This couple is renovating the sailboat home of their dreams
Alison and Armani dream of island hopping in the Caribbean on their boat, Bon Adventure
Video Transcript
ALISON HARTZLER: Welcome to Bon Adventure!
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ARMANI KAISER: This is our boat.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALISON HARTZLER: I'm Alison Hartzler.
ARMANI KAISER: And I am Armani Kaiser, and we are in Long Beach, California. So we wanted to make the shift because when I first moved out here to America, we were temporarily staying with Alison's parents and we wanted our own space. But we didn't want to necessarily rent. And so when we were trying to consider the options of how to move on to our next step here in America, we wanted to make sure that we owned something.
We wanted to have something that where we put money into it, we could possibly see it back again. And I like the idea of fixing things up. You make something your own. You learn new skills, and then you hopefully are investing in it. The length is 41 feet with an overall length of 55 feet. That's the spar length.
We roughly have 400 square feet of space inside. And that's not accounting for, say, the outdoor seating and our actual deck space. When we first got the boat, this was-- so it had sat for 15 years, and--
ALISON HARTZLER: It was a garage.
ARMANI KAISER: It was terrible.
ALISON HARTZLER: This vinyl is the same vinyl that was in the boat from the '70s. Well, it needs a little love. Probably one of the last things we're going to do is refinish our couch.
ARMANI KAISER: Yeah. We've done pretty much a complete refit. And one of the first things was doing the galley, which is a kitchen on a boat.
ALISON HARTZLER: Because we had to be able to eat while we were doing our project.
ARMANI KAISER: The sink we made a chopping board. So rather than have a chopping board out, it fits into the sink, and you can extend your counter space. So you lift it up. Everything's built in, and everything has multiple uses. So the idea is to increase the efficiency of everything. You can't just have a single use.
ALISON HARTZLER: We're also in a unique situation where we're not just trying to make a boat. We're also trying to make a livable space for us.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Underneath, this is where our trash goes. There is a lot of adjustments we had to figure out when we transitioned from a house to a sailboat. We live here. So if something goes wrong, no matter what it is, you have to figure out how to fix it. And we do, every time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ARMANI KAISER: So when guests come to stay, they have their own bathroom. We've almost finished this. And the idea is that everything has to be completely sealed-- waterproof-- but it should be fine when it's fully sealed and varnished.
ALISON HARTZLER: One of my favorite parts of our boat is our coffee and tea maker. Obviously, we have to have tea, because a British man lives here. But the whole thing can pull out. So this is what we use pretty much every single day, multiple times a day. Now we can go into our bedroom.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So this used to be our navigation station, which was covered in termites. So we got rid of that whole thing and extended this bathroom. And then with this leftover space, we made shelves here. And in here, this is where we have our clothes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think one thing that boat has taught us is that we don't really want to live a conventional lifestyle in the sense of nine-to-five job where you have to go into the office. And also, there's the romanticized view of a sailboat, where you can take it out and just go anchor somewhere along the coast for the weekend.
ARMANI KAISER: We just can't wait to travel.
ALISON HARTZLER: One of our dreams with the boat is to sail it to the Caribbean and go island hopping and work remotely.
ARMANI KAISER: Imagine just working on the beach, drinking your margarita. Don't tell our employer we're drinking margaritas, but that's what we'll be doing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALISON HARTZLER: Thanks for checking out our home.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
