A ‘sea gypsy’ who has spent the last 13 years sailing around the world has told Ben Fogle that he makes his lifestyle work by not setting too many goals.
Rick Page, 53, from London, sold his horse training business in Spain and moved to Australia in 2007. There, he bought a boat for £39,000 and took to sailing around the world.
The globetrotte is almost completely self-sufficient, relying on fishing and harvesting fruits for sustenance and using an old wind turbine for electricity.
When Ben first visited him for New Lives in the Wild back in 2015, he had a sailing partner in his girlfriend Jasna, 34.
Ben paid Rick a visit four years after their initial meeting to see how Rick was getting on for the latest season of the Channel 5 show, airing tonight. He found out that the sailor and Jasna had parted ways, and that Rick was happy still sailing on his own around Fiji, following where the waves took him.
Reflecting on his lifestyle, he Rick told Ben the key to being a happy nomad is not to set too many goals for yourself.
Rick Page, 53, from London, sold his business and moved to Australia in 2007. There, he bought a boat for £39,000 and took to sailing around the world. He told Ben Fogle he did not mind being away from his friends or family when the presenter visited him for New Lives in the Wild back in 2016. Ben returned to meet Rick four years on for the show’s newest season
When Ben visited him in 2015, Rick shared his life with Jasna, whom he had met in 2010.
The pair lived on fish and fruit and were happy living by themselves on the boat.
However, Ben was surprised to find that Rick now was a lone sailor after parting ways with his Slovenian partner in 2017.
Rick informed the TV presenter that Jasna was now living in Italy, while he continued on with his travelling.
Rick used to share his boat and his life with Slovenian-born Jasna, but the pair split up three years ago
The experienced sailor did not seem to mind his solitude, proudly saying he was single, though he joked saying ‘he was on the market’ made him feel like cattle.
‘What a lot of changes,’ Ben observed, and the big thing is Jasna,’ he added.
‘That’s a huge profound change in his life. Not only are you in a new country and you’re on a new vessel, but he’s also on his own,’ Ben told the camera.
‘But he seems very upbeat and positive, so I think that’s very much a new chapter.’
Later on, while the two men discussed the fact that Rick’s travels very much depended on the sea, he said he had accepted not to make too much plans.
‘I like the freedom of moving whenever you want to, but I’m not daft enough to come up against sea,’ he said.
‘If you put your will up against the sea, it’ll be the sea who wins. A lot of people do that wishful thinking and they forget, you can’t make that deal with the sea,’ he told Ben.
‘You’re forced then to take gambles with the weather that you would not normally take and you get into these situations you wouldn’t normally get into.
The experienced sailor told Ben he had learned not to make plans in order to life his dreamed nomadic life
‘I think the absence of that goal setting behaviour is definitely the key to this nomadic watery wandering that I do,’ he concluded.
Rick already had a nomadic mindset when living in the UK, where he tried his hand at different careers.
It was revealed during Ben’s first visit that he had worked as a professional musician in the UK and a safari guide in West Africa, before setting up a horse training business in Spain.
Speaking to Ben he said he had always felt the need to move and had been ‘daydreaming of a simpler life,’ before eventually buying his boat, the Calypso in 2007.
Ben found that a lot had changed in Rick’s life since their initially meeting in 2016. But he said Rick was optimistic and happy
Putting his diverse set of skills to good use, he could earn a bit of money or work on car repairs for locals who would pay him in fruit.
In 2016, Jasna and Rick were trying to be as self-sufficient as possible, fishing their meals and doing their laundry by kayaking to a fresh water stream.
A resourceful man, Rick relied on clever tricks to make his life easier, such as creating a fishing rod with some string attached to his boat and a beer can full of marbles to alert him if anything had bitten.
When the weather was bad and the sea hard to navigate, even at night, the couple were not phased and instead would continue with their travel, using 300 year old techniques used by Captain Cook to find their way in the dark and troubled water.
In 2015, Ben, while he admired the couple’s lifestyle, said he could not keep it up for longer than six months without missing his close ones.
Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild airs tonight at 9pm on Channel 5