Here’s something you never would have seen on someone’s CV five years ago: ‘full-time sailing vlogger’.
That’s how 20-something Aussie YouTubers Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu – who have built a social media empire on documenting their travels-by-boat around the world – describe themselves.
The couple’s channel Sailing La Vagabonde has racked up a following of more than 366,000 people in just two years (that’s across YouTube, Facebook and Insta) with weekly videos of the couple fishing, diving, exploring tropical islands and sharing honest reflections about life on the open seas.
Riley and Elayna’s popularity – like other social media influencers – has helped them build quite the nest egg via Patreon, a crowdfunding site heaps of vloggers use to pledge cash donation-per-video from their fans; with 1,083 patons at the time of writing, they’re bagging a v. sweet $7,521 per-creation.
“With your support, we can buy new filming equipment (which the salt air seems to like destroying/eroding at a fast rate), make repairs to our boat and feed ourselves when we can’t snag a fish!,” says the couple on their page.
But what fame’s also got them is a brand new million-dollar luxury catamaran at a discounted rate, offered up by a French boat building company who saw it a worthy investment to have its branding at the centre of videos watched by three million people every month.
“We’re the number one sailing channel at the moment on YouTube, so I guess that’s what they saw when we emailed them saying, ‘Hey, we love your boat’,” Elayna told ABC.
Their new 45ft Outremer catamaran is currently being build over in the Land of Frogs, and will be ready to set sail from February 2017 for them to “burn around the world at lightning speed”.
She’s a beauty:
Riley says they don’t have to do anything other than sailing around in the boat, “which we were going to do anyway”, so it’s a pretty sweet deal.
Before your eyeballs turn green, though, it’s not all smooth sailing towards sponsorships and endorsements; the couple works hard.
“Between running the boat, keeping the boat afloat, checking the weather, and keeping up with maintenance, that’s a big enough job as far as I’m concerned,” says Riley. “And then all this YouTube stuff; we’ve never worked so hard in our lives.”
Find consolation in them dollars, guys.
Source: ABC.
Photo: Instagram / @sailinglavagabonde.
