S A I L I N G U M A
“If you want to travel the world, don’t buy a couch!”
In a nutshell, we (Dan and Kika) are living and sailing around the world, on our All-Electric sailboat UMA.
In 2014, fresh out of university, we had everything a “grown-up life” was supposed to have—an architecture and renovation business, cars, and a rented room in a comfortable apartment. As new graduates, we naturally started looking for our own place, picturing it filled with our own furniture. But something felt off. The turning point came while helping a friend move into her new apartment in Atlanta. Over beers and cookies, as we carried boxes up the stairs, her roommate shared his unusual philosophy: “If you want to travel the world, don’t buy a couch.” At first, it sounded like a joke, but he explained that everything he owned fit into two suitcases. He traveled constantly, renting fully furnished apartments just long enough to make money for his next adventure. At the time, we didn’t fully grasp the weight of his words. But soon, we realized—owning a couch meant anchoring ourselves to a lifestyle we didn’t want. We craved experiences over possessions, freedom over convention. We refused to live by someone else’s idea of the perfect life. Instead, we chose to write our own story.
That realization led us to a small fishing village on the northeast coast of the U.S., just three months later, where we moved onto a tiny sailboat (a 1972 Pearson 36) that would become our home—and the beginning of our journey to explore the world.
As seen in:
Years living on a sailboat
11
Nautical Miles Sailed
28,000+
Gallons of Diesel Consumed
0
KIKA
DAN
UMA
the journey
From the start, we opted against a diesel motor for our boat, deterred by its noise, smell, maintenance, and cost. Instead, we decided to embrace a quieter, cleaner, and simpler alternative to a traditional diesel engine. Since 99% of the time we would be using our sails, we wanted something to help navigate into marinas, or through a small cut into a protected bay. So, we devised a plan to fit a small electric motor into our boat, and add the ability to motor a few miles from time to time. No noise, no vibration, no smell, no maintenance.
Amongst the work we did to get this boat to float again, we also built our first electric system from a forklift motor we bought from e-bay for $100, and spent the next two years circumnavigating the Caribbean, learning, exploring, and upgrading along the way. After completing 10,000 nautical miles around the Caribbean, we decided to make a few more major upgrades to our little home in preparation for a bold new goal: crossing the North Atlantic.
At the end of summer, 2019, we departed St. John’s, Canada, and sailed 1,800 nautical miles to Southampton, UK. From there, we ventured up the coast of Norway, upgrading our system to a new electric motor, and reaching Svalbard in the summer of 2021, before heading south to Iceland and continuing into the Mediterranean Sea. Documenting every step of the way on our Youtube Channel.
After 28,000+ miles and 10 years of living and sailing full-time aboard our beloved vessel, she was ready for the most significant refit of her life. The goal of this total rebuild was to prepare her—and us—for the next ambitious journey as an All-Electric Sailboat.
[You can learn more about our boat renovations HERE.]
430k subscribers
1.5 MILLION+ monthly views
No noise
No vibration
No Smell
No maintenance.
jOIN THE UMA NATION
Along the way, we’ve built an amazing community of like-minded souls who share in this wild adventure, helping us push boundaries and share our journey with the world. Our Patreon family fuels everything from repairs and upgrades to the stories we tell and the films we create.
The UMA NATION Patreon feed has become the perfect place to follow our journey more closely, with bonus videos, behind-the-scenes content, secret podcast episodes, live streams, exclusive meetups, discord access, and more—all ad-free. It’s like a whole other UMA-verse.
99k Followers
Watch ouR latest YT Video:
“we’re in no hurry to go anywhere, ever.”
That doesn’t mean we lack direction or motivation—far from it. We love what we do and plan to continue for as long as we can. We wanted the freedom to travel indefinitely and the freedom to live sustainably. Our only certainty is the uncertainty of our future. While we have dreams, goals, and mapped-out routes, we embrace the inevitability of change, adapting to life’s shifts as naturally as adjusting to the wind. Instead of fretting over the unknown, we focus on the progress of today.
In life, many of us obsess over tomorrow, next week, five-year plans, or retirement. But perhaps the best way to forecast the future is by reflecting honestly on the past and aligning it with a thoughtful awareness of the present. Connecting these dots helps us project a path forward while prioritizing the journey itself, shifting our focus from the destination to the present moment. As Ernest Hemingway beautifully said:
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”