PBO's YouTube aficionado Kass Schmitt describes The Sailing Brothers Luke and Adam Martin's arrival in North Carolina episode as "a brilliant mash-up of Beavis and Butt-Head and Gavin & Stacey"
Imagine a sailing channel where, instead of world-travellers discovering sailing, a couple of sailors discover world travel.
Luke and Adam Martin are brothers in their late thirties/early forties who were raised sailing Mirror dinghies out of Cardiff Yacht Club.
Twenty years on they started cruising on the Severn Estuary in their Hurley 22 before trading up to a Sabre 27, in which they circumnavigated the UK in 2017.
Adam convinced Luke that they could save money by living aboard, and after a cold, cramped, condensation-fill winter in Cardiff Marina they traded up again, this time to a comparatively palatial 1979 Rival 34 called Atlas.
They took the summer of 2021 off from their jobs as supermarket delivery drivers to circumnavigate Britain again, and upon their return started releasing video diaries from their travels on their YouTube channel The Sailing Brothers.
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Spurred on by the success of their channel and the associated Patreon, they extended their leave and stuck around only long enough to refit Atlas in preparation for setting off last autumn for a trade wind crossing of the Atlantic, stopping in Galicia, Portugal, the Canary Islands and Cape Verde before making landfall in Martinique this February.
Having explored a number of Caribbean islands, they decided to visit the United States, choosing to make their entrance in Moorehead City, North Carolina in an episode I can’t help describing as a brilliant mash-up of Beavis and Butt-Head with Gavin & Stacey.
The brothers, who, incidentally, have never been on a plane, wander the streets, full of wide-eyed wonder at items as mundane as traffic lights, pickup trucks and fire hydrants, before sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store marvelling at the novel taste sensation of a Slim Jim.
Their enthusiasm is infectious. The further they travel, the bigger they dream, and it’s hard not to share in their excitement and joy as their dreams come true.
They are currently in Nova Scotia, planning a passage back to the Caribbean after hurricane season, and from there, the world via the Panama Canal. I’m looking forward to following them the whole way.