Could This Be Our Next Cruising Sailboat? | Sailboat Story 146

To begin the search for our next cruising sailboat we self survey an Endeavour 40. The good news is that it’s received nearly 100k worth of upgrades, but the bad news is that it still needs a tremendous amount of work. Could this be our next cruising sailboat?

~ Ben, Tambi, & Molly | “SAILBOATSTORY”

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO OUR SUPPORTERS & FANS:

Hi, Ben here. I have a message for you that feels strange to communicate, but as a fan/viewer/supporter of our channel I feel indebted to share it with you. Here’s what’s happening:

Our channel is funded primarily by fans who choose to support us by becoming “Patrons” through a website called Patreon.com. That funding has been falling gradually for the last 3-4 years, but over the last year, in particular, things have really taken a nose-dive. Perhaps it’s Covid related as the exit-surveys suggest, or maybe part of it was that folks just didn’t care for the RV travel videos. Either way, trust me, I empathize. Regardless of the reason though, we’ve reached a point with our earnings that something has to change. It really comes down to either needing to boost our Patreon earnings to where we’ve been trying to get to for the last 5 years, or perhaps it’s just time for us to experience the sailing lifestyle without video cameras rolling. Our preference would unequivocally be to continue filming, but like many things in life, it often boils down to dollars and cents.

To our current and past Patrons, I want you to know that we’re incredibly thankful for your help. I’m still in awe of your generosity. To consciously part with a portion of your hard-earned money and send it to a family of “strangers” on the internet is something that still feels very foreign to me. Regardless of this, I’m deeply thankful for your support because without it, we wouldn’t have this PRICELESS video record of our family’s travels. To those that have stuck with us since the beginning… wow… you guys have been absolutely tremendous. To those who supported us for a little while and had to take off for one reason or another… we’re still extraordinarily grateful for helping us out while you were able to. I have a feeling of obligation to our supporters to provide them with the videos they have “invested in”. It’s a sense of responsibility that I have, and I don’t take that lightly – and that feeling is a large part of what’s driving me to openly communicate the goal we hope to reach.

The goal that we would like to reach on Patreon is $500 per video that we produce. If you take a look at our Patreon page, you’ll see that we’re currently at $281 right now – just a hair over halfway to our goal. We’ve got a ways to go, but the interesting thing is that if only 1% of our audience were to enroll right now, we would reach the goal before you finish this paragraph. We’re not asking for anyone to buy us a boat or to fund our travels, instead we’re simply trying to cover the expenses that go into producing these videos, and beyond that, it would be amazing to be able to put a few dollars towards upgrading camera equipment or boat expenses along the way. We feel like our $500 goal is a very modest and reasonable one, but for nearly 5 years it’s eluded us. Perhaps part of the reason we’ve never reached this goal is because we’ve never actively communicated it. Well, we’re changing that now, because well.. we have to! Hopefully sharing openly with you guys what we are trying to accomplish will produce better results than what we’ve typically done in the past, which has pretty much been just to silently grind onwards and hope.

In an active effort to reach our goal we are making some big changes on our end to help add additional value and incentives for our Patrons and to encourage new sign-ups. For example, Patrons will have the option to watch completely ad-free on Vimeo as an exclusive perk. Up to this point we haven’t done “rewards” at all, but we’re changing things and making a big effort to show our supporters that we really appreciate them. Right now we’re committed to giving this our best shot for a couple months of filming and see how things go. We’re optimistic that we’ll be able to reach our goal and continue forward with renewed energy and support. When we reach our goal we’ll celebrate with our supporters in some kind of goofy “Sailboat Story” way – and of course, the videos will happily continue.

We sincerely hope that, with your help, we can reach this goal and continue creating the sailing videos you enjoy.

Please help us continue producing videos by becoming a Patron today.
▶▶▶ https://patreon.com/sailboatstory

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