Nick and I met while travelling in India nearly 20 years ago. Nick has been sailing for more than 25 years, but my first experiences on a yacht were with him in cold, rainy London. Nick dreamed of spending a summer sailing the Mediterranean, but that grew into crossing the Atlantic, and we spent nearly 10 years living aboard. We gave up our careers (Nick was a dentist and I was a paramedic) to live and travel full-time by boat. We documented most of it on our YouTube channel, Sailing Ruby Rose. Over that decade, we gained first-hand experience of everything from coastal cruising to long ocean passages. We’ve also learned the realities of maintaining, managing and actually living aboard.