Transcript:
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (00:00):
Yeah, I’m sailing around the world on a 27 foot sailboat.
Ross Borden (00:03):
Are you like a lifelong sailor? I get the feeling you really know. No, no,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (00:07):
No, no, no. I just started
Ross Borden (00:11):
What? You bought a 27 foot sailboat and then you told your friends and family. I’m leaving Seattle. I’m sailing around the world by myself. How did people react to that?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (00:22):
Oh, my poor mother, when I bought the boat, I told everyone, Hey, I’m quitting my job. I’m going to sail around the world. And everyone was like, ha ha, LOL. You don’t know how to sail? And I said, yeah, I Googled it. It’ll be okay.
Ross Borden (00:37):
You have a couple million followers. When were you like, holy s**t, there’s a lot of people interested in this adventure.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (00:43):
There was never any goal to do social media. And then I went from 300 followers to a hundred thousand in five days.
Ross Borden (00:50):
This is creator, the podcast from Matador Network. I’m your host Ross Borden, and I believe creators are the future of all global advertising. So join me as I sit down with top creators to hear about how they got started, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the tips you need to become a full-time creator. Alright, welcome back to another episode of Creator the podcast. Today we have Luke Hartley, AKA sailing songbird on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Luke is sailing around the world. I’ve been falling his adventures absolutely insane. A lot of these videos going crazy viral from I think the mainland of the US all the way to South Pacific. I know you stopped in Tonga, now you just arrived in New Zealand. Luke, how the hell are you? Tell us where you are and introduce yourself.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (01:44):
Thank you so much for having me, Ross. Yeah, so yeah, my name’s, my real name’s Luke, but on the internet I go by sailing songbird and yeah, I’m sailing around the world on a 27 foot sailboat.
Ross Borden (01:59):
So when did you start leave port for the beginning of the journey?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (02:05):
Yeah, so I left the dock in Seattle, my home dock that I did a big refit of songbird right after I bought her, did a big, big refit and then left the doc on October 7th, 2023. A date that is forever seared in my memory.
Ross Borden (02:26):
Are you like a lifelong sailor? I get the feeling you really No, no,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (02:30):
No, no, no, no. I just started sailing what had never been on a boat before. Do you want the whole story?
Ross Borden (02:42):
Yeah, I want the whole story.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (02:43):
We’ve got time. Yeah, we’ve got time. We’ve
Ross Borden (02:44):
Got time, dude. Let’s get the whole story.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (02:46):
The story is I was a middle school music teacher teaching in Seattle, and my classroom didn’t have any windows in it, and that was hard for me. I was getting to school in the dark and leaving in the dark and was generally not very happy. I had this dream of being a music teacher, and when I finally got there and achieved the dream, I got my first contract, got my first classroom, my own students. I did the dream and then I had this existential crisis that I had a job that it’d be respectable to retire from, and that freaked me out. I was like, am I just going to be in this windowless room for 40 years and then I retire and die? Obviously there’s plenty more that happens, but this was the thought that I was having as a 23-year-old,
(03:38):
Or I guess a 24-year-old. And so I was kind of scrolling aimlessly on YouTube one day and came across this video of a sailboat that had been sailing around the world for 10 years, and I watched it cover to cover. I watched it front to back and I was fascinated. I was immediately fascinated. Like I said, I’d never really been on a boat before, never been sailing, but the self-sufficiency that I saw in this sailor as he explained his systems and the life he was explaining, I just got super obsessed with it and went down like a rabbit hole of YouTube.
Ross Borden (04:18):
You learned sailing through YouTube. It is crazy
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (04:21):
Because I was like, I straight up Googled how to sail. I remember Googling how to sail.
Ross Borden (04:27):
I was watching some of your videos with my wife the other day, and I was like, this guy clearly grew up on boats sailing from the time he could walk. I was sure that your parents sailed. I made up this whole story in my mind that you’ve been sailing all your life and you’re telling me you learned to sail by watching YouTube videos and until you decide to quit your teaching job, you had never been on a sailboat in a real sailing capacity.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (04:53):
Well, so I don’t know. We did a big vacation when I was 12 and we went to Hawaii and we did a catamaran excursion one day and that’s
Ross Borden (05:01):
It. Right, but that’s not, you didn’t sail to Hawaii from
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (05:04):
California, from Seattle? No, I just remember there being dolphins, so that’s literally the only time I’d been on a boat. But yeah, I mean I googled how to sail. Then after watching so many YouTube videos, the sailors would get into a situation and then I would be like, oh, they should reef the main to a double reef. Then the next moment they’re like, okay, we need to reef to a double reef. And I’m like, oh, I’m starting to pick this up. Okay.
Ross Borden (05:32):
You’re like, I know how to sail. I’m a professional sailor just from watching videos. That’s incredible.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (05:37):
Well, yeah, and then I was substituting in real life in Seattle. I was working as a sub and I decided the pole and the call to the sea was so strong that I flew down to Mexico for two months and hitchhiked around Mexico on sailboats, which is really easy to do. And
Ross Borden (06:00):
So wait, walk me through that. So did you fly to Mexico or you hitchhiked to Mexico on a sailboat?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (06:06):
So I flew to La Paz. No, I flew to Puerto Vallarta. No where? Yeah, I flew to Puerto De Vallarta and there was a boat that I had met on Facebook that was picking up crew, and the captain agreed to have me aboard. It was just me and the captain. This isn’t a big expedition boat, it’s just me and another cruiser. And I sailed with him for a week or two, and then I was ready to move on to a different boat to see what other boats were like. So I hopped on the paddleboard and introduced myself to all the other boats in the anchorage. And yeah, after sailing on five different boats, I got back to Seattle and I was like, time to buy a boat and yeah, quit my job, bought a boat and after a seven month refit in the yard in Seattle, I did a week of day sailing on my own boat and then launched on the
Ross Borden (06:56):
Circumnavigation. So you felt the call of the sea, you bought a boat, a 27 foot sailboat, and then you told your friends and family, I’m leaving Seattle, I’m sailing around the world by myself. How did people react to that?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (07:10):
Oh, my poor mother. So when I bought the boat, the goal was always to sail around the world. There was never a smaller goal. It was always like I’m buying a boat to sail around the world. And so when I bought the boat, I told everyone, Hey, I’m quitting my job, I’m going to sail around the world. And everyone was like, ha ha, LOL. Good luck. You don’t know how to sail. And I said, yeah, I Googled it, it’ll be okay. I know this sounds crazy, but I hope that this story shows people that sailing around the world with the modern tech that we have nowadays, it’s really not that it looks way harder than it is, it looks way harder than it is.
Ross Borden (08:00):
I think what most people, myself included, think about sailing from here to the west coast of the United States to Tonga, New Zealand. In my mind, the storm, the storm that is so big, you can’t get away from it. What would freak me out? Yeah, something could break. But yeah, with modern technology, you could typically call for help. It might take a really long time for help to get you, but for those of us who are not sailors, tell us about how you can confidently go into the Pacific Ocean where you’re a thousand miles from any land at all and not have a risk of getting caught up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (08:41):
I think, I mean to start at the beginning, the ocean’s called the Pacific Ocean, which is Latin for peace. I mean, Latin is pox, but the Pacific was named the Pacific by the first European explorers because it’s a very calm ocean. You don’t really get big storms in the middle of the ocean. We think of storms because we live on land and land disrupts the oceans kind of balance. You get a lot of onshore offshore wind when land comes up because the temperature differential between ocean and land. When you’re in the middle of the ocean a thousand miles from shore, literally, that’s the safest place for a boat to be because you’re a thousand miles
Ross Borden (09:30):
From That’s really interesting,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (09:32):
Which are dangerous. Rocks are very dangerous, and when you’re in the tropical latitudes, the weather’s so stable. It’s so stable. You don’t get big freak storms. I mean, I suppose you get freak storms, but you also get, there could be a tornado tornado that rolls through Atlanta tomorrow. I mean, it’s safer weather patterns than on land,
Ross Borden (09:54):
Surely. Yeah, that’s interesting. I think the first video that I just stopped doing, what I stopped the scroll when I saw you and discovered you and started following was you on your paddleboard and you were like, yeah, I’m out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, more than a thousand miles from any landmass, and
(10:16):
Oh, I’m on my paddleboard and I lost my sailboat. I was like, oh, just kidding. It’s right back there, but it’s really far behind you. And in my mind, again, probably ignorant thing to think, given what you just said, but I was like, what if the wind does come up or there’s a current all of a sudden and you lose your sail board, then you’re literally standing on a paddleboard and can’t catch up to your boat and you’re in the middle of the ocean by yourself, which I think is the most terrifying reality that you could ever come upon. But what you’re saying is when it’s calm like that, it’s just calm and you can just confidently paddleboard around and there’s no danger of you losing your boat at all.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (10:56):
That video. Yeah, I get a lot of questions about that video. My most viewed video on social media, it’s done 70 million views across platforms.
Ross Borden (11:05):
I believe it.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (11:07):
So I had been adrift for 10 days. I hadn’t had a breath of wind in 10 days. Anytime the wind dies on the ocean, I go paddle boarding. It’s like one of my favorite things to do. I always paddleboard in front of my boat so that if wind came up, which it doesn’t, and also you can see wind on the water, the texture of the water changes. So if a big gust of wind was going to come through, I’d see it like a mile away
Ross Borden (11:39):
And
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (11:39):
Then be
Ross Borden (11:39):
Able to take you, start motoring back,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (11:42):
Get
Ross Borden (11:42):
Right
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (11:42):
Back to additionally, if wind hits the boat, sailboats have keels, and because of that, they can only move forward. They can’t move backwards, they can’t move sideways, they can only move forward. So if a big gust of wind came up, the boat would just glide up to me and I’d hop on. If there’s current currents on the ocean are miles wide, I’d just drift with the boat. People think that that was the craziest, most dangerous stunt, and it cracks me up because it was a lake out there.
Ross Borden (12:13):
I mean, I figured you knew what you were doing. You were very calm out there. You’re just chilling. And it blew my mind. It did look like you were in a calm placid lake with, like you said, not a breath of wind. And in fact, you’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (12:30):
That zone of ocean that I was in is called the doldrums. And for any listener that doesn’t understand, hasn’t heard that word before, around the equator, there’s a belt of windless ocean, and that’s just because of macro ocean and wind patterns. And so there’s on average a 60 to a hundred mile zone where there’s just no wind along the equator. And when I was crossing the Pacific, I had to cross the equator and I didn’t have an engine. I had no engine. And I launched with the knowledge of not having an engine, and I drifted around the drans for two weeks. It took me two weeks to get a hundred miles. And typically after, wait,
Ross Borden (13:11):
So for the whole trip, you’ve had no engine. You’ve had no engine in your sailboat for the
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (13:15):
Whole trip. I had an engine from Seattle to Mexico, and then when I got to Mexico, my engine broke, and then I rebuilt the engine and then it broke in a new way, which was much worse. And I went, screw it. I don’t have the time, energy, or frankly funds to fix this engine. And hurricane season was coming into Mexico and it broke a week before hurricane season was going to start. And so I was like, well, I guess I do the Pacific Ocean without an engine. That’s the way that this is going to go. And so launched without an engine and I did Mexico to New Zealand all without power.
Ross Borden (14:05):
That is unbelievable. So, okay, we covered the sailing part, at least for now. So I understand where you’re coming from on this adventure from a sailing perspective, when did you start the platform? You have a couple million followers across TikTok and Instagram. When were you like, holy shit, there’s a lot of people interested in this adventure, and
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (14:28):
Tell
Ross Borden (14:28):
Me about your sort of journey as a creator.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (14:30):
I’d be happy to. It’s kind of an interesting journey. I never was, there was never any goal to do social media. My plan was to live on as few dollars as possible and I’d spearfish for most of my meals and to just live off of being given rice by because, sorry. When I anchor in these big, very popular anchoring next to million dollar boats, and it’s very common in the culture to go and say hi and go and share a meal, and then they realize, boats realize I have so little, and then they send me home with kilos of rice and kilos cans of food. I get given so much food all the time by boats that are really well
Ross Borden (15:16):
Stock. That’s awesome.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (15:17):
And so I was planning on just kind of going from place to place and picking up hard manual work in yards in boatyards and such. But then
Ross Borden (15:28):
When
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (15:28):
I was think was on month four of Mexico, I posted a video on social media on Instagram, and I had 300 followers on Instagram, just friends from college and such, just it was a normal account. And then I went from 300 followers to a hundred thousand in five days.
Ross Borden (15:48):
Wow. Was that from one video that went viral or was it just like,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (15:51):
Yeah, it was my first real video that I tried. The longer story is I went to a van festival in Mexico where a bunch of Americans and Canadians drive down from the US and rave in the desert for a week.
(16:06):
And I had made all these friends, all these young people, because typically sailors are in their mid a hundred and twenties. And so I was hanging out with all these young people, which was awesome. And I realized on day two or three, all my friends were taking videos of everything. I’m like, why are you guys taking so many photos and videos? And I realized they’re all influencers, they’re all van life influencers. And then they kind of taught me the tricks to the trade and they were like, yeah, if you tried, you’d do well. And so I was like, okay, I’ll try. So yeah, then made it.
Ross Borden (16:40):
And you did. Well, five days later,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (16:42):
A hundred thousand. Yeah, five days later I’m surpassing my friends and I’m like, oh, I’m sorry guys. I didn’t mean to go this hard.
Ross Borden (16:50):
Whoops. What was the video that got your start? Were you basically announcing you’re like, my engine is gone and I’m saying, fuck it, I’m going to go anyway, I’m sailing to New Zealand by myself.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (17:01):
Yeah, I still had an engine at that point, but it was just me being like, Hey, my name’s Luke. And last year I was a middle school music teacher and I decided to quit my job and sold what little I had and bought this little boat, and in two months I’m going to cross the Pacific and I hope you guys enjoy following along in my adventures. I’m saying this to 300 people on my Instagram. But then, yeah, I mean I think that video now is, I dunno, something like 30 million views across platforms or something,
Ross Borden (17:29):
I’m not
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (17:29):
Quite sure on that video. And so then it was like, oh, I guess I’m an influencer now. It was just straight away. I guess this is what I do because within three weeks, I mean that single video brought me to 200,000. And then after I crossed the Pacific, I mean, yeah, and then that paddleboarding video, I gained another 300,000 followers from that one video.
Ross Borden (17:55):
Maybe a question you get a lot too, do you use starlink or how do you have service in the middle of the ocean?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (18:03):
Yeah, so I use starlink. I picked up a starlink unit in Mexico then right at the end of my time in Mexico. But on my Pacific passage, my starlink dish fell overboard on day 19. And so then I didn’t have any internet or any way to communicate with the outside world because my sat phone stopped working. So from day 19 to day 49, I totally, I had no communications, no comms, and frankly, had a wonderful time. It was great to just kind of check out of Planet Earth from for a month. I mean, yeah, I eventually saw a boat. I saw this little light in the distance on day 45 of my Pacific passage, and I called them over the radio and I said, hello, is there anyone out there? And this Kiwi 90 foot sailing vessel responded, and I gave them my sister’s number and asked that they give her a call to let her know that I was alive.
Ross Borden (19:04):
Yeah, that you’re okay. Oh my God, that’s crazy.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (19:07):
And then four days later, I was able to get an internet connection on shore and gave my sister’s always the first person I call. I want to, because if there’s ever any bad news, if someone’s died or there’s a new war, I’d want to hear from my sister because yeah, I mean, I’ve received hard news when I’ve been in really remote spots. I learned of my grandmother’s passing through sat phone right before my sat phone went out, and
Ross Borden (19:37):
Then
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (19:37):
You’re kind of just sitting in the middle of the ocean thinking about your family and about what’s important to you and about what life’s all about, and you’re on a little boat. So it’s a crazy,
Ross Borden (19:48):
It’s got to be a really unique experience being, I mean, who can say that they’ve been completely cut off for a full month, almost no one.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (19:56):
Yeah. When’s the last time you didn’t touch the internet for a month?
Ross Borden (19:59):
Yeah, I mean, that’s a really unique human experience that brought you probably back to something almost no one’s experienced in a very long time. That’s actually pretty cool.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (20:08):
Yeah, I mean, it was a beautiful experience, honestly. I did a lot of writing, a lot of, I was super creative and feeling a lot of inspiration.
Ross Borden (20:17):
Has the community and people leaving you comments and asking you questions, has that been a cool sense of belonging when you’re on this solo adventure across the ocean? What is that like?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (20:32):
Yeah, so I have a degree in education. I’m an educator at heart, and the hardest thing about leaving my teaching position in Seattle is that when you’re a teacher and you’re grinding hard every day for your students and going to school every day, it’s hard work. It’s really hard work, especially at the school I was at. You have a sense that you’re doing really honorable work. It’s hard work, but it’s honorable work and leaving to go sailing. I struggled with it because it felt like a very selfish thing to do. It felt like a selfish thing to do, but I knew I needed to do it. I knew I needed to do it. And so the social media has been a blessing for me first and foremost, because I feel like I’m helping people. What was this kind of relatively selfish thing to do peace out from the world and go and sail and go and hang out in the middle of the ocean. All of a sudden, I have this big classroom with a couple million folks on it, and I get some really beautiful messages from people that describe the impact that my videos made on them.
(21:51):
I think of this one message that I got every week. I think about it all the time. It’s a woman that is in Scotland, and she messaged me saying, she messaged me saying, my husband died last week, and I’ve been stricken with grief and haven’t been able to get out of bed. And I have three young boys in the house, and I haven’t really been able to be there for them because I’ve been just struggling with grief so much and I haven’t been able to get out of bed. And so not only did my boys lose their father, they’re kind of missing a mother right now too. And I was doomed scrolling in bed and then came across your video, like a video of yours, and then watched every single video you’ve ever made, and the zeal for life that you have, the way that your perspective on life, the inspiration that you carry throughout your adventures gave me, I mean, yeah, she said it gave me the strength to get up, and she was like, I just went to the grocery store and bought ingredients for a meal, and I want you to know that my boys are having a home cooked meal from their mother because of you tonight.
Ross Borden (23:00):
Wow, man, that’s incredible.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (23:04):
That is more valuable to me than any follower count getting messages like that.
Ross Borden (23:10):
Yeah, I mean, it is really inspiring. I think I can see in the comments that people leave on your content. You inspire people for different reasons. You do have a really positive take. Even I found when things go wrong, you kind of laugh it off when a lot of people would be imploding mentally. They would be like, oh my God, this puts me in a dangerous situation, or this is going to be such an inconvenience, or how am I going to solve this problem? So is that just sort of the mentality you have to have when you’re sailing across the ocean by yourself, or have you always had that sort of positive spin when something bad happens?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (23:51):
I think I’ve always sort of had a little bit of a positive spin, but I kind of live by the worry once, suffer twice mentality.
(24:01):
What sailing has taught me, I mean, sailing and cruising will take everything you have no matter what you have, and you get really comfortable in living in chaos and living in an environment where you have no control. And so then when things happen to me that I don’t have any control over, it’s par for the course. It’s what I signed up for. And so yeah, I don’t really, all of the chaos, all of the chaos of sailing and the dangerous situations that I find myself, it’s just kind of part of it. It’s just part of it, and I’m comfortable in that
Ross Borden (24:52):
Space about, I imagine you’ve gotten really good at shooting yourself. What do you use to shoot, is it Insta 360 or do you have little tripod on your phone or it’s all on the
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (25:05):
Phone? Yeah, just my iPhone. I have an iPhone and then I had a GoPro that I could clip onto different, I had a claw mount that I could clip onto different parts of the boat, which was super important for me to be able to set up a camera and then have me changing a sale or something. That was super
Ross Borden (25:24):
Important
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (25:25):
In Tahiti, I picked up an Insta 360 camera just because it adds a lot of production value to the YouTube to be able to walk around deck with this 360 camera. It really is the best camera that can kind of show you what’s going on on the boat. But I just received two other GoPros, so now I have three. Now I have three GoPros. It is
Ross Borden (25:53):
Nice. You’ve got a GoPro sponsorship yet?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (25:56):
I have, yeah. GoPro sent me the new GoPro 13, the legit kit, and it’s got all these lenses. I’m super impressed with the camera that they sent me. Yeah, the GoPro 13. I’m excited to figure out all the different things it can do with all the different lenses and such.
Ross Borden (26:18):
So tell us about YouTube. You said you’re focusing more on YouTube and long form content, which I hear a lot from different creators, but tell us about where you’re at on YouTube and if we go on your YouTube channel, what’s the sort of difference in the content that we can expect?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (26:35):
So the YouTube channel is where I put all my long, obviously, it’s where I put all my long form content. I want the YouTube channel to be the full story, the full story of what I’m doing. While the Instagram and TikTok are just kind of windows into the windows into the grander journey, it’s been difficult because I find that I have a real affinity for editing and creating Instagram reels and less of an affinity for those long form videos. Partly it’s because for me to edit a reel, it takes me like an hour and to put out a half hour YouTube video takes 40 hours. I mean, it’s a huge amount of time and I’m busy trying not to sync, and I’m busy sailing and just doing it, and so I don’t really have enough time to sit down and edit for YouTube, which has been my struggle.
Ross Borden (27:39):
I saw at some point you said there was a video where you’re like, Hey, I really haven’t posted in a long time, and I have all this footage, but I’ve had an editor’s block and I just haven’t been able to motivate myself to edit. I imagine that’s something that a lot of creators experience, even if they’re not sailing a sailboat across the ocean. But why do you feel like that happened to you? Why did you have that block, and then how’d you get out of it?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (28:06):
Yeah. I didn’t post a single video for two months while I was sailing through the South Pacific, but I was continuing to film everything, but then for some reason, just the action of sitting down and hopping on cap cut and pasting all that footage together, I had some really hard edits of me scuba diving that frankly it took me hours and I just had this mental block on sitting down and doing that. I’m not sure that I’ve gleaned much wisdom from that experience to pass on other than I was shocked. I made the post about struggling. I was really struggling with my mental health. It’s been an incredibly lonely year for me. I struggle with loneliness a huge amount. People are like, oh, you’re solo sailor sailing across the ocean. Do you get lonely? I’m like, yes, desperately lonely. It’s the worst part about it. But I was struggling with my mental health and struggling with it all, and I was like, what if it wasn’t calculated? I just took my phone out and started talking, and then I had about three minutes of a little spiel, and that’s the limit for reel. So I uploaded it and it blew up this video about me talking about my mental health. I think I’ve got like 3000 comments or something like that, which is a huge amount of comments.
(29:35):
And that kind of solidarity to hear from so many people about their own struggles then motivated me. It made me feel like people cared again after I’d been away for so long.
Ross Borden (29:49):
And then you got back into it then that gave you the push to start editing all that footage and start posting again?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (29:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Just speaking. I mean, I think the reason why my social media has been successful is just because I talk to the camera very frankly. I talk very, I don’t really strategize around what content’s going to do best. I just,
Ross Borden (30:12):
You’re just living. You’re just out there sailing.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (30:15):
I’m busy
Ross Borden (30:16):
Selling all the world’s, some of the most real content, most raw content. I saw you catch a fish. I was watching that with my son. He’s obsessed with fish, and I could see you catch a tuna, and then I found another one of you catching, you had two huge mahi on, and you had one mahi in the boat, and you’re like, alright, you know what I’m going to do? The hook already came out, the mahi is in the boat, and you’re like, I’m going to let this guy go and I’m going to eat the other one. And you bring up the other one and it pops off the line. And now you went from two mahi to no mahi, and I was like,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (30:49):
It was devastating.
Ross Borden (30:50):
Oh my God. And as usual, you’re like, you kind of laughed it off like, ah, I couldn’t have eaten ’em anyway. They were too big. But it is really that one hurt. Some of the most that had to hurt. Those are so
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (31:02):
Delicious. I needed the protein as well at that point in passage.
Ross Borden (31:07):
Do you stock up? I saw you talking about eating ramen. What is your staple if you don’t catch fish, what are you eating every day?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (31:14):
I eat a lot of pasta. The problem with pasta is that it’s really water intensive and water is the most valuable resource I have on songbird. Water is only used for drinking. I do all my dishes, all my hygiene in salt, in the salt. And so water is super precious to me. And so when I make pasta water, I mean, they say make it salty as the sea. That’s too salty. Don’t use salt water to just make pasta. It’s too much salt. I do half and half. I’ll do half sea seawater, half salt, half fresh water. So yeah, I eat a lot of pasta when eggs are cheap. I eat a lot of eggs here in New Zealand, they’re cheap in Mexico, they’re incredibly cheap in the South Pacific, they’re dummy expensive. Each egg can be like a buck 50 instead of
Ross Borden (32:09):
Crazy
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (32:11):
60.
Ross Borden (32:12):
You had something about you covered 200 eggs in Vaseline. Can you tell us about that?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (32:17):
Yeah, I mean, I think it was, I could buy a pallet of 18 eggs for I think it was 36 pesos. So it was like two bucks, two or three bucks for 18 eggs. And so I got 200 of them and I covered them in Vaseline to assist in the seal of the shell because eggs go bad. When the yolk over time, the yolk drops in gravity, the gravity pulls the yolk down, and then when the yolk touches the shell, it then lets oxygen in and then it goes rotten. And so something the sailors do,
Ross Borden (32:54):
I did not know that
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (32:55):
Either. So you can either cover your eggs in Vaseline or you can flip them every couple days. And so when you flip the egg, then the yolk starts descending again, and then you
Ross Borden (33:11):
Coming the other way.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (33:13):
And so you keep the yolk in the center and then the eggs can last a very long time, especially if they’ve never been refrigerated. I have no idea why we refrigerate eggs in the us. It is bad practice doesn’t really do anything except make us feel like they’re safer, none of the rest. But
Ross Borden (33:32):
It’s the gravity. The gravity is the danger to
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (33:34):
Eggs. That’s really,
Ross Borden (33:36):
I did not know
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (33:36):
That. The refrigerates their
Ross Borden (33:36):
Eggs. Yeah. Yeah. I refrigerate my eggs apparently. Doing
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (33:41):
Your own thing. Well, as soon as you refrigerate your eggs, they have to be refrigerated forever. So in the us, don’t stop refrigerating your eggs because they get refrigerated on site. This didn’t mean
Ross Borden (33:52):
You can
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (33:53):
Turn this into an egg podcast, but
Ross Borden (33:55):
Forget sailing and being creator.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (33:57):
We’re talking about eggs. Eggs, here we go, what the people really need to know about.
Ross Borden (34:05):
So back to the overall journey and where you’re headed. One, I am curious, you are sailing across the ocean in a tiny sailboat, not necessarily the most ripe for brand partnerships, I got to say. So have any brands, you said GoPro sent you some of their new cameras. Have any brands reached out or have you done any brand partnerships with any major brands? You have, I mean, 2 million followers, a lot of followers and people are clearly very engaged in your content.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (34:37):
Yeah, it’s been much harder to monetize than I was anticipating. Yeah, it’s been much harder to monetize than I was anticipating. I’ve done two brand deals so far, which kind of funded this whole season for me. I did a deal with the Nature Conservancy, which is a environmental nonprofit, which they wanted me to come out as Pro Ocean. I was happy to do that. And the other one was for an AI music app called Suno, which I thought fit really well within me and what I do, because I was a music teacher and I genuinely think that app is really, really cool. I got a bunch of hate for that sponsorship just because people don’t like ai.
Ross Borden (35:20):
They were saying
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (35:21):
That
Ross Borden (35:21):
Very
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (35:22):
Polarizing, if I am using ai, I’m depriving a small artist from creating music. But then I was like, Hey, I’m a small artist and now I can generate my own high quality music for my own content for free easily.
Ross Borden (35:40):
Yeah, that’s a stretch that AI’s depriving a small artist. I would
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (35:44):
Disagree. I mean, I’m not ragging on them too hard. I mean, they have a point in that small composers like composers and song creators and beat writers, their industry is now, I mean, it can be done by ai and that really sucks for them. But then there’s other creators like me that now have, I can generate my own. I mean, I don’t have any budget for what I do, and so now I can generate high quality music for my content and who’s to say I’m more or less important to them or they’re less important as me as a creator. It’s just one of those things of, it’s a new tool that will put some people out of work and will benefit others.
Ross Borden (36:30):
Well, I think you’re going to get more brand partnerships going forward. I really think the content’s incredible. So tell us about your plans from here. You’re in New Zealand, how long are you going to be in New Zealand, and then where does the adventure take you next?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (36:43):
Yeah, so the way that the ocean works, the root for circumnavigation is pretty predetermined. I mean, you can go and do your own thing, but with the way that the macro wind, weather and current patterns go, it’s a pretty clear route for the circumnavigation. So I’m in no way innovating on the way I’m circumnavigating. I’m following the doctrine of the way to do it, at least for my first circumnavigation. I’ll do crazier stuff later on. I’m only 26, so I got plenty of time. And so yeah, I’m here for all cycling season. Cycling season ends on May 1st and May 1st, other than a heating micro weather patterns, I’ll be setting sail for Fiji. And then the next season is Fiji Vanuatu, and the Solomons going westward. And I’ll probably spend six months over the course of those three nations, and then I have a big choice. I can go through Indonesia or sail North to Micronesia and then hit the Philippines, maybe go even farther north to Japan.
Ross Borden (37:49):
And then
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (37:50):
I would sailed down through Southeast Asia, down around Singapore, up to Thailand, and then launch from Quet across the Indian Ocean, stopping in the Maldives for three months and Chagos Archipelago for one month. That’s like the visa maxes that I can get on those nations. And then I’ll hit Madagascar, cruise Madagascar for a season. Can’t wait for Madagascar round the Cape of Good Hope around South Africa. After seeing South Africa for a bit, I really want to see Namibia and the skeleton coast of Namibia. So I’ll hit Namibia after South Africa, and then I’ll cross the South Atlantic to Brazil and then sail north to the Caribbean and then hit Panama. And then after Panama, that’s the kind of five-year plan after Panama, I could either run it back and do it again or do something crazier, circumnavigate the Americas and go around Cape Horn and then up through the Northwest passage. But I’m not saying I’m going to do that because that’s a crazy undertaking. Much easier.
Ross Borden (38:51):
That’s more dangerous water. More.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (38:54):
Yeah, there’s a lot of icebergs sailing from Greenland to Alaska over top of Canada.
Ross Borden (39:02):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (39:03):
Yeah, that’s Arctic Circle sailing. This boat was built in Canada, and so the hull is insulated, and I have an alcohol, big alcohol heater on board, and so this boat is built for northern latitudes, and so I could do some pretty crazy arctic sailing in songbird. If I did that and it got really cold in songbird, I would end up killing the termites that are slowly kind of eating away at songbird that I picked up in Tonga. So I’m kind of tempted to just go get into the cold to
Ross Borden (39:34):
Just freeze ’em out
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (39:35):
To neutralize that threat. But yeah, I mean, I dunno. That’s like the five to seven year plan.
Ross Borden (39:43):
That’s a very solid five to seven year plan. So no shortage of content on the horizon for you? No,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (39:50):
No.
Ross Borden (39:51):
So Luke, one question before we go that I ask everyone, and this might get harder and harder as you go to all those incredible places over the next couple of years, if you had to constrain your life to three countries, your passport only worked in three countries, you had to stay in those three countries for the rest of your life, including the us. Yes. That is included. If it’s one of your three, what would the three countries be?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (40:17):
I mean, it’s interesting because since I’ve left sailing, I’ve sailed through the us, Mexico, French Polynesia, Tonga, and now New Zealand. So I only have five to choose from French Polynesia by far and large. That is number one. No question.
Ross Borden (40:36):
What was your favorite place in French Polynesia that you went to?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (40:39):
The Marques. The Marques
Ross Borden (40:40):
Marques.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (40:41):
It’s an incredibly remote archipelago in northeastern French Polynesia, and it is very, very untouched. I mean, the flights there are very expensive, so there’s very few tourists, and there’s people that are still living and kind of traditional Polynesian ways.
Ross Borden (41:04):
Okay, so French Polynesia of an easy number one French
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (41:07):
Polynesian, number one, no question. I love Mexico. Much of Mexico is, especially around the coasts, are kind of becoming America’s playground, which is a shame. But I love that country. I mean, Mexico’s gorgeous. I’ve spent months of my life, eight months of my life sailing around Mexico, and then I suppose I would say Tonga after that. Tonga was lovely, super nice people, beautiful water, good stock for spearfishing. I like the remote. I really liked the remote spots.
Ross Borden (41:47):
Were you in Tonga when the whale during the whale season, by chance?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (41:51):
Yeah, I got smashed in my face with my boom and almost died because I lost my concentration. I had a bunch of whales all around the boat, so I was looking at all these whales, and then, yeah, I got knocked out by my boom.
Ross Borden (42:06):
I’ve been on a couple trips there where you get to jump in and swim with just a dive mask with the humpback whales and the calves. Just unreal experience. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. Tonga is
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (42:17):
Incredible. They were beautiful. I see humpback whales all the time, though. There were lots of humpback whales in Mexico. I mean, yeah, lots of humpback whales in Tonga. I see whales are like squirrels.
Ross Borden (42:30):
Yeah, really, there’s so many.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (42:31):
My coolest kind of ocean story is the fact that on my 49 day passage from Mexico to the Marquesas during the last month of the passage, I had 20 to 40 mahi mahi under my boat, 24 7, like 20 in the day and 40 at night, and I was spearfishing them off the boat the whole way. So I survived on Mahi for that whole passage.
Ross Borden (42:56):
You were standing on the boat and spearfishing, or jumping in and using a spear
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (43:00):
Gun when I was in the doldrums and the boat wasn’t moving at all, I would jump overboard and spearfished them in the water and be in their environment. And then when the wind came back after those two weeks of drift, I realized I could just sit on my rail with my spear gun half in the water, and there’d be 30 of them swimming next to the boat, and I could choose one that was the right size, the right
Ross Borden (43:24):
Size, crazy.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (43:27):
I was going through a full mahi every two days, and I’d run out of Mahi and I’d be like, oh, let go get another one in 15 minutes later, I’d have
Ross Borden (43:34):
It’s mahi clock.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (43:36):
Yeah, it’s That’s incredible. Exactly. It’s great. And then for those who are just listening, won’t be able to see, but for those who are watching, I got a tattoo of a mahi mahi after I got to French Polynesia to kind of
Ross Borden (43:47):
Simplify the fact that, oh, with the Polynesian design, awesome. With the
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (43:50):
Mar design specifically
Ross Borden (43:53):
Marsian,
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (43:53):
Okay. Yeah. And so after living on this fish and surviving with this fish for 30 days, and I mean, I didn’t have internet. All I had to do, the only people I had to talk to were those fish. And so I feel very connected to the Mahi now.
Ross Borden (44:12):
Alright, and for those, in case anyone missed it, where can we find you? If you want to watch all your long form content on YouTube, your reels on Instagram and your tiktoks?
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (44:21):
Yeah, so Sailing Songbird is my name on everything. I have a website as well that you could check out. Sailing songbird.com. I sell merch, so if you want to pick up Songbird hoodie, you can go and do that on my website. But yeah, just saving songbird on Instagram and TikTok and on YouTube. I intentionally kept it very simple, very findable.
Ross Borden (44:43):
Luke, love chatting with you, man. It is been really, really fun conversation and wish you all the best. We’ll be following along on the adventures, and thanks for coming on the pod.
Luke “Sailing Songbird” Hartley (44:56):
Appreciate it, man. Yeah, it was a pleasure to
Ross Borden (44:57):
Be here. Creator, the podcast is produced by Matador Network. We are leading global travel publisher focused on travel and adventure. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe. Every week I interview a new top creator. New episodes are released every Tuesday on YouTube, apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts are found. Thanks for listening.