Stella Overboardvideo
1 Year Living on a Sailboat… The Good, The Bad & Was It Worth It?
9 May 2026 · 21 min · 24K views · Kapuas, Indonesia
Couple embraces on sailboat deck under tropical sky
What this video covers
Camille and Jesse mark one year living aboard Stella, a previously offshore-equipped sailboat they bought in Langkawi, Malaysia with no prior sailing experience and have since sailed through three countries, reaching Indonesia.▶ 0:00 The previous owner had delivered Stella from Denmark to Malaysia, so the boat arrived with a watermaker, life raft, and basic offshore gear; Camille and Jesse added solar, davits, and jerry cans to go fully off-grid.▶ 7:09 Their first month was lost to a gearbox failure made worse by a local mechanic, forcing them to do most of the repair themselves.▶ 3:09 Other incidents included a toilet blowout on the first sail, a dragging anchor in strengthening wind, a fishing net fouling the propeller requiring Jesse to dive while underway, and a stuck furler that sent Camille up the mast for the first time.▶ 3:44 The watermaker failed and required a full bleed in a rolly anchorage by headlamp.▶ 14:18 Sailing remote Indonesian waters with no nearby services, they troubleshoot fuel-line air bubbles, jammed halyards, and engine cutouts — including one that forced them to sail into an anchorage and drop the anchor under sail.▶ 11:52 Their core lesson: doing all maintenance and repairs themselves built the diagnostic confidence needed to handle failures far from help.▶ 11:31
More from Stella Overboard
From Stella Overboard — see the channel’s boat, crew, and every analysed video.