My Dream Come True – Stay At Home Business On My Boat!
Yacht Shangri-La
Stay at home business and work from home – a dream I have actually been able to achieve, although my home is a boat. I love the freedom living on my boat offers, and working from my home is my definition of total freedom! I will tell you about the work I do later, but for now, let me share how I came to live on a boat.
Shangri-la has been my passion over the last few years, since I found her languishing in a Turkish boat yard in a very sorry state. Shangri-La has come to mean “Paradise on Earth,” and it is certainly mine! I set about restoring her slowly, trying to retain as many original details as I could.
She was originally built in Italy for the great classic American actor Robert Mitchum in the 70′s. He kept her in the South of France for most of the time, and we believe she was sold off when he died. Quite how she got to Turkey, I’m not sure, but I’m happy she did.
She is an all wooden boat, around 75 feet in length. Last year, I took her out off the water for a few months, so I could laminate the hull, as this protects the paintwork against the fierce sun in Turkey.
Not many marinas can even lift my boat, as she is so heavy! Even the giant crane at the marina I chose to do the work, found it hard. The tires of the crane were almost flat! Good that it didn’t have to travel very far to put the boat to rest. This was a huge job, in time and effort.
The next problem was getting onto the boat when she was out of the water. A huge ladder had to be fixed to her side, and scaffolding built all around the boat for us to be able to work. My poor crew took one look at the ladder (imagine climbing a ladder as high as a second-story building!) and decided once she was on the boat, she wouldn’t be getting off too many times during the day. But within a few days, she was even able to carry the shopping up and the rubbish down!
Right away we set about doing the lamination. I suppose the best way to describe it is to say that it’s a little like wall-papering, and then covering it with a resin. Once this was finished, the whole boat had to be painted, along with lots of varnishing of the exposed woodwork.
Eventually she went back into the water, and for the first couple of hours, she was letting in water like a sieve! She had dried out so much when she was on shore, aided by the heat. We were racing around the boat pumping water like crazy. A few days later, the wood had swelled enough to stop the leaks and we were able to relax and enjoy the beauty of the restored finish.
I truly love Shangri-la , but a wooden boat always need maintenance, so there is always something to do.
It is also my home and a very comfortable one at that – plenty of room for my family and friends to come and stay. I’m sure that is what Robert Mitchum had in mind when he had her built. Not too many cabins, but plenty of space, even a full size bathroom with a tub. It’s great to sit on the sun deck and imagine his guests doing the same. He had guests like Steve Mcqueen, Ali McGraw and Ava Gardner to name a few, staying on board. My guests may not be so famous, but they are always special to me.
Munchkins - Shangri-La Mascot
Oh, and I forgot to mention my cat. She just turned up on the boat one day and never went away. My crew has called her Munchkins, as I never got around to giving her a name, so it stuck. She always travels on the boat when I moved it to a different Marina, and she lived on the boat when it was out off the water, Now she barely goes ashore. But every day, she goes up on deck and just rushes around like a crazy person for a few minutes, and I mean truly races around. After this mad little burst of exercise, she settles back down to sleep.
Now let me leave off talking about working on my boat for a while and touch upon my other passion in life, Internet Marketing.
When I first got involved in Internet marketing, I was thinking of how to work at something fun, without ever having to leave my boat. When I started, I never realized how much I would enjoy it, but as time went by, I found I really do. It’s challenging of course, and involves study and learning new skills.
But I like that! And anything worth doing always does require us to use our minds to their best capacity. Since I discovered my coach Chris Farrell, another Brit no less, I have become even more inspired. He has simplified so many tasks for me, that that’s made it so much more enjoyable to sit in front of my laptop and work.
It’s not easy to get the specific skills needed, and without a really good coach whom you can trust to not be just extracting money from you with empty promises, months, even years can be spent trying to perfect what is needed, and separate out what is useless hype.
I had some really basic but hard to answer questions, like how to make a website on my own, and how to make a website searchable, and how to make a website with email and a search service. And I also wanted to learn how to make a local website, so I was quite overwhelmed with looking for simple and clear answers with understandable technical instructions. Chris and his staff made that information available…like to create this website you are on now!
I really wish I had discovered him years ago when I started. Would have saved me a lot of time and frustration. If I recommend one thing to any of you out there starting out with Internet Marketing, it is go meet Chris Farrell as soon as you can! And save yourself a lot of headaches. (And money) Maybe you can also create a stay at home business and work from home, allowing you to enjoy time with your family. With a little effort anything is possible, and you can have your dream AND your freedom like me.
