Retired Grandparents Ditch Mortgage for Life at Sea - YouTube

Hi, we are Margo and Tony and we

live aboard here on Denelli Gray. She is a 1987 Catalina sailboat. We also have a

1982 Volkswagen van that we travel on land. Our passion in life is sailing and

traveling. We've been married 50 years and raised

three children and now we just travel. We travelled right from day one. We retired in

2010 and we had come out to California after Hurricane Andrew in Florida where

we were living in the Florida Keys and it became impossible to stay there moved

out to California where our children had taken up residence and we worked for

ten years or so and then we retired in 2010. We retired with enough money in the

bank to take care of us if we got sick in our older age and the rest of the

time we live on Social Security. We sailed our boat down here to Ensenada

because the cost of living is so good. We quit smoking so we can save $400 a

month and we put that away and then we travel either by the van or on our boat.

So this is the Denelli Gray. It's a 36 foot Catalina 1988. She has two sails: the main

and the jib. Right now the jib is stored because we're not using it too often. We

have this boat here in Ensenada Mexico. It's our home and this is our home base

and it's a super nice place to live. We're retired. We can take the boat

anywhere we want to go which is one of the great things about living this

lifestyle. If we get tired of Ensenada we just

untie the lines and off we go. The unfortunate part of our life is that

sometimes we like to travel on land. This is the Baja buggy. We've rebuilt it. It's

a 1982 Westfalia Volkswagen Vanagon. We take it every place we can in North

America and eventually we'll take it to South America but right now she's been

all through Mexico, all across the US, and Canada. The longest we've spent in the

van is six months and we traveled the entire US up to Canada

Banff Lake Louise and then back to the US and out to Victoria and then

eventually back here. We actually weren't really ready to come back but we ran out

of places to go so and of course that won't fit on the boat so if we decide we

want to leave here and untie the lines we got to find someplace to put that van.

We have all the comforts at home. There's nothing that you would have in your

condo or house that we don't have here except a dishwasher. She's got a 25

horsepower diesel engine to help us in and out of port, but other than that it

costs almost nothing to travel in her because she's a sailboat. My wife

actually put these in the right place so that either one of us can always

maneuver up the deck and always have a place to hold on to

so there's never any, hopefully no possibility, of falling overboard and of

course we are tethered and we have our life jackets on.

Catalina 36's are great sailing boats. I wouldn't hesitate to take this boat

anywhere. She's got all the navigation equipment that we could possibly need

and we use it. She's a great boat. We have our dinghy off the back. Nissan

outboard. We have a West Marine kayak inflatable right on the forward deck and

an ocean kayak on the bow. We generally will cruise about six knots. Under

really great conditions we can get up to eight.

My name is Margo Heising and I

live aboard with my husband Tony this thirty six foot sailboat. We run our life

from here. We've lived on the boat for over 20

years. I'll take you for a tour of our boat and where we live and how we do

things. One of the great things about everything is its small and easy to take

care of. This is our, we call it a reefer in the sailing world, it's actually a

refrigerator and I have a two burner stove and an oven and I can cook a meal

for six to eight people on here with absolutely no problem. We have a dry

storage locker which is here and that's very very deep and we keep all of our

dry goods in there and then we have cabinets here where we keep everything

that we need to entertain and to keep ourselves alive with the food. Tony and I

have been married for 50 years and one of my greatest hobbies and loves in the

world is cooking and entertaining for my friends. One of the biggest questions I

had when I moved on to the boat was how will I do that with such little room?

I had a very large farmhouse where I could entertain up to 20 to 25 people

and I thought if anything will make me unhappy here it will be not being able

to entertain so I decided the way to handle the problem was to bring my bone

china anyway and my silver and my crystal and serve, instead of 25 people, I

can I can feed eight people here with all of the beautiful things that I have

which is bone china and it's very very durable in the boat. We don't have any

problem with it. I can serve pretty much as many people as I want in our salon

over here. I can seat six on the other side. I can seat two up on my deck

here. I usually put all the men out there and we can sit six to eight men out

there to eat so I can have quite a large party here and all of my needs as an

entertainer are solved. We have a double sink here. We have drawers here where I

keep silver and pots and pans. Under here is the interesting part of the boat. Our

engine is under there. We have a twenty five horsepower engine. As a woman I had

to learn how to work on the engine because when we're at sea sailing, if

something goes wrong, Tony gives me instructions while he tends the boat.

Over here we have a, it's technically called an AB cable, when we're sailing we

use it to use our maps and our navigation. When we're not sailing this

is my art studio and my computer desk. I do all the little art pieces here in my

spare time. I used to do much bigger ones but I had to cut everything down to what

fits to do on a boat to live here comfortably

and be happy. This table goes down and we have cushions that fit in here and we

can sleep two to three people here. This table also goes down and we can fit

another person here so we can have company. Tony installed our TV so it's

out of the way on the wall. Oh we also have a half cabin back here. It's used

for storage right now because we're retired but we used to, the children

sleep in there, it's a king-size bed so we have our place for our grandchildren.

So we have our ability to entertain. We have our ability for company and

we can entertain our grandchildren well at the same time. We have just tons of

storage everywhere. This is our silverware drawer. Our batteries are under these

cushions and our fuel tank is under this cushion.

Over here we have, under that cushion, we have our water heater and under here we

have a holding tank for our bathroom. Our clothing is kept in these cabinets

and Tony has two more cabinets than me and I don't think that's fair. In our

bathroom this is our toilet. This becomes our shower in the morning. The water goes

down into this drain and pumps out into our holding tank. The v-berth is

king-size. We have plenty of room and you see we have a TV in there too and all of

our books. Our whole library I used to have a whole wall of books and now I

have a little tiny library with all my favorite books. Tony has his guitar which

he plays and we're very very very comfortable. Underneath of that bed it's

more storage and Tony has his own closet. Right here these are called ports and they

open like that. We have a port up here to let in more air so we have everything we

need to have a happy sustainable life. Our

expenses to stay in this marina are $400 a month. We get $2,800 a month Social

Security so after we pay our slip, we have $2,400 a month left and we

budget $500 a week. The extra four hundred pays for our boat insurance and

anything extra we would like to do. The cool thing about living in Mexico is the

cost of the peso because five hundred dollars a week only costs us

about two hundred and eighty dollars. We stay within our budget. We eat nicely.

We treat ourselves to an occasional nice restaurant. We had mortgages and car

payments and insurance rates just like everybody

else. Now, we've got none of that. Everything in our life is paid for. You

know it once you realize it you don't have to to devote your life and money to

other people and you can just live a very peaceful quiet life it's pretty

easy. You just have to make up your mind that you can do it. We owed our soul to

Bank of America. Our boat was mortgaged through them, our credit cards were

mortgaged to them, everything that we owned was mortgaged to Bank of America. I

sat down one day and figured out how much interest a year that I paid them. It

wasn't worth paying. We have more spendable cash now than we ever had when

we were working and when you realize that then you realize that you can do it.

You don't necessarily have to live on a boat but if you're willing to sell your

house and buy a smaller house then you don't have the burden. You can travel too.

You don't have to live on a boat. It took us almost three years to get everything

under control. I had to pay off the mortgage on the boat sold our cars and

we retired with the boat and no car and we didn't have a car for six months

which was the first time in our life that we didn't have a car and we took

public transportation and had a fabulous time figuring that out. I can't say

enough how I wish that everybody could follow their dreams to just make it

possible. You have to make it possible yourself you know and

you can do it.