YouTube Videos And Social Media By LF2SF

In the last couple weeks I’ve gotten several (real) comments on the website asking about our YouTube Videos and Social Media presence….ie:  what social media presence do we have and why doesn’t LF2SF make more videos?  I’ve also had various others folks we know ask us questions about why we don’t make more videos and how this would surely help monetize our site and help our income streams.  These are valid questions and I want to give you answers from our point of view….family cruisers on an older (experienced) sailboat actively cruising in Central America without solid internet.

YouTube Videos:  We’re a family cruising on a sailboat with a giant breed dog (Great Dane), a cat and two active kids.  I wear multiple hats onboard, there is little time for me to edit video and put it together correctly even if I knew how or wanted to do it.  The HelmsMistress also wears multiple hats but homeschooling takes up much of her time.  When she is inclined and has the time, she puts together the YouTube videos that we do have (along with help from the kids).  Both the HelmsMistress and the kids do all of the live filming for our videos and all of the content is done from our floating adventure platform…the boat.  We simply don’t do more videos because we don’t always have time, inclination or the internet to publish those videos.  A good solid 10-minute video without voiceover takes us about 4 days to make; meaning between meals, moving the boat and homeschooling.  We also don’t have extra crew to be dedicated videographers and we roll on an older, heavier boat that takes regular maintenance.  Regular work and maintenance on the boat ensures she stays in decent shape.

While we don’t put out videos all the time and have not done so in awhile, our channel and all videos are completely free and we do not intend to monetize the site.  If you take a look at our videos and like them, feel free to buy us a beer on our Patreon site.

Website:  We started LF2SF in 2014 and grew our blog into a website in 2018.  The vision was to continually add blog posts and information about cruising, sailboats and family travel as a resource that others might find useful.  That vision has grown into what we are today…an eclectic mix of content written by our kids on Fridays, our Great Dane and Kitten on Sundays, the HelmsMistress (from a women’s point of view) on Wednesdays and commentary/writing by me on Saturday and Monday.  All of our content is accessible and free to anyone around the world.  We rely on our readers for energy and appreciate anyone who follows our site.  If folks like our writing, they can follow the site and/or buy us a beer on our Patreon site.

Pinterest:  We have a Pinterest site you can access, but they’ve made it harder to actually find our site.  We don’t update it like we should but we still love the photos.

Patreon:  Yup, we have a Patreon site where we have awesome folks who have decided our content is pretty rad…so they’ve taken the time to donate enough to buy us a beer.  Donating money to artists, creators or content via Patreon is totally voluntary and should be a way for you to reach out to someone and thank them for the time they put into their content.  Some folks who are out here on boats make an entire living off monitizing their sites and generating income off Patreon.  I think that Patreon is great as it simply means creators must work hard to generate great content for viewers and readers….and CONTENT to a website or blog is everything these days.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, SmokeSignal ect ect:  We had some of these accounts when we were in the US,  to figure out how much time and energy it took to maintain them.  We just could not keep them updated and relevant on a moving, cruising sailboat.  And we don’t have the internet to do it.  A satellite system would fix that but it’s a large financial commitment of the equipment upfront that we’re not going to do right now.

I don’t have any mad video editing skills (but the HelmsMistress and kids are developing theirs) and we as a family don’t really want to be on film all the time- we decided that we didn’t want to produce “home” videos and we wanted the focus of the website to be on the good and bad of cruising and travel with kids.  So we’re trying not to write stories specifically for family back home or make “home” videos either, hopefully our good, bad and ugly experiences will help others but possibly entertain you too.

Despite writing for the website since 2014, our blog post writing and photography continues to evolve, it’s always an evolving work in progress.  I’m not a super technical person so I’m still learning to operate the website (with help from Brandnu Creations) and I’ve never had any professional journalism training.  But the writing gets better as we go along; the addition of the HelmMistress’ voice in her writing has given the website fresh vigor and a chance for anyone with questions about cruising, sailing or the vagabond lifestyle to connect with her directly.  We love the fact we can highlight travel with a giant breed dog, love to show off new and unique cooking styles on the Big Green Egg and highlight our own take on sailing, cruising and travel as we go along.  Our writing also showcases the places we go…and HOW we get there, Ie: by boat with the least amount of fossil fuels as we can manage.

In the end, we prefer to write and maintain the website and make occasional YouTube videos when we have time.  We would like loads of followers but we LOVE the dedicated band of followers we have now….thanks for reading, have a great week!