How to survive living a year in the desert?

Okay, that sounds way more dramatic than it actually is. Australia is one of those countries that have a huge desert. They call it the outback here. Majority of the people live on the coast but there are small towns all over the country - even in the desert. Mining is a huge business here and most of the mine sites are around the outback. That's why we moved to the outback as well after Covid-19 took our jobs in tourism - to work in a mining town to get back on our feet.

We spent a year in a small town called Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. It's not actually like that Saharan desert that you probably picture in your head from the movies with camels and sand dunes - it's more like shrubs and dry small trees here and there, and more flies than you could ever imagine. Lots of snakes and lizards, but not many birds around because of the lack of fresh water. Winters are chilly and summers too hot. Overlooking the whole area from one of our favourite spots, a hill called Katunga lookout it looks more like an African savanna - just without all the animals and grassland. Tap water gets transported from Perth through a huge pipe for over 800 kilometres. The taste wasn't the best, I must admit. Crime rates are quite high there and it has been the first place in the world that I wasn't feeling safe enough to be outside after sunset - or even comfortable being home alone some nights. But the people we worked with were the most caring we've ever met and that is what we have dearly missed from living in Kalgoorlie - the sense of a tight and caring community. The community and trips to the coast every now and then were the two things that kept us sane through one of the most stressful years we've had so far. Living in a place so far from the ocean and our hobbies and passions, during a global pandemic missing our friends and families and dealing with visa issues at the same time, not knowing when we could return living on the coast and following our path towards our dreams and goals.

I always keep my promises, so as the title promised here's my tips on how did I dealt with living in such a hostile environment so far from the ocean:

• Swimming pools

• Airconditioning (there was only one week during the whole year that it wasn't on)

• Nice cafes

• Camping trips to the coast

• Becoming part of the community (I joined the local choir and also teached yoga)

• Making realistic and achievable short term plans to keep eyes on the prize

• Photos of the ocean and boats on your fridge door and nautical deco around the house

Check out the short videos Josh made during our time in Kalgoorlie from our Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZZp0HHM_mb/

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CPUn1FBHkTh/

This video even shows our favourite part of Kalgoorlie, the Karlkurla Bushland Park!

Why did we choose an old monohull?

Catamarans VS trimarans VS monohulls is the never ending debate amongst sailors. Everyone has a personal favourite and an opinion about which one is the best. And knowing the type of the stereotypical sailor(man, because most of the sailors still on 2021 are sadly men) he is more than happy and willing to share his opinion. Even when no one asks for it.

Luckily it's up to the listener or the reader to decide whether to take on his advice. We listened to many people whilst looking for our boat and read even more online and of course we had our own experiences sailing different kinds of boats previously, but still it took us quite a lot of brainwork to decide what kind of a boat we were even searching for! A few things that we were considering were:

• Safety

• Sail-ability

• Seaworthiness

• Price

• Maintenance

• Space

We would have of course loved to have a nice spacious catamaran, a boat with two hulls and more than enough space to live comfortably and have guests on board, but with such a big boat comes big costs - you have double everything so you're going to pay double for everything. And double the time and cost for maintenance as well! Instead of sanding one hull for a new antifoul you're sanding two. And good cats aren't cheap to begin with. Also since we are quite new to sailing we wanted to stick with what we knew the best. For these reasons trimarans were out of the question as well.

We decided to go with an old boat because being novices in sailing we don't want to stress too much about putting a few marks on her while learning to become best sailors as we can be. We made a lot of research so that we would be sure to choose a solid boat that could take us through storms if needed to. Also we went to see for about 10 boats in Perth, some of them not even nearly what we were looking for, but good experience to see. There were so few boats available on the West Coast of Australia that we were super surprised when our paths crossed with our little Vellamo in July 2021. She was advertised online and was slightly out of our budget, but she was a true gem! She is an older boat, but launched 2007 and has had only a few owners since who have all been up to date with the maintenance. She was also properly equipped for longtime cruising and ready to cross oceans! We fell in love straight away.

We sacrificed space for sail-ability, but this thing flies to be such an old lady! Just cruising downwind in pretty rough seas against the breaking waves we average 6.5 knots. I can't wait to experience how she sails in calm seas! Also she has just enough space to accomodate a friend or two overnight and host small dinner parties, and we can't wait to offer that kind of experiences to our friends and family!

Here's a little tour of our home that is able to take us wherever we want to go:

WE ARE FINALLY LIVE

Months and months of thinking about putting this all together and starting this little project we have finally decided to publish everything we have been working on so far. Our little project has been given a name, Tides & Currents. Like the tides and currents we have to look out for when we are sailing on our little 34 footer monohull called Vellamo but also the ever-changing tides of our lives and currents taking us to new paths.

As our closest friends and family know, we have been getting into photography and videography lately. For a while now we have been filming our trips around Western Australia for fun and decided to put that footage together into short videos for our friends and family to see glimpses of our life. Especially for me with the time differences and border closures it's been quite challenging trying to maintain connections back to my home country, so we thought this would be a great way of showing what is my life like over here on a whole other continent. And because Josh really misses being a tour guide and showing others the wonders of this world we thought this would be the best way to share our adventures. We hope this little project would also shed some light about our lifestyle that is a bit different.

As you can imagine it's quite hard getting everything we want on film, and that is why we have also set up this website and different social media accounts so that you can choose which one you like using the most. 🙌

We are so super excited to share all this with you! Check out these links below and let us know what you think! 😊

- Heli (and Josh)

LINKS:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tides.currents

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tides.currents/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM__hAcxN3yyzTv-ecPmXSQ

TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZSefQGoV5/