Welcome to Sailing Rum Punch. We are Ben and Ellie and together we have bought a 38ft sail-boat with big plans to build our dream floating home and navigate the world with her alongside.

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Now, how did we come to the decision to go against the traditions of buying a house, being tied down with a mortgage etc and embarking on an adventure that could take us AND our home all over the world?

Well, I'm glad you asked. Let's take a few steps back...

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As a young kid, sailing with his dad every chance he could, Ben dreamed of buying a sailboat one day and living on her. As the years went on, he went to Uni to study Stage Management and found himself touring the world and growing up in the world of theatre. A similar story with me (Ellie). I also went to Uni to study Stage Management - it wasn't until we met, we found out we went to the same drama school, only a few years apart. We were both (separately) jumping from rented flat to rented flat and from show to show. There was a time Ben found himself in a position to settle down, and say goodbye to that ultimate dream live-aboard life, but life is life and things can change. It was the end of 2019 and a small show, that you might have heard of, in the West End brought us together. That show was School of Rock. With similar ways of life, the familiarity of constantly moving around and mutual dreams to travel the world, I think we both just knew.

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2020 brought the world a terrible year and we found ourselves cooped up in a London flat, twiddling our thumbs and watching endless Youtube sailing channels. That year brought a new perspective not just to us but to a lot of people, and being freelancers in the theatre industry, we were hit hard with a sudden closing of shows and loss of jobs. Not something anyone had planned for. After what we thought would only be a three week holiday and ended up turning into a whole year, being the proactive people we were, we were bored and restless. Ben took an opportunity that arose to complete his Competent Crew and started his Day Skipper course. This turned into hours of scrolling on Apollo Duck and Yachtworld, fantasising about different models of boats we could live on and discussing budgets etc. The idea of living minimally was relatively routine to us, constantly packing and repacking suitcases to take on tour with us, living out of whatever we could fit in the car. The absolute necessities. It seemed like the lifestyle would fit perfectly for us. We could travel and explore, conquer the sea AND the land, and our jobs would be able to work around this. At least that's how the cogs in our brains turned as we romanced. The reality comes with a lot of balancing, juggling and an extreme amount of hard work, but we were determined to get there.

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Flash forward a year to 2021 - we were both touring the UK with a show called Bat out of Hell and having spent the last year saving every penny we could, we started to seriously search for the perfect boat to make our own. Well, the rest is history.

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We finally found her. Our very own 1972 Contest 38 yacht.

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We are sharing our DIY refit amongst the crazy chaotic on-the-go life we lead with whomever would like to tune in and with the intention of living a minimalistic and adventurous lifestyle. We've documented every second we can, so scroll it a little lower and embark on our journey with us from the very beginning and let's see where we end up!

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Feel free to read even further into how we came to purchase Rum Punch by heading to The Full Story. More ramblings in the making, such as why we picked the name...