Traveling with Pets as a Nomad
Nomad Profile
Cory and his partner Corey, along with their cat Pineapple, are hard to resist. Cory’s inspiring story of resilience, plus their “learning to sail as we go” approach to adventure, translates into an exhilarating ride. Add in the kitty on a boat, and be still my beating heart.
Author of the Substack Radical Paths, his byline is “Teenage punk → Harvard PhD,” so you get the idea. And as much as I appreciate his self-reflection and thoughtfulness (each post carries a bit of angst), it’s his daily notes that stick with me. So inviting. So encouraging. So Cory! Give ‘em a read.
9 Fun Facts First
Name: Cory
Age Range: 30s
Nationality: United States
Nomadic Stance: Full-time
Last Corporate Job: Government Scientist
Current Job: Writer & Transition Coach
Favorite Country: Thailand
Next Stop: Guatemala
What do you like best about the nomad life? Autonomy
2 Questions
1) Living on a small sailboat (with your partner & cat Pineapple!) is a singular experience. What is your daily life like?
Daily life is waking up to my cat meowing for breakfast, just like she did back on land. Except we haven’t been on land for 9 months and counting. Pineapple doesn’t know or care that she lives on a 31-foot sailboat anchored somewhere in the Bahamas. She wants her bowl filled at 7am.
Some mornings that’s easy. The boat is still, the water is flat, and I make coffee without thinking about our unusual situation living on the water. Other mornings – like the last 2 days – making coffee means bracing against the galley wall with both hands so I don’t fall across the boat when the swells knock into us.
Strong southerly winds have us pinned in one of the few spots we could find that offered any protection at all. It’s enough to be safe, but not exactly comfortable.
Before starting liveaboard life, I knew the weather was powerful but I didn’t know it would dictate literally everything in my life. It sets the schedule. The mood. The priorities. The entire agenda. When it’s gnarly, you don’t sail. When it’s perfect, you drop everything and go. When it’s calm, you try to savor every moment. Our lives run on a logic that has nothing to do with the day of the week. Often I need to think for 20 seconds before I tell you “it’s Tuesday, maybe.” And we need to be OK with it.
In 40 weeks, we’ve spent exactly 5 nights at a marina. Every other night, we’ve been at anchor – a metal hook in the sand somewhere between North Carolina and the Crooked Islands in the Bahamas.
Our floating home swings gently (or not so gently) on the end of a chain. Sometimes when the winds and waves are especially strong, we need to stay on high alert in case the anchor doesn’t hold. We’ve weathered severe storms this way. But so far, our trusty anchor has always held.
On calm days we leave the boat at least once. Beach walks, new hikes, exploring whatever town is nearby – if there is one. Grocery runs are their own adventure, especially since fresh produce is rare in the remote islands. Everything is imported, so it’s very expensive. That means we’ve gotten creative with whatever’s available. We catch fish off the side of the boat. We cook what we have. We eat out only twice a month or so. Yet we have everything we need.
I work from the boat most every day – writing, posting, coaching clients remotely with my laptop and Starlink. Nine months ago I had no idea if any of this was possible. I had no clue what I’d do for money after our savings ran low. But last month we had our first net-positive month. $800 in the green, anchored off a tiny Bahamian island. It was proof of concept that this crazy life may be sustainable long-term.
We’ve sailed nearly 4,000 miles now – north to Rhode Island, south through Florida, into the Bahamas. Next stop is Guatemala, our 3rd country. We started with almost no sailing experience. We’re still learning. But the boat keeps moving, and so do we.
2) You are open about your past addiction and life struggles. How has your past prepared you for your life now?
When I was getting sober at 20, someone told me: “Keep going and you’ll suddenly realize you’ve built a life beyond your wildest dreams.”
I held onto that idea for years. It sounded like a cliche people say whether it’s true for me or not. I wasn’t sure I believed it.
I was a drug addict and alcoholic as a teenager. Newly out of the closet at a time when the world wasn’t giving me many positive signals about that. I had no real hope for my future. The version of me at 19 would not have predicted any of what came next.
But I got sober. And then something major shifted – in a way I only understand looking backward.
What I learned in recovery was that every hard thing I’d done could be applied to the next hard thing. The tools weren’t specific to staying sober. They transferred. Mentors helped me get sober, so I found mentors in school. I learned I could do hard things one day at a time, so that’s exactly how I approached college. Community college at 22, straight A’s in state school, then a full ride to Harvard for my PhD.
But I didn’t have some master plan. I just kept going and kept applying what I already knew.
By my mid-30s I was a Senior Biological Scientist for the federal government. If I would’ve stayed, I would’ve had a sweet pension. Colleagues I loved. Work that mattered.
And then I got the same intense curiosity I’d felt before – the one that begged to know: what else is possible?
My husband was up for the challenge. Pineapple, our nearly 18-year-old boat cat, wasn’t getting any younger. So we did what we’d always done: we looked at what we knew, pointed it at the dream, and started moving.
Sobriety didn’t just save my life. It taught me a specific way of living – one that turns out to be very good preparation for sailing the world with no fixed plan. You take it one day at a time. You do the next right thing. You trust that if you follow your values and keep going, it works out.
So far, it keeps working out.
The person who told me I’d build a life beyond my wildest dreams was right. I just didn’t know the wildest part would involve a cat meowing at me from a sailboat anchored in the Bahamas.
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Christened “Wander Woman” by National Geographic, Erin Michelson has traveled to 135 countries & all 7 continents. She is a professional speaker and author of the Nomad Life™ series of curated trips and travel guides, including the #1-ranked Explore the World with Nomads.
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