lake in Canada? **Seth:** Yeah, Canada. So we entered Canada at Kingston. **John:** Did you have to show your passports? **Seth:** It’s an online check-in. So we had to show them with our face. Really? Yeah. That we are real people and that we really have passports. **John:** It’s like video. Like you have to— Yeah. Okay. **Seth:** Yeah. **John:** Do you have to get off the boat or? **Seth:** No. So, well, in Canada we did. You had to be standing at a phone. Like you pick up the red phone off this dock and there’s like a dozen places you can go. You pick Pick up this phone and someone answers, and they ask you questions about your passport number. And do you have a dog? And kind of food is on board and booze? And are you importing this or that? And and that’s it. And I think they talked to each person. If I remember right, we passed the phone around, and they they were fine and convinced. And then the same similar thing with reentry into the U.S. It was a like a FaceTime call, and they wanted to see everybody’s face. and their passports and answer those same kind of questions. Are you importing livestock on board or anything like this? And so that one was even easier because you can do that anywhere, you know, in between the Canadian port you left and the US port you’re entering. You don’t have to be at the red phone, which kind of surprised us in Canada. We weren’t expecting that, but it worked out just fine. Uh-huh. So yeah, so then we ended up in Canada. The stretch of Canada is called the Trent-Severn Waterway. goes from Trenton, uh, is the beginning of it. And it’s this series of locks similar to the Erie Canal. A unique thing about Canada, they are also antique locks, but they’re operated by people, humans, with, uh, little kind of turnstile things. And they’re pushing huge gears to open these gates to move your boat in, and then they flood the thing with a manual valve. They flood it with water, and then you raise up, and they open the other gate, you go cruising on through. And each of these locks is very scenic. They have gardens there. They pride themselves between boats coming through, what are they going to do? So they plant gardens and they maintain grounds. And each of these little towns in Canada was just quaint and magical and awesome. And in, in that stretch, there’s not really marinas. You just, wherever you get for that night, there’s docks next to those locks. And so you just tie up next to a lock And that’s where you are. And it’s usually right near the town, so you can walk in and get groceries or go to restaurants. And this is when everybody wants to be outside in summer in Canada anyway, and so they have concerts in the park and just fun farmers markets and things that you can go and do and experience, which were just really awesome. And so that’s like a whole section of the trip, is this Trent-Severn. And I should note that This is a route option, so you can stay completely in the US if that’s your choice. You can take the— you kind of bypass Niagara Falls. You don’t want to try to go up Niagara Falls. It’s not advised, but there’s a lock that takes you around Niagara Falls into Lake Erie, and then you go around kind of Detroit and up the east coast of Michigan to get back to Lake Michigan. But we prefer the Canadian route just because of how scenic and Awesome. **John:** You mentioned that these locks were manual. How do the other locks work? **Seth:** Big, like, electric motors that drive the gears. So they— an operator, usually operated by a single person, they just push the button that says, you know, we got a boat in, he’s going up, you know, hit go, and then it does everything else kind of automatically. It closes the gate, floods the chamber, opens the other gate, lets you out, rings the bell. But in Canada, these were all manual. anyone. Really cool and mostly run by college students that are off on summer break. And so they’re out there walking around and around and opening gates for us. And everybody was super friendly and kind and caring too. We just really enjoyed it. **John:** So what’s next after that? **Seth:** Yeah, well, so there’s 2 other big bodies of water in Canada that the canal kind of gets you connected to. One is Georgian Bay, and the North Chan. Big open blue water, granite boulders, kind of— it reminds me a lot of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia where tree-lined hills kind of just end at the water level. And for us, this was an excellent way to kind of end our journey. Is, you know, we saw everything from the huge cities of New York, D.C., and some of the big towns in Florida even. But this kind of secluded, not a lot of folks around, no big cities really, a lot of anchoring in remote anchorages kind of all by ourselves, or maybe just a boat or two, was a great way to decompress and kind of think our thoughts about the whole trip and what was to come. And Really enjoy the the natural beauty, the water. We did a lot of swimming and dinghying around, adventuring, a couple of little you know exploration kind of hikes around different places. You can hike to kind of mountaintop lakes from where your boat is. So you go dinghy over and hop on a trail and hike up and swim in a lake that you know it’s really only accessible in the summertime. It’s snowed in every other. time of the year. It was a good way to kind of finish our journey. And then we, we re-entered the U.S. at Detour, Michigan. It’s on the Upper Peninsula. And crossed our way, finished our loop at Hessel, Michigan, which was where we were the prior summer. That’s as far north as we had gone. So a very emotional time as we pulled into Hessel, Michigan in the harbor there and finished that trip. A lot of feels by everybody on board. And we kind of had a dance party. We put on some music and we’re dancing our way into to drop anchor for that last time. We had a friend that had met us on shore and had brought with him the Gold burgee. Gold burgee is you fly a white flag while you’re doing this loop, identifies you as somebody that’s, that’s on this journey. It helps you identify other people so you can ask questions and have community that way. And then when you have completed it, you change out that white flag for a gold one. And so we had a dear friend standing on shore waving us in as we dropped anchor with our gold flag ready to go put it on our boat. It was a very, very special moment. **John:** Hmm. What are the emotions like? I have no idea. Like when you say like the emotions, the feels like what? **Seth:** Yeah, it was, it was weird on our boat because I think we talked a little bit about it before, but it only got worse throughout the end of the journey is that 2 of us were very sad to see it come to an end, they’re ready to go around again and never leave boat life. And 2 were, get me off of this thing. A year is enough. I miss my friends. I miss my house. I miss being able to drive to the grocery store if I forgot one thing and it doesn’t wreck the whole day. And so, I mean, there were tears all around, but some of us, tears of joy in completing the journey, some tears of sadness for it being over, at least this chapter of it. But I think overwhelmingly a sense of accomplishment. I think you don’t go through this type of a journey without really feeling that as a deep, deep sense of accomplishment for all the things that we had done to really make that happen. And I think it’s through some of the challenges and the adversities that we experienced on the trip that, that we grew the most and that, uh, that make finishing such an accomplishment. I think if it were easy, um, you wouldn’t have as many of those feels, you know. If it was a vacation, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t experience it in the same way as, um, it really is. It’s challenging, it’s work, uh, and so when you have that sense of accomplishment, it really It really gets you that, wow, we really did this. We really pulled this off in, in all the aspects that that means, right? The, all the pre-work for the years ahead to, to make way for this, both time-wise for our family, financially for our family, the sourcing of a boat. We spent a whole year really shopping for the boat that, man, we really pulled that off. We really bought a boat, did this thing. That, that’s an accomplishment. And then all the day-to-day, 7,000 miles on a boat is no joke. You know, we did it without ruining a propeller by hitting rocks. We did it without, you know, the perils that you could have at sea. And, and, you know, we did it with teamwork and as a family. And I think that sense of accomplishment was overwhelming, overwhelmingly what we felt as we were coming into that final stretch. **John:** What were some of the biggest challenges in the last 1,000 miles? **Seth:** Yeah, as the end got closer and closer, I think some of the— what each person was feeling was different day to day with the others. So the ones that were mourning that, okay, the end is coming up in 3 weeks, so now it’s 2 weeks, now it’s a week. Like, I want to linger in this place and I don’t want it to end, so I want to just immerse and be here. And then the other 2 of us saying— I’m ready. I don’t want to be here. This is not my jam. Let’s get on with it already. And everybody enjoyed the trip. Don’t misunderstand. But everybody was feeling different emotions in those moments in the final weeks. And so that caused people to struggle sometimes with what the other person was feeling because we couldn’t really relate. I mean, we can intellectually relate to, okay, you’re feeling bummed because this is coming to an end, and I’m feeling like I’m excited that it’s coming to an end. And that puts us at odds on the boat, and that affects some of our decisions day to day of, I just want to sit here and relish in what we’re experiencing today. And the other, like, let’s stop relishing and get into port so we can go have dinner and And speed this thing along. **John:** And which camp were you in? **Seth:** I was in the go-around again. I would still be living on the boat. My daughter would still be living on the boat. We absolutely loved it. It was terrific. And I think that’s— and we’ve stuck with that even after the trip, that that was the case. I think the other 2, my wife and my son, they’ve come around a little bit to At first, they were like, yes, it was a good trip, but never again. And/or like, I didn’t see as much value as the other 2 of you. But as the months have worn on since being home, I even asked my son today kind of in preparation for this, what would you say? You know, what were like the highlights? Or how has this changed you? And to hear his answers were kind of profound. And I think he wouldn’t have said that in those final weeks or the first couple of weeks after being home. He was still, you know, I miss my friends. It was a challenging trip for me because it was a year away from, you know, familiarity and home and friends and things. But I think he looks back on it now and has a new perspective having been home. He appreciates things here more now. You know, he recognizes that he’s grown spiritually, physically, mentally. And he, he, he kind of now looks back on some of the times on the boat that he felt bummed out and thinks, well, maybe I took for granted the awesomeness that was going on there. And so he looks back on it with a different filter, right? And some— sometimes I think in life when we’re going through something that is an adversity or something like that, um, when you look Back on it in retrospect, you see things that you don’t see when you’re going through it. And I think that’s what he’s experiencing. And and I’m excited and proud to hear him say that because I think we’re all changed by this trip. But to hear him because I think he had the hardest time of all of us to look back with a fondness now that he maybe didn’t have right after the trip was was awesome and. Powerful for me to hear. **John:** How are you different in 2024 than you were in, say, 2022? **Seth:** Oh, so much more experience. I think I learned so much more about myself, my family, and how we approach so many different things in terms of like big hairy goals and projects and stuff like that. Once you have bitten off this big amazing thing, it opens your eyes to what’s possible in other areas of your life. So I think I’ve built up a confidence there that I certainly didn’t have before we started this whole journey. I think it’s changed, you know, like my son, it’s changed the way I appreciate the things of home and the things that are all around us in our day-to-day lives that— and I think, you know, to some extent all travel does that. You know, if you go on a week vacation, you go experience something and you see how, you know, people just in different parts of the country or internationally live or experience life that’s different than your own. It makes you appreciate sometimes the returning to home. And so I think I appreciate home more than, than I had prior to this journey. And I think I appreciate, uh, I, I’m way, way, way more flexible now than I was before. I mean, I have been Type A engineer planner, uh, my entire life. It’s, it’s what I prided myself on, what I made my career out of, uh, for 26 years. And on this trip, it taught me that you have to be flexible. Uh, life is going to throw things at you And it can’t all be planned out, and that’s okay. And you roll with it, and it turns out okay in the end is the punchline. And so I can apply that to so many other areas of my life. And I wouldn’t have thought that that was the message that I would have come away with. I would have thought, oh, I learned that planning really pays off and that you should invest all your energy and carefully plan and execute the plan. Because that got me so far. But on this trip, that only gets you so far. And at some point, you just have to have faith and you have to have a sense of courage and a sense of flexibility to be able to change when it’s necessary. And those are things that I’m going to carry going forward for sure that we learned on this trip. **John:** Any I say any adversities, but I remember in the last conversation you had gotten a hole in your boat. Like, were there things like that that happened in the last 1,000 miles? **Seth:** No, as far as the boat goes, it behaved flawlessly that last stretch. And so we are very thankful for that. We did sell the boat. in the fall before moving back home. And that was always the plan. But again, there— that generated some feels, you know. **John:** Oh yeah, I can see that. **Seth:** A sad, sad day. But we had started working with a broker around the last time I talked to you. Our boat broker had started working with us, had the boat listed, yeah, with the idea that there’s many months left and that that’ll be plenty of time to get interested parties onto the boat to look at it while we’re still in process. We write a contract that says, you know, I’m, I’m going to deliver it in, in this condition, it’s going to be in good shape. And, uh, and then we finish our trip and then they say it’s their boat, take it over, uh, upon an inspection, just like you would inspect a home. You haul it out of the water, you look at it, make sure it’s as advertised, and then, then you buy the boat. So we had it locked up in contract, uh, before we entered Canada. So a couple of months early, uh, than when we were going to finish. And that gave us, uh, comfort in that the deal is kind of done, you know, and we have a contract on the boat. So that feels reassuring that it’s not gonna not sell at the end of this trip. Uh, and then also it gave us terror because what if we screw it up between now and the end? Uh, somebody’s already bought this thing, and if we run into something or blow an engine or something like that, let’s be very careful. everybody, you know, yeah, we, we stopped drinking red wine on the decks. We stopped, you know, we, we treated it a little more like it was someone else’s boat because it was at that point. Um, we, we went on to have a couple of hijinks with the sale. So that particular one fell through for financing reasons. Uh, we had another one that fell through for inspection and, uh, maybe, uh, just fear reasons. You know, sometimes when you get into a purchase like this, it it stirs up, oh, I don’t know if I can handle a boat this big, this complex, whatever. And by the time you realize it, there’s really only one point you can accept or reject the boat, and it’s after that inspection. So they rejected it after that inspection, which was difficult because you’ve already got a lot of emotion invested and time invested and logistics invested by that point. So, but our third buyer Went, went, went off without a hitch, like clockwork. Everything was fine. But we were pushing up against fall in the Great Lakes, which is a time when you want to get prepared to haul your boat out of the water, get it in heated storage and things like that. So there was some nervousness that, well, if this one falls through, then, then we’re in some trouble. But really, the plan was always to sell the boat when we were done, and that ended up working out just fine, just with a couple of missteps in between. **John:** Are there any things that you wish that you had done differently or that you would do differently if you were to do it again? **Seth:** I don’t think so. I think you can only apply that experience to the next time you do it. You can’t really know it. I can’t really tell somebody else, this is what I would do differently, and have them actually do it differently to any more degree of success than I did. Just by the same token of, I listened to everybody else’s advice and we did the best we could. I think everybody’s trip is going to be different. Things we, my wife and I, have talked about, well, like our kids are coming up on college ages, they’re going to be out from under our roof before too long. And, you know, one of the questions that we get frequently is, well, what’s next for your family? You know, is it more boating or would you ever do the boat trip again? And we’ve wrestled with that because, you know, we’re putting 2 people on the boat. One that said, you know, it was a great trip and I never want to leave, and, uh, her that says, yeah, okay, it was a good trip, but I don’t know that I want to get back on that boat like my friends. And so what do you apply to that situation, uh, in terms of this experience? What would we do differently? Um, we wouldn’t have so much of a breakneck pace. I think, um, this trip To complete the loop in a year, you have to really keep moving. Like every other day you need to move the boat. And some days you don’t really feel like moving the boat. You feel like this place is beautiful and amazing and chill, and I just want to stay here. I might want to stay here forever. It’s, it’s so incredible. Or at least for a week or two until I get bored of this place and let’s move to the next one. So I think we would slow down the pace. We had a real desire to like see it all. And try to see it all, do it all. And I suffer from FOMO, fear of missing out, all the time. And so if I skip some cool port, my fear is that I’ll never get back to that port ever in my life. And so if I skip it, you know, tomorrow we don’t make that stop at the biggest ball of twine, then, then I will forever miss out. And inevitably I will hear at the pub from the other boat that said, oh, you should have stopped there. It was the best place ever. And so we stopped at many more places. And so I think my advice for anyone else would be stop at half the number of places and invest time. And so, so it slows the trip down. You’re going more miles in a day. But give up that FOMO and just be present where, where you are and enjoy where you are. So I think if we do it again, we’ll do it with that in mind. I think we’ll skip every other town. We don’t need to see it all again. We don’t need to see all the ones we missed even. There’s enough of the world out there. Just go at a pace that is more slow and conducive to our schedule. I think that’s the big one. And then also that enables you to have time when you’re not moving so quickly to invest more in friendships, to be more flexible, to go with— like, if you meet some cool people and they’re on your neighboring boat, uh, go, go invest time with them. Don’t say, well, good to meet you, but we’re moving on tomorrow. Say, hey, you guys are cool. Do you, you know, you want to go grab a beer tomorrow, or you hit this museum, or see the sights, or share a hike, or do those kinds of things? And I think that would have helped somewhat with some homesickness as well that a lot of us experienced on the trip. And, and also moving at a slower pace allows you more time to invite friends to be on the boat with you, or to get off the boat, go home, make some visits, those kinds of things. I think that would have improved the quality of life on, on the entirety of the trip, really for everybody, because everybody gets homesick. Everybody, you know, has that fatigue of travel, and sometimes taking a break, um, with the pace we went was more difficult. And I think if you slow it down, it affords you that. And I think It makes it a richer experience when you’re on the boat than if you hadn’t gone and visited and seen people. **John:** I mean, I’m thinking of road trips that we’ve done where we camped or whatever and moving every day or two. That’s— I don’t know. It sounds— it’s exhausting car camping, but I can’t— I don’t know what’s— yeah. I don’t know that you completely answered the question. What are the next adventures or what’s What’s next? **Seth:** Ah, it’s because I don’t know, John. We’ve got, we’ve got dreams, um, we just don’t know where they fit in kind of the new, uh, pace of life for us. Uh, I’m, I’m a boat guy and I love boats. We all do. Uh, after this trip, that was never a question I don’t think any of us had, was, uh, I loved everything about the trip but the boat. That was not the case. Everybody enjoyed the And we’re used to having a cabin cruiser on the water here in Portland to be able to go down and weekend on and explore and do those kinds of things. So we are missing that less so in the winter when it’s raining and drizzly and cold. But I think come summertime, we’re really, really going to miss that kind of thing, like waking up on the water, having a cup of coffee, looking out. Is it’s it’s just part of our DNA now, and so to not have that is going to be a challenge. So I see. an opportunity there for a boat in this locale to spend time on here. But beyond that, we are no longer satisfied with, you know, go a couple miles up the river, a couple miles down the river, and, and that’s it. Having done this huge grand trip, we, we know what the world holds out there. And so if we’re going to invest in another boat, I think we’re looking for one that is capable of exploring, and I think we have so much great exploring to do here in the Northwest. I think that’s really the answer is the next boat adventure to me is a boat that’s here that we can do just that weekend up and down the river, but then is capable of, let’s go all the way down the Columbia River to Astoria. Let’s cross the bar into the Pacific Ocean. That’s new to us. Uh, and then take a right turn and head up to Seattle. Let’s do Puget Sound. Let’s do San Juan Islands. Maybe that’s the summer and then that’s it. Um, maybe it’s more than a summer, or it’s the next summer and it’s the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska. Uh, for a while, uh, you know, as soon as I got home, I went out to the bookstore and I bought this map of the Inside Passage from Seattle to Ketchikan, and I posted it on the wall here in my office, and, uh, I would look at it and I’d plan and I’d think just like, you know, we just completed this trip. And I think after some number of months, it kind of started bogging me down and it was— and concerning my wife. She’s like, we just got off the boat. What are you doing? Crazy. So the map is still here, but I put it inside my closet. **John:** Oh, I love it. **Seth:** Open it and go look at it. But yeah, so no firm plans, but kind of a loose idea for an adventure there. And then longer term, I think I’m ready to go around the loop again. I think my wife is ready to go around the loop again. I think the trip has changed the kids so that we’re not so tied to the bricks and mortar of this being home. You know, we called a boat home for 15 months on this trip, and I think Everybody is okay with whatever home looks like in the future. That could be something that floats. It could be something way smaller than a house here. It could be something in the north in the summer and south in the winter. I think there’s a lot more openness to that because of what we experienced this year. And so our idea of home has has a little bit changed. Again, no firm plans or anything like that, but I think. And going forward, **John:** is Portland Boat Tours opening again in the spring or summer? **Seth:** I will certainly be out there on that boat, Rosie, and going up and down. It may be friends and family because I kind of feel like I’ve got a backlog of connections to make and things like that. So I don’t know if we operate as a business this summer, or it’s just a fun catch-up, let’s do that. So I won’t commit either way on that, but I will definitely be out there because I miss that little stretch of river and, and getting in my wooden boats and going. So for sure. **John:** Well, anything else in closing about the trip, challenges to people listening, Anything else? **Seth:** Yeah, I— we talked a little bit about it last time, about, uh, in terms of encouragement for folks is to, um, just figure out what your thing is, you know, whether it’s travel or it’s, uh, starting a business or it’s, um, just, just really anything you could name, you know. What is your big dream that you want to do And what can you do in any kind of small way to just start moving towards it now? This type of a grand adventure doesn’t happen overnight. This is years of dreaming and thinking and asking, well, you know, wouldn’t it be crazy if— it’s one of my favorite questions my wife and I ask ourselves on an annual planning retreat. That’s what this trip came out of. It is. wouldn’t it be crazy if— and we take a blank piece of paper and we write stuff down, and this trip was on there. Wouldn’t it be crazy if we could move on a boat, do this trip for a year? And it happened. So I guess my challenge to folks is, you know, get out a piece of paper and write, wouldn’t it be crazy if— and jot some things down. And then the next step is, well, what small step could I take towards one of those things that I’m interested in or passionate about? Because otherwise you’ll wake up in another year and be in the same place doing the same thing, you know. And, and I, I’d really encourage people to, to move towards whatever it is that’s drawing you, because this trip, although, you know, in, in a lot of ways different than maybe what we exactly thought, has been rewarding in so, so many ways. I can’t imagine not doing it because you never started or you never took the baby steps that it took to to make it happen. So that’s my, my challenge and encouragement to folks. **John:** What was the— just stay close to— what was the first small step you took after you wrote down, it would be crazy if we did this thing for a year? Like, what was the first 4 or 5 little steps you took? **Seth:** Yeah, there were big concerns. Like, that was the next thing is, okay, well, what are all the things? Let’s get out on paper. What are you worried about? What am I worried Like, I’m worried about how do you afford this? Like, can I quit my job? Like, do you work from a boat? How do you do that? It was, yeah, like you had asked earlier, are you capable of this trip? Like, do I have enough boating knowledge? Can I even pull that off? And like, insurance is always like just in our minds. Like, okay, what about health insurance? I have a job that has health insurance. What do you do? You live on a boat. All of those kinds of questions. So just writing those down. I find that in life, naming those challenges, putting them on a piece of paper already provides some relief, right? **John:** 100%. **Seth:** And if you come up with a new challenge, put it on a piece of paper. That deflates that challenge. It takes its power over you away. You can’t overthink it. It’s on a piece of paper. And if anything else comes up, just add it to the paper. That’s it. You’ll get to it. And then we prioritize that. We kind of doled out those things like, okay, I’m going to go off and figure out how do we afford You know, what does the trip cost? How much do we have to save? You know, what do we have to save? You know, what does that look like? And you just start picking those things off like one little piece of information at a time, at a time. And then we started scratching those challenges off the list until, hey, you know what? There’s no reason we shouldn’t do this because we’ve answered all of our questions and concerns about it. Right now, we’re still, you know, we still may worry about some of those things, but that’s the tiny step that I think you can take is name those challenges and just start picking away at them, even if it’s just a phone call here or a spreadsheet there. You know, how do I get between where I am and start making those little steps? **John:** So, what was the amount of time? I keep having questions. What was the amount of time between when you put the idea on that piece of paper And then the time that you actually left to get on the boat? **Seth:** I think it was 3 years. I think it was 3 years. And the second year, so 1 year after putting it on the paper and after kind of thinking about all those things, we had another retreat and we said, wouldn’t it be crazy if Because we were planning this, uh, to be going on this year, not last year. And we wrote on that paper, wouldn’t it be crazy if we could do this a year earlier? Because it kind of sucks to be gone for your senior year of high school. Oh, totally. That’s not, not a lot of fun. So we’re putting a challenge in front of our daughter if we do that. Wouldn’t it be crazy if we could actually pull off this plan a year earlier? and do this so that she comes back and then has her senior year? Could we do that? And we figured out a way to do it. I mean, that’s the power and the magic of that process and that list and the knowledge of what it takes to do a thing is that you can answer that question. And we did it. So yeah. **John:** So beautiful. **Seth:** Yeah. And I am excited for what’s next. I really am. I’m excited to have that blank piece of paper again and dream again. **John:** When’s the next retreat? **Seth:** Yeah, we’re overdue. We’re overdue. But that’s how things happen. Wouldn’t it be crazy if we could go to Alaska? and do that or own a cottage on Lake Michigan and a boat in Florida and go to Bahamas again and all those things. Right. **John:** I guess **Seth:** I’m making up my own list. I should involve my family. But yeah. **John:** Thanks for listening to The John Poelstra Show. Notes, links, and all that other good stuff for this episode are at johnpoelstra.com/podcast. Send your questions, ideas, or a simple hello to REDACTED. Want to stay up to date on new episodes and receive notifications of upcoming events? Register your email address at johnpoelstra.com/listen. Updates. The post 124: Seth Vore–Wouldn’t It Be Crazy If… appeared first on John Poelstra.