An Ontario couple sold everything to sail the world – here’s how it’s going

One year ago, an Ontario couple left their house and sold everything they own to sail the world.

One year ago, an Ontario couple left their house and sold everything they own to sail the world.

“It was really kind of scary, backing out for the very first time,” Steve Easson said, recalling the departure from Lake Ontario with his partner of a decade, Ben Roth, on Sept. 16, 2022.

“We had no idea what we were getting into,” he told CTV News Toronto from Grenada.

The idea was planted six or seven years before they set sail from their hometown harbour in Hamilton. Easson, who had been working as a pilot for 20 years, arrived home and said, “Hey Ben, do you want to buy a sailboat?”

His colleagues had raved about the easy transition from flying to sailing, so on a whim – despite Roth telling him not to impulse buy a boat – Easson did just that and started puttering around Lake Ontario.

It was when the pandemic hit that they began considering how this hobby could become a full-time operation.

“We found a boat we could live on and then it all happened really, really fast,” Easson said. They named it “Oh Caribou” and launched a social media account to chronicle their adventures.