Last night I came across a really good article on NY Times about the practice of exchanging work to travel the world with sailors.   Sometimes I come across articles and websites that make me go “Whoa, this is awesome!” and this is one of those “Whoa” articles. 

According to Sailing the Caribbean, the Frugal Way, a great way to travel the Caribbean (and the world) is to search for sailors looking for crew members.  In exchange for your work you get to sail around the Caribbean for free.  There is no need to have experience sailing because you can work as a deckhand or a cook.   There are sailors out there who will take unskilled people and teach them the basics about sailing.  If you can’t find one of these then an alternative will be to work and pay a small fee to the boat as the author Matt Gross did.  He paid $55 a day to work a few hours for the boat S.V. Illusion and had a great low-cost vacation.  Another option in addition to the S.V. Illusion is the  Karaka.  The Karaka’s  shared expenses total about $150 a week.

 Here are some sites that connect sailors with a crew. 

• CrewRecruit.com
• Crewfinders.com
• GlobalCrewNetwork.com
• FindaCrew.com
• FloatPlan.com
• CrewFile.com
• WorkOnABoat.com
• WorkOnAYacht.com