When we started housesitting in 2015, we always intended to use housesitting as a way of visiting other countries. Covid and other responsibilities delayed this...
Dan loves to cook and the galley or kitchen is his domain. When he has an idea for a particular dish, he will find numerous recipes and then merge them together. Of course he always adds his own twist as well.
Click on the wine bottles to see the complete recipe list.
Our boat kitty is subsidized in a very small part by our affiliate relationships with a number of vendors. When you go through our site to purchase an item, you may get a small discount and/or we may get a dollar or two dropped into our boat kitty by the vendor.
We do not have affiliate relationships for all of the items, some we have included because we have found their products exceptional. The items included are also not exclusive to life on the water – many work equally well in any home.
Click on the kitty to see our favorite items.
Our Journey into Housesitting
A number of years ago, I met a woman (Lisa) through the Facebook group Women who Sail and I followed some of her postings. Along the way she mentioned ‘housesitting’ and I asked her for more detail. Lisa supplied me with tons of information about her foray into housesitting including contacts, websites, and tips on getting started.
Realizing that we did not need to stay in one place during the non-sailing months opened up a huge number of possibilities for us. Equally important was the realization that we did not need to pay rent when we could travel and take care of people’s homes and pets. As the bean counter in the family the idea of taking those dollars designated for rent and putting them towards either travel expenses or boat improvements sounded like a win-win.
Housesitting Information
Required Skills
Both Dan and I had both grown up with an assortment of animals and we really missed having furry critters around. My experience covered dogs and horses but Dan had grown up on a ranch...
One of the most common questions we get asked is how we find the housesits. The simple answer is the Internet. There are numerous online services that you can join to either find housesits or look for a house sitter for your own place.
Housesitting Tips for Sitters (based on our experiences) We’ve learned a few things during our time as housesitters. We have compiled a list of things we wish we had known when we first started housesitting.
About Us My husband (Dan) and I are retired. In 2013 we sold our downtown Minneapolis condo and now spend our summers on our beautiful 41′ Gozzard sailboat. Currently we are sailing on the Great...
I stepped outside with our two canine wards on their leashes. The smell of wood smoke wafted through the surrounding woods. While the convenience of...
We started our sailing journey very casually – Dan on a Sunfish and Julie on an O’Day Daysailor. A chance invitation from a co-worker to sail in the Virgin Islands got us both hooked and started us on a very different path for recreation and as a lifestyle.
2013 – Heading into Duluth on our G37
From that initial charter experience we both began to dream of a sailboat large enough to live on with a goal of getting to tropical waters. We did our research on boats, made a list of requirements (the must-haves vs. would-like-to-have). Our process led us to Gozzard Yachts but it was 2013 before we actually purchased one.