Join Team Maxing Out as they sail around the world on their Privilege 39 catamaran, Exit Only. Team Maxing Out chronicles their exploits during an eleven year circumnavigation. Experience their adventures as they sail through Pirate Alley and up the Red Sea. Find out what it's like to sail through a global tsunami in Thailand. Dodge floating debris with them as they carefully navigate through tsunami debris crossing the Indian Ocean. Sail up the Kumai River in Borneo and visit the endangered Orangutans of Kalimantan. Explore the crystal clear waters of southern Turkey and sail through the Corinth Canal of Greece. Ride out a storm at sea as Exit Only sails from Gibraltar to the Canary Islands. Discover what it's like to sail on the ocean of your dreams. Captain Dave tells the Rest Of The Story at Wanderlander.com .
What would happen if Exit Only made the final cut and was on Survivor? Who would survive the competition? Look at the contestants and decide for yourself. Would the Conspiracy Theorist relentlessly dominate the competition, or would Joss and her hermit crab army carry the day. Would Donna and her head thumping rock create a reign of terror among the crew? View Maxing Out Survivor and decide who the winner will be!
Galapagos beckons, but doesn't play games with their entry procedures, so we careened the boat on a beach in Panama to clean the boat bottom to perfection. Then things broke, Mom mastered Sudoku, and we got bombarded by a squadron of winged stowaways. Join us in Part 1 of our journey from Panama to the Galapagos.
Join us as we celebrate crossing the equator on our way to the Galapagos by ushering Zoe and Joss from Pollywogs to Shellbacks in an elaborate and time-honored ceremony. It was beyond thrilling to finally sail into the Southern hemisphere the South Pacific! The Galapagos islands await.
Welcome to my positive sailgrams. When I need a little inspiration, this is where I come to recharge my batteries. If you want more inspiration, you can visit my Instagram page which is my meme storage facility.
Captain Dave has written twelve eBooks that are available at the Positive Thinking Bookstore and that can be downloaded from Amazon. While you are out there sailing on the seven seas, push your mind in a positive direction with eBooks from Captain Dave.
If you want to make your dreams come true, there is only one way to make it happen. You have to be all in. Be all in or get all out. Anything less is a waste of time.
I don’t want a light go fast catamaran. I want a heavy displacement go anywhere catamaran. I also want a catamaran that is safe - safe enough to take my family around the world, and that means it is unsinkable unless you blow it up in an explosion or burn it down in a fire. I want to avoid that sinking feeling.
For the past seventy-two years I have been doing the sea turtle maneuver. I come up for air every couple of weeks, months, or years - I take a quick look around - and then I dive for the good life down under. My submersible life has taken me around Planet Ocean on Exit Only and across trackless wilderness in my Land Rover Defenders.
Just to cover our bases, we have made signs in the sand on the beach notifying the government that we don’t want to be rescued, and there is no need to send help. When you fly by in your Sikorsky helicopter, just keep going. Don’t land. We don’t need your help or your viruses.
The unexpected side effect of our Arabian adventures was that I achieved escape velocity. Without even trying and without knowing what was happening, I no longer felt the pull of cultural gravity. I achieved escape velocity, I was free, and I made my life into what I wanted it to be. I was now a citizen of the world, and cultures were something to be experienced and enjoyed, but not something that controlled my existence.
Imagine how you will impress other sailors at the beach when you strap on Captain Dave's Stingray Shoes and fearlessly walk across the sandbars of paradise. People will instantly recognize you as a Real Ocean Cruiser. Tread among the stingrays with confidence knowing you will never be stung with a stingray barb again. Captain Dave's worldwide money back guarantee will return your money and pay your hospital bill if you ever get stung by a stingray.
Most seasteaders have modest vessels on which they make magnificent voyages. Their lifestyle is not a fashion statement, and whether anyone else knows about it is unimportant.
The problems with sailing is it takes a long time to sail to the far side of fear.
The Grumpy Sea Turtle looks grumpy because of the bony structure of his skull. He has a grumpy skull that puts a scowl on his face. The scowl is not his fault.
The good thing about fear is if you immerse yourself in adventure, when problems happen, you don’t have time for fear. You get on with what needs to be done to deal with the challenges at hand, and when the problems are over, you realize you were never afraid.
Personal freedom is near the top of my list of highest values. That doesn’t mean I behave in a socially irresponsible manner. It means I don’t let the world compress me into its mold and tell me how to think and what to do, and that’s where freedom begins. I live in a parallel universe where dreams actually come true. I am the invisible man.
I am not afraid of the darkness. I will be a light, and I will do everything in my power to make the darkness afraid of me.
If you get stung while swimming or floating, you may get stung anywhere from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. Stings in the neck, chest and abdomen are particularly serious and may be life threatening. Stings to your private parts is an unforgettable and possibly life changing experience. I saw a picture of a male suffering from an ignominious sting to his parts down under, and I am willing to bet he now suffers from Stingray PTSD.
I have a few regrets, but none of them have anything to do with money. Those regrets are wasted time and missed opportunities to go where I could have gone, to do what I could have done, and to become all that was possible for me to be
I am really good at recognizing adversity when it stares me in the face. I am less skilled at recognizing opportunities masquerading as adversity. Sometimes opportunity has to whack me over the head and beat me up before I see that it’s there.
In order to get the most information from satellite imagery, you need to combine the visible and infrared images. Visible imagery helps you separate thick from thin clouds, and infrared imagery helps you distinguish between high and low clouds. Together they give you a better understanding of what is happening in the atmosphere. You don’t need a PhD in meteorology to extract useful information from satellite imagery. With just a few principles, you can understand enough of what is happening in your small patch of ocean to make informed decisions that keep you and your boat safe.
A microclimate is a local set of atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas. The Sea of Cortez is Microclimate Land, and the microclimate varies significantly with the seasons of the year.
After Joshua Slocum circumnavigated in his 36 foot sloop in 1895, the world realized it was possible to make a singlehanded sailing voyage around the world. Solo circumnavigations started out as a trickle, and by the 1960s, the trickle turned into a torrent.
Big boats are extremely hungry. They eat dollars at an fantastic rate. They don’t nibble at your wallet. They swallow the whole thing.
The offshore sailor now has weather information available by satellite download on Iridium Go. Find out how we used Iridium Go and Predict Wind to sail from Panama to the Galapagos Islands in six days.
Some of the fallen rainforest trees continue to thrive on Escudo de Veraguas in Panama. These are trees with attitude. I call them the NEVER QUIT TREES of Escudo de Veraguas
The Hawksbill sea turtle has been beating the odds for millions of years, and with a little help from humans, they will continue to beat the odds. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, you should avoid being a sea turtle if you want to live long and prosper. When sea turtles hatch and begin their march into the sea, they don’t know that the odds of survival are massively stacked against them.
Kissing cobras is an exercise in denial and is pushing the limits of staying out of harm's way. No amount of money would ever tempt me to kiss a king cobra. It's disgusing, stupid and dangerous. The King Cobras in an offshore sailor's life are thunderstorms, and I do everything in my power to stay away them.
You can strike Pretentious off the list of possible yacht names for any sailboats I get in the future. My net worth would never permit me to join the Pretentious crowd.
On our passage from the Bahamas to Panama, I saw more logs in the water than I had seen on our entire circumnavigation - if you exclude the logs dumped in the water by the global tsunami.
Don't let a digital disaster happen to you. Understand the limitations of your chart plotter and your digital charts. Your eyes don't lie, and if your eyes don't know, you don't go. That's my navigational strategy, and I am sticking with it.
Positive lightning constitutes 5-10% of lightning strikes and typically has 1,000,000,000 volts and 300,000 amps. A positive lightning bolt last ten times longer than a negative one, and positive lightning is ten times more powerful than its negative counterpart. Negative lightning will knock your socks off, and positive lightning will kill you.
Death by AIS is a stupid way to die. Don't let it happen to you.
Selecting a yacht for a circumnavigation is not that difficult. Finding a yacht that is circumnavigation ready is much harder. Circumnavigation ready yachts don’t grow on trees.
Capture the essence of what it's like to sail offshore in a catamaran around the world when conditions are less than perfect. Listen to "Captain - Save Our Souls" and "The Red Sea Blues" perfomed by Too Many Drummers. Experience our Red Sea adventures watching excerpts from the Red Sea Chronicles. Trade wind sailing is over when you start the 1500 mile slog up the Red Sea. Just because it isn't easy doesn't mean it's not worth it - as long as you survive! Enjoy.
Every cruise begins with a dream, and once that dream takes hold, the course is set for the rest of your life. Cruising dreams are dangerous because they are contagious. I caught my cruising dream from Robin Lee Graham when he sailed tiny Dove single-handed around the world at age sixteen. After reading about his adventures in National Geographic, I instantly knew that one day I would sail around the world on my own sailboat. It was only a matter of time before I set sail with my fellow dreamers on our catamaran Exit Only. We became Unstoppable, Consistently Positive, Endlessly Persistent Doers of Dreams.
We started our circumnavigation as novices and finished as experts. We are living proof that good seamanship can make up for a lack of experience. Before we started, we had never sailed offshore at night, and we had never made a passage of more than fifty miles. We had never been in a storm at sea, and we only sailed our catamaran six times before we cast off our docklines. We had a massive amount to learn about cruising and sailing offshore, and you can learn those lessons here in Cruising 101.
Fear prevents thousands of people from setting sail. Fear did not stop Team Maxing Out. If you are afraid to venture offshore, you need to read the "Top Ten Cruising Disasters That Never Happened." Follow that up with "Thirty-Four Lessons That I Learned In 33,000 Miles." When you drop your dock lines and raise your sails, you don't drop off the edge of the world. Things pretty much continue just as before except that THEY ARE BETTER!
Tsunamis destroy everything in their path. Although we experienced tsunami warnings as we sailed across the Pacific Ocean, disaster never happened. It was not until we arrived in Thailand that we got our graduate degree in tsunamis. We were in Phuket when the global tsunami killed more than 100,000 people along the perimeter of the Indian Ocean. We now have profound respect for the power of tsunamis, and we have strategies to protect ourselves when cruising in Tsunamiland.
Cruising around the world isn't all work and no play. Plenty of awesome adventures happen that are not a threat to life and limb. Sailing up the Kumai River in Borneo to observe the endangered orangutans of Kalimantan ranks high on the bucklist of real ocean cruisers. Snorkling in the crashed airplane of a Colombian drug lord is a once in a lifetime experience. Island critters have their own stories to tell. If you are lucky, you might even meet the Master and Commander of Anegada.
People who sail around the world are different. They don't do the same things as everyone else, and they are guilty of living their dreams. They experience a type of freedom known only to real ocean cruisers. They are willing to take the risk and accept the consequences of sailing on the ocean of their dreams. When adversity pays a visit, they modify their plans, stick to their purpose, and never surrender their dreams.
Cruising connects you with the universe in a uniquely powerful way. You become one with your yacht and the sea, and you immediately sense changes in the wind and waves. Even the clouds have a story to tell. You get to know the sea in all its moods, and you learn how to survive. It's not long before you establish your seastead, and the ocean becomes your home.
The good, the bad, and the ugly accompany you on your voyage around the world. The good is simply amazing, and you want it to continue forever. The bad usally doesn't last long, and it doesn't get ugly very often. You learn to not trust blonde boa constrictors, and you don't let the jaws of fear devour your dreams. You focus on the good times and forget the bad times. You don't worry too much about the future, and instead you focus on where to take the next step.
You only get one life, and you should make it into an unforgettable adventure. Point your bow west and become addicted to downwind sailing. It won't be long before trade wind dreams take over your life, and you develop Sailing Addiction Disorder for which there is no known cure. The only treatment is to sail downwind around the world.
When dreams are born, they are weak and vulnerable and easily die from neglect. The only way for your dreams to survive is put them into the intensive care unit of your mind. If you keep your dreams alive, they will keep you alive and make your life worth living. Your dreams become the center around which you organize your life. Dreams do come true. When you drop your dock lines and set sail for distant horizons, your life will never be the same.
Dave Abbott - Captain Dave sailed around the world with his family on his Privilege 39 catamaran, Exit Only. Captain Dave has owned six Land Rover Defender expeditionary vehicles and one FJ 40 that he has driven through Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, New Zealand, and Australia. He is planning a driving trip around the world in a Defender 110 Land Rover.
Donna Abbott - First Mate - Donna earned her stripes the old fashioned way by enduring the rigors of passage making for the thrill of exploring exotic ports across the globe. If Donna could travel full time, she would. There's no place on planet earth that she does not want to visit. She has explored more countries than two people could count on all their fingers and toes. Air travel is her least favorite method of travel. But if you put her on board Exit Only or behind the wheel of a Defender 110, she will go anywhere.
Wendy Abbott - Mate - Wendy is a veteran of dozens of adventures around the world. She sailed halfway around the world on board Exit Only from Florida to New Zealand. She drives Defender 110 Land Rovers like a professional and has tens of thousand of miles under her belt on her adventures on land and sea. When not adventuring, she works as a doctor.
David Abbott - Mate - David shot over 170 hours of footage on the voyage from Australia to Florida. He then produced the Red Sea Chronicles. In addition to the narrating the film, David scored, performed, and recorded the soundtrack for the project. David sails catamarans like a mad man, and drives Defender 110 Land Rovers until the wheels fall off or he is out of gas. He is a good mate on land and sea.
Sarah Abbott - Mate - Sarah is an adventurer and offshore sailor with a trip from Australia to the Med under her belt. She sailed through Pirate Alley, up the Red Sea, and into cinematic glory in the Red Sea Chronicles. She loves life on the high seas, and is ready for another sailing voyage with Team Maxing Out. Her fresh and enthusiastic perspective on cruising helped make the Red Sea Chronicles so special. Sarah grew up in France and is fluent in French. When not adventuring, she works as a physician's assistant.
Although I like the feel of a paper book in my hand, I love trees even more. When people purchase an eBook, they actually save trees and save money as well. Ebooks are less expensive and have no negative impact on the environment. All of Dr. Dave's books are available at Save A Tree Bookstore. Visit the bookstore today and start putting good things into your mind. It's easy to fill your mind with positive things using eBooks. No matter where you are or what you are doing, you can pull out your smart phone or tablet and start reading. You can even use electronic highlighters and make annotations in your eBooks just like paper books.
