Whitelum skipped university and started a business digging trenches for Australia’s phone company before going to work on oil rigs for eight years. Carausu did not set out to be YouTube personalities. It actually takes quite a bit of onscreen talent and editing skills to get viewers … I’ll admit it.
But they make most of their living from patrons: about 3,500 subscribers who pay $3 to $10 for early access to the videos and other perks, like the chance to meet the couple for dinner and a sail, perhaps, if La Vagabonde comes to their town.īut as one poster noted, “ … people think that just anyone can get a GO PRO and do a YouTube Channel, get on Patreon and make hay. The couple sells shirts, hoodies, totes, sailing guides and cookbooks they have written from their website, mailed in compostable envelopes. Designed by a fan, it’s La Vagabonde merchandise, $29, made by an ecologically conscious company in Los Angeles. Carausu’s and under Darth Vader’s helmet was Lenny. Whitelum was wearing what looked like a Star Wars T-shirt, except that Mark Hamill’s face had been replaced with his own Carrie Fisher’s with Ms. “They just seemed like really cool people,” he said. Kellershon has been following their adventures for years when he saw that they were heading north after months in the Bahamas, he offered them a spot at the marina. The boat’s engine was broken and they had been in town waiting for parts for over a week, guests of Sean Kellershon, the dock master at Gurney’s. After pumping it out, he turned to Google: “My boat is sinking, what do I do?”
Whitelum had kept the bilge pumps off to save electricity, a rookie mistake, and he awoke to a cabin awash in water.
It was moored off Dubrovnik, Croatia, slowly taking on water from a hidden leak, when it was swamped by the wake from a fishing boat. Carausu was, thank heavens, not on board the night it nearly sank. Whitelum had no sailing experience before he bought a barely used 43-foot Beneteau from three bickering Italians. Carausu, mostly in coastal Australia, Mr. Luckily he had learned a few things in the months before that encounter. When he told her he had a boat, she thought it was a pickup line. (She had noticed his distinctive mustache.) Elayna Carausu was playing guitar and singing for a travel company Riley Whitelum was living on the sailboat he had bought with money saved from working for years on oil rigs. They met in Ios, Greece: locking eyes across the town square, both in their 20s then.