Page - 182 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

182 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Nataša Rogelja | The sea: place of ultimate freedom? Introduction crete, the port of Agios Nikolaos. Winter. A retired finnish couple sit in their shining white cockpit and watch the sea, pretending to read. Bob, a redundant worker in his late fifties is drinking and watching the sea, without pretending. Pablo, a strong man in his thirties, a free- lancer and a sailor, is that bit closer to the sky, high above the sea, holding the mast with his right hand, a screwdriver in his left while loudly reporting his observations to his assistant on the deck far below. Tom and Prudence are in Agios Nikolaos for the first time. Last year, they sailed up the Red Sea to Turkey, this year they sailed to crete. They’ve just taken apart their desalinator. They bought it a long time ago in Australia. Desalinators are expensive but impor- tant, so they bought a second-hand one. Water is expensive in the caribbean, ocean passages are long, a desalinator is a must-have. Their plan for tomorrow is the helm. The boat is impor- tant. The boat protects the sailors. “have you realised yet what it means to be a liveaboard? It is about boat repairing in exotic places!”, they joke and laugh with their piercing voices. The man high above the marina agrees with them. The man with the whisky in his hand agrees as well. One day, 15 years ago, when they were in their twenties, Tom and Prudence went to a library. They didn’t want to spend their life working for corporations; paying back their loans; living in a house that would be way too big for them. They went through all the books on sea, travel and adventure. One book, written by a french sailor, got their attention. The man set off single- handed around the world in 1968 to distance himself from the consumerism and environmental destruction of the West. Later, he wrote a book about it. “The coast is a great whore”, he wrote. “If he did it then, we can do it now!” They decided and set off. […] The clear blue winter sky begins to glow in the orange colours of a sunset. People slowly disappear beneath the decks their boats. Later on, in the evening, I was invited to Tom and Prudence’s boat. I explained about the research and started with my interview questions. At the end of the evening Tom asked me sarcastically: “But how on earth will you compare all these stories and people. We have nothing in common except the sea.” from the fieldwork diary (December, 2011) My involvement in this research was two-faceted. In the two years before the research com- menced, I was involved in this lifestyle as an insider. As an underemployed anthropologist, I was in a precarious work position as freelance journalist living and traveling on a boat, while also fulfilling my dream of spending time with my children while traveling. for the following two years however, I was working on an anthropological project registered at the European Scientific foundation, studying people mainly from Europe, USA, canada, New Zealand and Australia, who live and travel on sailboats in Greece and Turkey. Over these two years, the fieldwork (six months each year) was conducted in several locations: 1. Ionian Greece (areas around Igoumenitsa, Lefkas, and the town of Preveza); 2. the corinthian Gulf (the island of Trizonia) and Peloponnesus; 3. crete; 4. the Marmaris region in southern Turkey; and 5. the island of Rhodes. The foundational data for this article was gathered through in-depth, open- ended interviews with people who have been living part-time or full-time on sailing boats in the last 20 years (with a few exceptions of those who had been living on boats from as early as the 1970s). The ethnographic interviews emphasised my interlocutors’ personal backgrounds, the reasons for their mobile lifestyle at sea, their relation to the sea, their travel itineraries and post-migration experiences, and were conducted with total of 67 individuals. After the research, I furthermore maintained contact with 5 families through e-mail, following their blogs, or with