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Stranded at sea, 18,000 kilometers from home, floating on 40 feet of fiberglass. Freedom to transact literally became a matter of life or death. This is our story. Australia locked its citizens out from returning during the pandemic. My family, wife and three kids, three, five, and six months old, were sailing on a catamaran in the eastern Caribbean at the time.

We ended up there for two years, waiting out the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, we essentially became stateless. For a time, all countries within sailing distance closed their borders to Australian flagged vessels. No flights or cruise ships. My son couldn't renew his passport, and we had to get him temporary refugee papers.

Initially, we got locked down for 91 days on our boat in an overseas territory of France. The Gendarme Nautique, water police, prohibited us from leaving the boat. We technically weren't even allowed to swim off the boat at anchor. Early on, desperate to get the kids some exercise, we took the dinghy to an isolated beach.

The Gendarme came with guns and megaphones to enforce our isolation. The next day, a mini aircraft carrier arrived and military control was implemented on the island. Hurricane season arrived while we were still in lockdown, ramping up the stress. We provisioned to head to sea if a hurricane approached. Stateless, the last resort plan was to drift at sea, waiting out the season.

I studied the weather manically. Months passed. Hurricanes became imminent. The outlook dire. Then Grenada saved us. They let 1,200 stranded boats in despite their borders being completely shut. A tiny, poor country was saving us when my own affluent country was blocking its citizens. This hit home hard. We sailed three days nonstop to Grenada.

Too late in the season, we faced terrible weather, experiencing multiple frontal systems, winds of 30 to 40 plus knots. And at one point, three tornadic water spouts closed in around us while the gooseneck bolt on the boom vibrated loose. Two more weeks of quarantine, then freedom after four months restricted to the boat.

NOAA then issued a hurricane warning with a track map directly over us. We scrambled to prepare and tied to the mangroves. Thankfully, it fizzled out and passed just south of us. As time went by, we became forgotten citizens. Freedom to transact issues began to arise. We had been living in Canada for the three years prior on global expert visas.

Canada had also locked us out. It remained open to citizens and permanent residents, but not to work visa holders. Our Canadian bank cards expired, and we needed to be physically in Canada to activate new ones. Subsequently, our online banking account was suspended for suspicious activity. Again, we were required to go into a branch to remedy, which was impossible.

Our Australian bank access also became restricted. After roaming overseas for too long, our Australian phone SIMs expired, and we lost access to our two-factor authentication numbers needed for access to our bank accounts there. To obtain a new SIM, we needed to provide government-approved ID and activate from within Australia.

Again, the familiar response was, "Come into the bank and we can sort this out." Loss of freedom of movement essentially led to a loss of freedom to transact. Fortunately, we had access to family who could help us out, and the bank agreed, after much pleading over the phone, to accept a phone number of a family member for two-factor authentication.

But the lesson was clear. Without freedom to transact, you have very limited options to sustain life. The Australian government had placed a Level 4 travel ban on the entire world for its citizens, previously reserved only for war zones. This immediately rendered both our travel and health insurance policies void due to exemption clauses for travel to Level 4 areas.

The Panama Canal then shut to vessels under 80 feet, and so began two often stressful years at sea, 18,000 kilometers from home, reliant on the benevolence of small foreign countries to provide the very shelter that our own country refused to render. In this crazy chapter of our lives, we faced numerous challenges, yet savored incredible family experiences.

Cancelled by the stress, we entered a heightened state of existence, ultimately transforming it into the most extraordinary time of our lives. Navigating through immense technical and geopolitical intricacies, we journeyed using little more than wind across 15 countries and territories during the pandemic. With the absence of cruise ships and flights, the Caribbean's remote tranquility echoed the serenity of the 1950s.

Sailing into endless sunsets, dolphins playfully surfed our bows awake as the stars emerged in the evening sky. We saw numerous volcanic islands materialize on the horizon and explored untouched jungles and secluded waterfalls. We spent time with the kids, wildlife spotting for monkeys, iguanas, bird colonies, exploring volcanic landscapes, relaxing in hot springs, swimming and diving over the reef with turtles and schools of fish, just enjoying the sea and each other as we watched the kids grow up.

Endless hours at the beach, meeting other stranded families from all over the world with vastly different backgrounds but ultimately a shared story, a common experience to bond us together. We ran our own renewable power systems, solar and wind, into a lithium bank. We made our own water via a small desalination unit, caught our own fish, drank rum punch, and watched the green flash from more remote beaches than one could expect to see in tens of lifetimes.

Not all rose is obviously. The flip side was the challenges of raising a baby girl and two boys, including doing homeschool in a confined space. Coming up to speed under duress as landlubbers with the realities of sailing, navigation, weather routing, and all boat systems. Constantly working on the seemingly infinite list of boat maintenance jobs.

Endless time spent provisioning and looking for parts, fitting in the time to work remotely to keep us alive financially. Dragging anchor in midnight squalls, having other boats drag around you. Enduring sleep deprivation from anchor alarms and a breastfeeding infant, we somehow persevered on multi-day sails without access to additional crew, testing our limits.

We then faced extended lockdowns and quarantines everywhere upon arrival. The mental angst of that initial 91 days of lockdown in the hurricane belt, hoping that borders would open somewhere for Australian flagged vessels before the hurricane season started, be with me for life. Certainly the hardest thing we have done as a family.

The 18 months that followed was a sublimely beautiful, yet at times crushingly difficult. In hindsight, the most meaningful time in our lives. When we finally made it home to Australia after two years floating on 40 feet of fiberglass, it felt like an alternate reality. People at home stressing about the smallest of issues and arguing over trivial things.

The Australia I left, a nation of prolific travelers, was now scared of foreigners in a way I had never thought possible in my life. Something had been lost in the population here. They had their own lockdown trauma. In a bizarre way, being stranded at sea liberated us from it.

Forged by circumstance, intermeshed into the physical world around us, our preconceived boundaries of what was possible in life, physically and emotionally, had been removed. Yet in other ways, it led to a kind of PTSD reintegrating into society. Everyone took for granted simple freedoms like freedom of movement, freedom to always be able to return to your home country, and freedom to transact.

We knew firsthand how fragile it all was. I held back releasing ocean work or even this story as I needed time to process the experience. After two years of being back on land, I created the Intrepid Ocean series to attempt to work through these thoughts and emotions. The experience highlighted the fragility of the global norms and governance systems we take for granted.

Now, after three years back in Australia, we are heading back to our boat in the Caribbean to finish what we started. The kids are now four, eight, and ten. So, here we are again on the precipice, about to jump off, to find out who we truly are as individuals, as a family.

The essay I have just read to you was a Twitter post by an account named Intrepid. The handle is @Intrepid_P. Intrepid also answered a couple of questions that were asked by listeners that I think are really useful and illuminating. Angie says, "I can't believe Australia locked you out. Was there a specific reason?

My cousin had been in America for over 10 years and it took a while, but he flew back into Australia after maybe five months into the pandemic." Intrepid responds, "It's complex, but essentially, initially, in the first six to eight months, there were no flights out of where we were.

The airport simply shut on the small island nations. By the time they relaxed and opened up, the quotas into Australia had been reduced again and were as low as $3,000 per week, with over 50,000 Australians registered with DFAT and probably four times not registered wanting to come home. This drove flight prices to astronomical levels, peaked at $80,000 per person from London.

Not, obviously, an option for five of us to spend a quarter of a million flying home. The reality was Australia kept granting exemptions for critical business trips out of Australia and most of the $3,000 cap was taken by high-priced business travel, for whom paying $50,000 was not an issue.

Start contrast to the New Zealand system, where they ran a lottery ticket system to come home rather than let the market decide who could pay to come home. We finally managed to book flights via American Airlines via Los Angeles after like 18 months, and even then, just before we flew, they halved the quota again after we booked.

American Airlines, to meet this, then simply cancelled every second flight and rebooked people six down the track. We, by chance, survived this cull. The quota at those levels meant that each flight from LA to Sydney only had 32 passengers on it. This was not sustainable, and so six weeks later, Americans stopped flying completely Australia and just flew freight.

On arrival home, after having all been vaccinated and having two PCR tests in a week of flying and one on arrival, we then had to pay $5,500 to quarantine for two weeks on arrival, same building as the athletes returning from Tokyo Olympics. For the $5,500, we got a small hotel room with two beds for five people.

All up, it cost us close to $50,000 to get home, even after waiting 18 months since the initial lockdown. Another question that was asked. Wow, truly impressive story. Some questions. One, how did you access internet? Two, were you using crypto in the Caribbean as a currency since your bank cards were cut?

And three, same boat for this new voyage? One, we would try and get local SIMs from each country we went to. Internet, however, was difficult in most places. I had a 4G router with external aerials so we could point them across the ocean and get service from land. This time we have Starlink, so it should be different.

Two, sadly, I was using crypto at the time but could not use it directly. The islands were very much cash economy, but I could use a portal in Australia, then a WISEcard to withdraw local cash. And three, yes, same boat. We left it in Aruba when we finally came home.

We did not trust the flights would actually leave, so could not risk having nowhere to return to by selling it. Fluke asked a question. Wow, this is wild. Being Australian, we were warned to return home immediately or be locked out of the country. Was there no ability to leave your boat and just fly back when that call came out?

Intrepid responds, no. France went into lockdown prior to Australia when Italy had its first outbreaks of the pandemic. Basically, the airport in St. Martin shut, even to medical evacuations. We had no physical options to fly home for about eight months. By then, it was financially prohibitive. Flights from London peaked at $80,000 per person at the worst of it.

Essentially, the quota of 3,000 people was taken up by business travelers who got an exemption to fly out of Australia. This is why the 50,000 stranded people registered with DFAT essentially stayed at that level for most of the pandemic which is probably four times that in reality. This is in stark contrast to New Zealand who ran the quota as a lottery, and then you bought the flights rather than let airlines use the market to decide who got in.

Even at the end, after almost two years, when we finally got flights out of Los Angeles, which still cost $50,000 for the family, Skomo halved the quota one last time, and American Airlines simply had to cut every second flight and rebooked eight months down the track. They luckily made that cut and came home to then pay $5,500 in quarantine fees despite having been vaccinated and having three PCR tests that week.

Six weeks later, American basically stopped flying as they were limited to something like 32 people per jet under the new rules and only flew freight. To be honest, that was one of the most frustrating things coming home. People had this view like, "We gave you four weeks to come home." And it's like, "FFS, there is no way a lot of people could come home." The French side of St.

Martin does not even have an international airport, and they closed the border to the Dutch side, so even if it remained open, there would have been no way to cross. So I'll stop with all the questions, although I thought it was interesting to talk about. I want you to think about that story this week as you consider your own situation.

Now, most of us, of course, are never going to face something like that. Probably it'll be a few more decades before another pandemic comes, maybe 50 years, who knows. And a global pandemic is a unique risk. It's the only thing that I can come up with that results in a global closure of borders and such all at the exact same time.

It's the only thing that I know that has that globally simultaneous impact. There are many other things that can affect regions, but the only thing I've ever come up with that has that simultaneous global impact is a pandemic. But it's good to stress test and think about, well, what happens in terms of how do you prepare for that?

And what you see is the importance of being prepared to be isolated. That leads to physical preparedness. But more importantly in this case, you see the importance of backup plans from a documentary perspective. This particular writer, Intrepid, you would think that he was pretty well squared away. He had a great passport from a great country, a Tier A passport, had the ability to go and live and work in Canada.

That's a good start. And yet found himself completely trapped because it wasn't good enough. And I tell you what, the pandemic was definitely motivating to me and a whole lot of other people to make sure you don't only have one residence, but you have multiple countries that you can legally go and live in.

In most cases, I think that tourists are treated better in countries than residents are. But when it comes to access to a country, residents are treated ineffably better than tourists. So you want to have high quality residencies and you want to have multiple citizenships, if at all possible. Multiple places where you can go and live and be treated like a citizen.

And the basic value of citizenship is unrestricted right to enter a country. How Australia got around with restricting that right is something that is interesting to look at. They didn't restrict it legally. They used the market to enforce their restrictions. And so they said, "Oh, Australian citizens can come back." But they highly limited the entrance of people.

And then because Australia is such a remote destination, they said, "You can come back. And of course, you'll do two weeks of quarantine in an expensive hotel camp that we're going to set up for you." But then they used the market to limit the flow of people. And so it was quite an interesting workaround where they forbade their citizens' entrance for a time.

And then they used the market conditions to keep them low. So Australians, that should affect you dramatically in terms of how your government handled that. Anyway, I don't have anything more to say. I just want to share that interesting story. I'll link it in the show notes published on Twitter two days ago.

In closing, make sure to go. And if you're interested in thinking about and planning for solutions and talking with me about this, etc., go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical. Sign up for my event that I'm running in Panama City, Panama in January 2024, expatmoney.com/radical. Sign up today. With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season.

Because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices. And with a money-back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite. Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store, Kroger brand has all your favorite things. Ralph's. Fresh for Everyone. (upbeat music)