It was a league Colin MacRae could only dream of.
But after some bad luck, some good luck and a whole lot of initiative, the former superyacht engineer and Below Deck television star is living that life too.
The 38-year-old West Aucklander could not afford to buy such a vessel, so he went to Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, at the beginning of 2018, following hurricane Irma.
The hurricane left dozens of extensively damaged yachts, including SV Parlay — a 2012 Lagoon 450 catamaran.
The vessel was deemed a "constructive total loss" by its insurance company because it was so badly damaged.
Mr MacRae said one man’s bad luck was his good fortune.
Initially, he bought the four-cabin, four-head vessel with a navigation flybridge with the idea of doing charters around the Caribbean.
But first, he had to get it off the bottom of the harbour and repair the entire structure.
"We had to rebuild all of the engine, all of the wiring, everything. It was a major, major operation. It was a year and a-half of repairs.
"There were moments during the repair process that felt like it was never going to end."
While he and a couple of mates were fixing Parlay, they were being filmed at every step of the process, which turned out to be valuable footage.
"We ended up getting a videographer to put together a few episodes to put on YouTube, and within no time, we had a strong following.
"So the plan changed from doing surf charters, to becoming YouTubers with our own sailing channel — Parlay Revival — and here we are now sailing around the world, making videos every single Sunday for people to watch.
"We’re showing people the world, through our eyes and experiences.
"We’ve got 300,000 subscribers on YouTube and 500,000 on Instagram."
The subscribers paid for all the repairs and continuing maintenance, he said.
As soon as the vessel was up and running, he did two circumnavigations of the Caribbean before deciding to circumnavigate the globe.
And his first destination on the trip was, not surprisingly, New Zealand.
They arrived in November last year with a crew of eight, and they are now sailing around New Zealand, capturing the beauty of the country for their YouTube channel.
He said they would be in Dunedin until the next "weather window" opened up, when they would sail for Stewart Island and Fiordland.
"After that, we’re going to skip Australia and go up to the Fijian Islands and Tonga, and then do Asia and cross the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic."
"This is me living my dream, 1000%, and it’s all about inspiring other people to do that as well.
"It’s about spreading the word of making the most of life, because it’s pretty short."
