We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we didn’t win the lottery and we aren’t trust-fund babies. We don’t have an endless pot of money funding our cruising lifestyle. We didn’t wait until we were retired with a solid nest egg either. Instead, we work, we tackle projects on our boat ourselves, and we’re always looking for ways to save money. Cruising can be expensive, but if you’re cruising on a budget, it’s absolutely doable. You just need to get creative.

“100% you won’t be able to paddleboard that back,” I said to Mark as he loaded our 100-litre dry bag onto his paddleboard. “Nah. It’s fine.” It wasn’t. He swam back to the boat while pushing the paddleboard—and our food. Just another day in the life of provisioning as liveaboard sailors.