Over 100 sailing channels with more than 1000 subscribers, with from months to decades of content, and some abandoned sailing channels were surveyed for general trends (nothing is 100 percent and nothing is zero). This is not meant to be offensive but it is meant to be interesting.
The general types of YouTube sailing channels:
- Soup to going nuts REFIT bow to stern, keel to mast tip on the hard
- Soup to freaking nuts REFIT bow to stern, keel to mast tip while cruising
- I’m building a boat from scratch
- I’m 20 and have no clue but will figure it out (influencers in search of stuff)
- I’m ~50 and retired/self employed (this is for my kids and grandkids)
- I’m ~50 and unemployed (you can make money doing this)
- BTDT wow YouTube (been sailing for more years than some have been alive)
- Vanlife/tiny house/backpacker to sailboat
- I’m a diver, kite boarder, wind surfer, singer, health nut but call it a sailing channel because boat
- I’m not a broker but here is a bunch of boat tours that make me look like a broker
- I’m not Casey Niestat but want to be (lifestyle, drinking, boozing, dating, socializing influence want to be)
Content creators make episodes about:
- The boat tour (deck, living area, engine bay)
- Who are we (him, her, maybe kids)
- The how we got started (scrimped, saved, sold the couch)
- What is a blue water boat (yeesh)
- This or that brand of boat (positive negative bias depends on click bait of thumbnail)
- What are the kinds of sailboats (Sloop, cutter, ketch, usually forget yawls, cats, and junks)
- What are the types of hulls (planning, full displacement, partial displacement, not foiling)
- Unique local flora/fauna/terrain
- Local tourist sites
- First sail on the “new” boat
- The financing of the boat
- The boat in in high, medium, low wind/sea conditions
- The broker experience
- Lightning on a boat
- Difference between catamarans and monohulls (supporting your way)
- Differences in hull material (steel, aluminum, fiberglass, carbon fiber while ignoring fero cement)
Sailing channels feature do it yourself and how to episodes on:
- To provision for long passages (take the labels off, food plan)
- Buy/sell a boat (survey, broker, etc.)
- Single hand multi days (autopilot, fatigue, windvane)
- Install satellite communications
- Choose the correct batteries (Bias dependent on level of sponsorship of choice)
- Set up tracking solutions (Spot, Inreach, Iridium Go, YB)
- Anchor is inlets/counter currents/bad situations (scope, bridle, side bridle, Bahama mooring)
- Survive a hurricane (Mangroves, get out of the way, tie down)
- Wilderness medicine and injury triage at sea
- Navigate across an ocean (routes, tools, techniques)
- Set up a sail plan
- Select a prop
- Figure out weather (LuckyGrib to PredicWind)
- Clear into a country
- Get water and fuel while cruising
- Polish fuel/remove water/diesel bug
- Do an oil change
- Replace an alternator belt
- Do foreign country grocery shopping
- Do the budget
- Stay fit (showing b-roll of working out usually in “tight” clothes)
- Maintain winches
- Rebed deck equipment
- Rebed a hatch
- Choose, paint, fix, reseal boat anti-fouling
- Fix a through hull
- Replace batteries
- Varnish/epoxy/paint deck/caprail/hatch
- Service cutlass bearing
- Service windlass
- Replace an impeller, clear a water strainer
- Repair a head (Toilet)
- Clean transducer/knot log (must include water geyser)
Another category is the install/refurbish of current equipment like:
- Water pump
- Bilge pump
- Solar (serial, parallel, shading, flexible, high performance)
- Wind generator (noise, size, issues, neighbors in anchorage)
- Watermaker
- Standing and running rigging (dynema, rod, wire, size, etc)
- Replacement anchor and chain (bonus for stainless discussion)
Location
Cruising grounds (Mediterranean, Caribbean, Bahamas, South Pacific, Nordic, East/West/Gulf USA, Sea of Cortez, Chesapeake “ICW”, Solnet )
Big Rocks (Atlantic crossing, Pacific Crossing, Cape Horn, Cape Good Hope, Cape Hatteras, Indian Ocean, Panama Canal, Galapagos, Suez Canal, ICW)
The common narrative/talking shot catalog:
- Companion way to helm on mono, seat to helm on cat
- Helm towards companionway
- Nav station to seatee
- The high/low of person sleeping in bunk
- Pan of flat sea/roiling sea from helm
- Selfy stick shot back to relaxing in cockpit
- Neck down shot of cooking in galley or on grill
- From water of anchor rode to bow
- Talking head at saloon seatee
- Talking head in cockpit
- Back deck to dinghy
- Selfy stick on dock with boat in background
- Off boat road talk
- Off boat trail talk
- Off boat car talk
The creator visual as content b-roll must haves (bonus for voice over):
- Turtles eating grass
- Dolphins in the bow wake
- Sunset/sunrise time lapse of boat in bay
- Filtered depiction of clouds/weather approaching
- Depth of field of winch in slow motion
- Wake of boat at speed (slow motion to regular motion)
- Block moving in seaway
- Stuff swinging below deck
- Girl/Guy in bathing suit under waterfall (extra credit slow motion)
- Any fish being caught/landed (do not show fish being cleaned, requisite shark got it pic)
- Drone shot (reveal “land to sea and boat”, Top gun “fly by the boat”, Where I am “terrain features”, travel by map “entrance to bay and path how we got here”, Tourists are us “shore line fly by”)
- Chilling beers on table (depth of field)
- Chilling sailors on trampolines (sunset, under sail)
- Dinghy in rough seas (bonus for jiggling girl bits)
- Showers on the deck in a bikini (really? They aren’t in bikini’s)
The various patterns of how YouTube couples seem to be categorized:
- She/he former television/acting/model/singer/porn career and partner aspiring cinematographer on a sailboat
- She/he successful businessperson with partner eye candy
- Couples of significant age difference making it work
- The handy person with the aspiring documentarian partner
- Social media consultant with sailing partner
- Captain(s) of industry go sailing with partner
The various top forms of criticism you see by the audience
- I don’t like those kids channels (people in prime child rearing years, in gorgeous paradises, in close proximity to each other for long periods of time, with clothing optional, and nobody around? What did you expect puppies?)
- Click bait (thumbnail does not match content)
- All they have are chicks in bikinis (In the tropics… duh)
- I can only handle so much pretty blue water
- This isn’t reality why would I watch it
- To much lifestyle not enough sailing
- Couch sailors negatively commenting on obvious principles to anybody with owner level sea miles.
Story Lines that have been done so rarely as to not count
- Fighting a real fire on your boat
- A gasoline/propane explosion
- Handling docking disasters
- Exhaustion
- Death on a crossing
What you’ll never likely see (the taboos of YouTube)
- Discussion of nudity on boats related to comfort and the reality of the tropics (it’s called a Bimini top for a reason)
- Discussion of sex between cruisers and the single life
- Any discussion of LGBTQ+ within the cruising community
- Interracial couples especially pick-ups in the islands
- Drugs or recreational activities involving them
- People who are homeless on boat and hazards to everybody else
- The ignored safety rules (ever see a YouTuber closing through hulls for a crossing?)
- Until recently where were/are the black sailing couples?
- The reality of holding tanks not the requisite going sailing to empty video.
- The large naked German/French/Brazilian guy checking his anchor
- The open warfare between cruisers and watermen (crab pots, lobster pots, and you cut it away!)