This short documentary looks at the current life of David Welsford, who decided to sail off in his little wooden boat – a yacht that he recovered from being scrapped. We see him on the sea, shopping for basics and doing some freelance work to bring in enough money to live the life he wants to live.
To put cards on the table I have to say that for some reason I have limited patience with backpackers and people who travel as rough as possible and bang-on about how this is the only way to travel etc. Perhaps that sentence tells you why I feel this way, because while some people are cool, my experiences have generally been of people who are not content to live their life but rather put down the experiences of others while lifting theirs up – like any culture, it has nice people and asshats, so I guess I am just unlucky. Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is because my back was immediately up when this film started and the acoustic indie soundtrack and lush images of a man doing just this all came on the screen. So I was just about the opposite of target audience.
Credit to the film then that it pulled me back from this point. The narration is probably the biggest thing that does it, because Welsford is a nice character to present and I enjoyed listening to him talk. On top of this the choice of subjects to be talked about is good – specifically money. Naturally I assume people who do this are well supported from home, so I will huffily think "okay for some" in a dismissive way, so it is good that the film counters such thoughts by talking about the reality of income in this situation – and again Welsford is likable in his approach to this. Personally such a life is not for me, but he tells us really well why it works for him – but not in a preachy or "better than you" way. Backpackers could learn from this.
The production itself is good. Of course the film has plenty of great images and they are well captured and edited together. The soundtrack sits uneasily with me; on one hand it does set the indie-freewheeling tone of the film with a very easy shorthand of the music selected, but on the other hand it is a very obvious way of doing that – so I liked that it worked but disliked it for the reasons that it worked. Generally the film lets Wlesford just be himself – talking in narration, sailing, living as he wants, and this is where the film is interesting. It may not be the life for everyone, but it is still an engaging film looking at why it is the one for him.