In this episode, we talk with Stephen Ladd, author of Three Years in a 12-Foot Boat, about the adventure and experience of travelling on a boat.
On the Show Today You’ll Learn:
Links & Resources
Website: www.stephen-ladd.com
The Why We Travel Podcast website: https://whywetravel.net/
Visit our website at https://whywetravel.net/
Visit our website at https://whywetravel.net/
In this episode, we talk with Stephen Ladd, author of Three Years in a 12-Foot Boat, about the adventure and experience of travelling on a boat.
On the Show Today You’ll Learn:
Links & Resources
Website: www.stephen-ladd.com
The Why We Travel Podcast website: https://whywetravel.net/
Visit our website at https://whywetravel.net/
Visit our website at https://whywetravel.net/
Claus Lauter: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Why We Travel Podcast. Today's episode will take us on water. So we are talking about adventures and experience traveling on a boat. Therefore, I have a very special guest with me. Stephen Ladd. Stephen Ladd is an American city planner. Wa Ima Morris. He is the author of the three years in a 12 foot boat in which he rodee and sailed two South America and back in a tiny boat on his own design. In 2009, he teamed up with his now wife, Virginia to sail to Argentina and Beck largely, we are eight major source American rivers in a 21 footer. So he has a vast experience on being a boat, traveling the world, , on water.
And we wanna dive into this topic a little bit more today. So, hello Steven. How are you today?
Stephen Ladd: I'm doing fine. Klauss, how are you?
Claus Lauter: I'm very well, thank you. Steven. Tell me a little bit, what is your first, , memory in becoming a traveler?
Stephen Ladd: Well, my first memory actually was at the age of two when I was traveling in the Eastern United States with my parents first memory was of the Lincoln Memorial. It's where. Abraham Lincoln is sitting on kind of like a big throne inside of a dark chamber. It was very dramatic to me, so I remember that.
I guess you'd call that traveling. We were on, a vacation.. Touring the East coast.
Claus Lauter: Okay. And one, did the travel bot really hit you?
Stephen Ladd: I don't remember not not having it. When you're a little kid, you only travel when your parents travel, I guess. But as soon as it was conceivable, I traveled on my own.
Claus Lauter: Okay, cool. , now you have done a couple of years traveling around the world. So you basically went
up
and down North America in boats. You actually built your own boat. Tell me a little bit about how. Did you get to that idea?
Stephen Ladd: so as soon as I graduated from high school, I traveled for a year. myself in Europe, Asia, and Africa. That was hitchhiking, taking buses and, , to a fair amount. It was motorcycling. It began with motorcycling and ended with motorcycling in between, it was other modes of transport. And, that was a traumatic experience, which I have, written about, and, but it involved a lot of really crazy stuff. Getting caught up as a refugee in a war between India and Pakistan, and being in prison in a Moroccan jail for a month. I came back home and, started a conventional career going to college and so forth, but the travel bug was always there and I kept it at bay by ongoing.
Every weekend adventures. A lot of cross country ski. Backpacking back, country skiing trips in the mountains, , and other forms , of localized travel, localized adventures. But then, that in my mid thirties is when I started building the boat. And plant the voyage that, culminated , in my three years in a 12 foot boat, , story.
That was, , a very nice cycle, the beginning of just extreme wantless finally being satisfied. So very, you euphoric. And it was like , a novel, supposed to have it beginning in the middle and an end. It had a crux phase of it, very, very difficult and dangerous at times.
but then it, came to a conclusion I got all the way back home, nobody thought I could. And a boat that is so light that , it's so small, it's intended to pull it up onto the beach at night. It's like a canoe or a kayak you can pull up on the beach at night to get out of the water.
And that's the boat that I traveled to, , 2000 America through South America. And then, Through the Caribbean so then that was all satisfied. I've had two major trips now in my life. That one that I was 18, the one when I was 36, and then I met who's now my wife, and it was really her instigation start , the latest voyage.
The one that , the newer book is, she knew I would have it in me. And so she sort of left it as an alternative that she wanted one now and did I want to come. And so it was her idea. But once I got started with her, it was just great. And , those two that are books are written about them there.
, they're the same in that they're about very small boats. Small boats, just big enough for the task at hand. When I was by myself, I could be in a 12 foot boat with my wife. I had to be in a 21 foot boat to do the same things with the same level of accommodation, which is very low, , just, virtually no electronics or refrigeration or mechanical.
Assistance That isn't quite true. The second book has a motor part of the time. But , in the first story, I was alone in battling with my loneliness and fear and so forth. And in the later voyage I was with my wife, therefore not as lonely and not so fearful because you have somebody else to buck you up, , you have the courage of two instead of the fear of one.
Claus Lauter: Okay. Now, just to give an expression for people who do not know what 12 feet is, , that's just a three meter 65, so that's what a average car has on length. So , it's very little. Now obviously with that you have a, I reckon, a very minimalistic lifestyle. How did that impact your travel?
Stephen Ladd: , it was really integral to it. I always am a minimal. At home. not an extreme minimalist, but it's a matter of, choice and I just enjoy the challenge of small things, having a less powerful motorcycle.
Just a little one , riding in a bicycle a lot. so the idea of being in a small boat was really not a negative. It's kind of fun. with a small boat, you just get a pat, If nothing else works, you just get a paddle you don't have to , go down to the engine room and figure out why the compressor's not working today, or something like that.
You know, you just get a paddle, if you want to look ahead, you just turn on your flashlight. You don't. Anything complicated so anyway, you can just get around. You're, close to the water, You're right, in the action. go right up the little creeks. Go into the little bays.
You're very intimate with, , where our water and land come together. It's not blue water sailing. The blue water sailors, they want to be out on the ocean. You know, they want to go across the Pacific Ocean , in three months I'll be in Tahiti or something like that. Well, this is totally different.
It's like the wide crossings are, , necessities that can't be avoided and are unpleasant, but you make it. And, , but what you really like is when you. Wherever you're gonna go, and you've got a little rip stream amount, a creek mouth or a little lagoon, or a mangrove opening or a mangrove swamp, that's when it's nice assuming you can, , combat the insects.
Of course.
Claus Lauter: We're talking about rivers here. Give me a bit of an idea what the trip route was. So just for our listeners that I get an idea, you obviously did not necessarily go, as you said on Blue Waters along the coastline. You went inlands, you went on Rivers. What was the route?
Stephen Ladd: I'll refer now to the, newer book, The five Year Voyage, that is a rendering of our boat this kind of situation did happen and that is that we were in this picture, we're in a small stream where for some reason having to go up this stream, I am pushing it and she is on the bow with a pole polling.
And , so it gives you idea of the scale. And these are shallow draft boats. The boat is only drawing about six inches. Down in the water so you can go until the water is, , no longer at least thinks, or six inches deep. On that trip, it has some overlap with my earlier travel. We found ourselves upon getting down into South America, on the coast of Venezuela.
You have to understand that this, , involves portaging. A portage is where you move a boat across land to get to someplace where you can put it in the water again. And these portages are not human powered. They're not putting the boat on our heads. We're having to figure out different ways to transport the boat.
sometimes free. , Negotiate a payment and, , that boat's 21 feet long. It weighs about, 700 pounds plus our gear was probably another 300 pounds. So it's not trivial, but it's also doable. That's not that hard really to move, , something of that size. It might be a pickup truck, it might be a car that has a boat trailer, use their boat trailer.
and in a couple cases it was, , just actually on top of some. Cab of a, vehicle you find people who are willing to try something a little bit different, to make a little money. half the time we didn't have to pay anything at anyway. So you get into South America and there are these major river systems in South America, and I suppose all continents have major river, but South America has major big rivers, you know, has the biggest rivers in the world and.
So there's ways to connect your travels here , the first major connection was one that isn't a geographical oddity. It allowed us to go right up one river and then go down and, , into a whole different drainage basin. , that's due to the fact that the oroco and the. Amazon, or at least tributaries thereof.
You have to understand that any one river system , is many, many different branches. But these two river basins, , in one of their two extremities, they meet and actually are the same thing. And so we were able to come up this one and then down this one. So by going up, the oroco would come into the Amazon on a backdoor route of the Amazon where the countries of Venezuela, Columbia, and Brazil intersect.
So now we're going. It's the real Negro and get into the main stem of the Amazon. We continue down the Amazon and we're going to southerly direction throughout. And then we come to the mouth of the Madera. Well, Madera is a very large tributary as well, and we went up it, so we're still going south upstream.
We went to Bolivia that way cuz Boli. Thought of as an anden country? Well, most of it is, at least half of it is actually in the Amazon. And so we come into Bolivia going up this stream, these individual legs take months each, We get to the top of that stream to where, like I said, it's only like a foot deep and that's as far as you can go.
And, , we ranged a portage to, , the next Ranger River system on this case, you have to go across a little. I think it was a 200 mile, , truck trip and it got to a different drainage basin. This is the Paraguay River, and we promptly, , have a major, challenge ahead of us, which is that the first several hundred miles was through the world's biggest swamp, the Grosso Pannel.
It's only swamp for hundreds of miles. , , and you're going through the middle of it and there's no maps of it. we sort of mapped it ourselves, as we always did. we used, , Google satellite imagery, like on Google Earth and, , We use certain tools to create maps that could then be visible on our handheld gps.
And so we were able to figure out when there's forks and meanders and curly cues, you know which one to take and when the stream you're on flows into some big lake, figure out where on the other side of this lake to continue on the river, we were able to figure that out.
Largely thanks to my wife. She's good at that sort of thing. Anyway, so that got us to the Paraguay, The Paraguay, , feeds into the parr, which flows into the real deal, La Plata, which is, for BU of arteries. Argentina is, and that's like half the way we're gone as far as we can go Then, the boy just halfway over because there's no further rivers going south and then began the reverse.
But that's a different set of rivers. So I'll take a pause here in case you have any questions.
Claus Lauter: Oh, that's absolutely for me, a true adventure travel. What you did there, obviously you are getting there in areas where there is no travelers, no tourists, no infrastructure, so. How's your experience and you did it basically twice and first question you probably go get the most is wasn't that dangerous?
So from your perspective, how did it feel? Did you get in dangerous situations?
Stephen Ladd: We're always trying to survive, but it was dangerous. And sometimes, it's remarked to me that I've taken too many chances in my life. Maybe I have, but I'm still here. So it's worked out. There are very many scary, scary, scary, scary moments.
we had some really frightening moments, but we always figured out and maybe we were lucky we survived.
Claus Lauter: Okay. How were the encounters, the locals? They were probably surprised coming to people coming on a boat all the way down.
Stephen Ladd: , this sort of a. Traveler, the sort of the visitor is never something they have experienced. We never ran into people who said, Oh yeah, another boater coming down the river. Huh? No. It was always like, what? or in one case, I remember we were in a certain parts of South America and we kept hearing, Oh, , about two years ago, this other guy came down the river.
He was in a kayak. He came down the river too, So , there had been one other person we heard about that. There's people always are interested in indigenous people. They're the main population and to the extent there is a population, a lot of these areas are extremely unpopulated.
They were times when we went for one week traveling on the river without seeing another human being. That's how unpopulated it is. And wherever there is population tends to be on the water. If you go into the jungle and. Further in, you have less chance of seeing people in there. But there's a lot of beautiful nature still left there.
, especially in the Rio Negro area, which was our favorite. That's the major tributary of the Amazon, which has a. They call it black water it's a water that's, , clear, , but with tannic acid, it's translucent, but it has a tannic coloring and that tannic acid prevents the, , growth of mosquitoes.
So it's a very healthy climate.
Claus Lauter: Okay. No mosquitoes is obviously very helpful both of these travels were year long travel, so three years, five years. How do you financially plan for such an
Stephen Ladd: Just savings. It's not difficult To arrange for your finances in the 1990 to 93 voyage, it was more difficult because that was the days of travelers' checks. in remote places, they don't necessarily take travelers' checks, and so you're scrambling a little bit there sometimes.
So anyway, the source of the money savings, that's never been an issue for us cuz , we're savers anyway, We're minimalist, Which also kind of means we're savers. We've had decent jobs, but we don't blow it all on cars and stuff, therefore we have the money. The question is how you got that money, accessible to you when you're in timbuck to figure to be speaking.
a differences between the early 90. And the latter voyage, which was in the later two thousands, which is that, , there's still difficulties , in the latter voyage too. those, , took place only in certain countries. Certain countries are, I'd just have to say repressive as to financial arrangements.
If you're willing to, Do what they want you to do, fine. But , it's gonna cost you a lot more than the black market will allow you to do. There's always a question whether to participate in the black market and to, weave your way through these little nets they put. There to catch you, either prohibit you from doing what you wanna do or hassle you to the point where you just give up or to make you pay , these artificially high bank rates so as to get more money from exterior sources.
There were challenges that way too, but , we did pretty well there. Once you figure those things out, you can stretch your dollars pretty well.
Claus Lauter: Okay. Now the. Around after traveling for a long time, coming home, settling in brackets and normal life. Was that a challenge as well?
Stephen Ladd: No, not really. When you travel through saturation, you're ready to be back home. , it's a good feeling. , we have, as you can see in the background of my image, , some of the, , pictures of the. Flags we accumulated, , these flags are in the order of the countries.
We got a flag for most of the countries, not all of them. So we put our flags, these are the flags that you're not really required to fly them on your boat, but it's kind of a tradition that you do. , it's a courtesy. These are all the courtesy flags of all the countries. and we put 'em up on the wall and it looks nice.
And, we live with our wonderful.
Claus Lauter: Yeah. If somebody nowadays would want to do a trip like this or a similar trip, what would be your recommendation? How to get started with that?
Stephen Ladd: there's a lot of technical stuff about what kind of boat they have and what, how to handle a small boat. And there's a lot of technical stuff about. Your gear choices and your bureaucratic choices. But to me the central point is not the mode of transport, but that you do travel in a, saturated way, in a way into the deep.
Middle of the middle, and really getting away from it all, especially for young people. I think that, , the younger you are, the better it is for you to travel. It's like the idea of the, , aborigines who go on a walkabout or North Native Americans would call it a spirit quest.
It pertains to all of us. We should all do that. We should take it seriously. I mean, it's fun. It can be fun, , but it should be taken seriously. It's something that is really a good thing to do. I mean, obviously it's only a choice for people with some affluence, I guess, to have, that , amount of savings and take that timeline on their lives.
But to me that should be a major priority for anybody. , if they can swing it, do something like that.
Claus Lauter: So where can people find out more about you? I understand you have written some books about your travels.
Stephen Ladd: Yeah, my books are, , anywhere fine books are sold, you can get 'em through your local bookstore or through Amazon.
Claus Lauter: Okay. And where can people find more about you? Do you have a website. or Instagram?
Stephen Ladd: If you just. Take the correct spelling of my name, which is S t e p h e N, but then you put a dash before my last name, l a d d. Then , that plus the www at the beginning and the.com at the end. That's my website. I have an off the website. , help yourself, , any of your listeners.
Other writings that you will find there? , I write mostly on traveling subjects and other adventures besides what's in my book, but I have writings on other topics as well. Boating, for example.
Claus Lauter: Okay, I will put the link in the show notes and it just one click away. Steven, thanks so much. I think you had an awesome trip there. , I wish more people would do that and get really into the hint lens of countries and explore countries from that end. And instead of only going to the most touristy places in a country, it gives you complete different experience.
Thanks so much for your time.
Stephen Ladd: Okay. Thank you, Klaus. Have a good one.
Claus Lauter: You too.