About Us

Hi, we’re Tom & Nina.

We did everything right and checked all the boxes. After college, we excelled in our corporate jobs, bought a big house, cars, and all the things. By the time we reached 30, the life we worked so hard to build and the stuff we worked so hard to acquire just wasn’t cutting it. So we quit the materialistic rat race to chase a different life.

Liveaboard Life

In 2022, we sold it all to buy a catamaran that we named Escapist. We chose the name because this is not a story about running away to become degenerate pirates. It was a deliberate effort to upset the norm to spend more time living.

She was our full-time floating home and office for several years. Boat life taught us resiliency, expanded our comfort zones and took us to some of the most beautiful waters in the world. The memories, the failures, the victories, the challenges, the lessons, the growth, the people, the support, the love… it was all more than we ever could have imagined!

We’d absolutely do it again and may even find ourselves on a sailboat again in the future. We wouldn’t trade this experience for anything and absolutely fell in love with the islands.

Creating Vela Nova

After years of living primarily at anchor, we started to crave a bit of stability. With no interest in returning to our live before the boat, we started to look into what it would take to live in the Bahamas. There are many logistics to consider and it’s certainly not as simple as buying a house in the states. Luckily, we aren’t afraid of a good challenge.

So that’s the goal: to find our little slice of paradise in the islands.

We've been documenting our journey since the beginning. Initially, we just wanted to record it for our own memories. When we set out to do this, we learned so much from others who have done this before us. Now we're sharing our experiences to possibly help others or perhaps inspire someone else to take a life-changing leap of faith too.

I hope that you'll join us through the ups and downs that come with the island life. Give us a follow on Instagram and subscribe to the blog for more on this wild life we're living!