Anchored and off-grid, Sascha and Raf of the popular YouTube channel ‪Spear It Animal have overcome the odds and transformed a wreck into an on-the-water dream. In this episode of the Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, host Dr. Denis Phares sits down with the Spear It Animal duo during the 2024 Annapolis Sailboat Show as Sascha and Raf share their incredible journey of transforming a sunken sailboat into a fully off-grid home powered by lithium and solar.

Sailing Off-Grid | Spear It Animal’s Sustainable Life on the Water

Sascha and Raf started their journey by purchasing a heavily damaged Beneteau 50 monohull during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although they initially knew little about boat restoration, Raf’s background in carpentry gave him confidence to take on the massive project. Their boat had severe water damage to structural keel problems, but that did not deter them. Sascha and Raf poured time and effort into rebuilding, living on anchor without basic amenities, and tackling each issue head-on. They worked together to transform Spear It Animal into their dream home on the water while sharing their journey on YouTube.

In this episode of The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, Sascha and Raf dive into their off-grid lifestyle, emphasizing their reliance on lithium-ion battery power, supplied by Battle Born Batteries, to manage an array of amenities on their boat. They describe the vital role of a powerful battery bank, as it enables them to comfortably live off solar energy alone, supporting essentials like AC units, refrigeration, and their water maker. They also highlight how having 3,000 watts of solar power and an alternator for backup has transformed their experience, allowing them to sail comfortably without a generator. Sascha and Raf also chatted with host Denis Phares about how their lithium power system elevated their lifestyle beyond traditional “bare-bones” sailing.

Listen to the full episode on YouTube or wherever you stream podcasts, and follow along with Sascha and Raf’s latest adventures on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

Podcast Transcript

Denis Phares  0:11

Welcome to The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast. We are here today in Annapolis, Maryland, for the Annapolis Boat Show, and I’m pleased to welcome my guests, Sasha and Rafael of Spear It Animal.

Sascha Meyers  0:22

Hey, guys.

Rafael Echemendia  0:24

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Denis Phares  0:24

Alright. So, The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, we like talking about lithium-ion batteries, and we’re at the Annapolis Boat Shows. Why?

Rafael Echemendia  0:34

We came to see you, Dennis. Yeah. You hooked us up with an awesome bank, and we felt obligated to buy flights and come shake your hand, man.

Denis Phares  0:43

Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate that, seriously. But let’s talk about your story a little bit. You started off with, I guess, a wreck, and made it into something pretty special. And, obviously, the power system is a big part of that. So, for those of us here who are not as familiar with your story…

Sascha Meyers  1:04

So, we literally bought a sinking wreck, that…

Denis Phares  1:08

Sinking, sunk?

Sascha Meyers  1:09

Sinking. Yeah.

Rafael Echemendia  1:10

Sinking, previously sank. We didn’t find out it sank until after we bought it a few months later. Someone approached us and was like, “I used to charter that boat in St. Martin, and I have pictures of it sunk after the hurricane.”

Sascha Meyers  1:23

Yeah. After hurricane Orla.

Rafael Echemendia  1:24

And we’re like, “That clears up a lot.”

Denis Phares  1:26

From St. Martin.

Sascha Meyers  1:28

Yeah, from St. Martin. They had sailed it up to St. Augustine, probably not too long before you checked it out. And yeah, it was sinking. It was taking on water, we couldn’t figure out where so we had a big project on our hands.

Rafael Echemendia  1:42

Yeah. I showed up with hot pockets and pulled the trigger on the boat before I got any sort of survey done. I’m a carpenter by trade and have a lot of confidence in myself, I guess. And I saw the boat, I’m like, “Oh, this is perfect.” I could see the vision. And I was like, “It’s got the bones, we’re good to go.”

Denis Phares  2:05

What did you know about boat building as a carpenter, was it…?

Rafael Echemendia  2:11

Nothing. But I can build custom cabinets and all that.

Sascha Meyers  2:14

Custom kitchens, bathrooms.

Rafael Echemendia  2:15

So, I was looking at the wood, and I knew I got this. As long as it has the bones and the engine, we’re good. The engine only had 2,000 hours on it, which is pretty low for that. But, anyways, we bought the boat, and immediately when we bought it, after 20 minutes of looking at it… It’s an insane story, I don’t want to waste all our time here by telling you the details, but basically…

Denis Phares  2:37

[Inaudible 2:37] to your channel.

Rafael Echemendia  2:39

Yeah. Go check that out. But, long story short, it still has the same amount of hours on the engines even though we sailed it all the way to Grenada.

Sascha Meyers  2:49

Yeah, it still has 2,000 engine hours on it, so meter has not changed.

Rafael Echemendia  2:53

So, the meter didn’t work. So, the engine, we totally had to rebuild. We gutted the entire inside. We lived on anchor for over a year without… We didn’t have floors for three months, we were sleeping on sawdust.

Sascha Meyers  3:07

No water, no electrical, no kitchen, no nothing.

Rafael Echemendia  3:10

No electrical. And then, the electric wires we did have, we had cut them back and they were just black all the way through. So, we ended up gutting every wire out of this boat and replacing every single wire. It was insane.

Denis Phares  3:20

But the structure of the boat was…

Rafael Echemendia  3:23

It was also bad.

Sascha Meyers  3:23

That was bad too. We really didn’t…. Yeah, he didn’t do his homework whatsoever.

Rafael Echemendia  3:27

So, after we billed all the water out after we bought it, we realized all these massive patches everywhere. It had structural keel damage.

Sascha Meyers  3:36

The grid had popped at some point.

Rafael Echemendia  3:38

The boat did somersault in a hurricane, and the broker was not very honest with us. And I signed a “as is” contract, so I kind of screwed myself.

Denis Phares  3:47

Did you overpay for it?

Sascha Meyers  349

Big time.

Rafael Echemendia  3:49

Yes. Yes. We bought it for 120, it was worth no more than probably, what, 60?

Sascha Meyers  3:56

Yeah, realistically. But in the COVID market, I’d say…

Rafael Echemendia  4:01

120,000.

Sascha Meyers  4:03

But in the COVID market, 80 grand would have been a good selling price.

Rafael Echemendia  4:04

Yeah. During COVID, boats were flying off the shelf. They would post, and that day they’d be bought. So, I went there with the impression, “I need to get this boat before someone else does.” And for the model of the boat, it was the cheapest Beneteau 50 that was on the market at the time. So, if I didn’t get that boat, I would have had to fly to Croatia, or something. So, we snagged it and had to face our problems.

Denis Phares  4:31

So, this was during COVID. Was it because of COVID that you came to that decision?

Sascha Meyers  4:35

September 2021 was when we went and picked it up from St. Augustine. But yeah, COVID. Like he was saying, every time you go look at a boat, the second you want to put an offer on it, it was gone.

Denis Phares  4:45

But why did you want to do this, was it because of COVID?

Rafael Echemendia  4:49

Money.

Sascha Meyers  4:50

Money. That wasn’t when we started sailing. We actually met sailing before Spirit Animal.

Rafael Echemendia  4:56

My buddy and I bought a catamaran with no experience, stepped off into the Caribbean. Crossed paths with her and her sister, which were sailing on her dad’s boat.

Sascha Meyers  5:06

So, we met in Georgetown in the Bahamas. Separate boats.

Rafael Echemendia  5:09

Then we sailed for like eight months together. We just buddy-boated every day, spearfishing.

Sascha Meyers  5:14

Became best friends.

Rafael Echemendia  5:15

Beame best friends, and then some. And then my buddy only committed to having the boat for a year, and we all had to sail back for hurricane season. So, I had to sell my boat, and I spent all my money that year. So, I was looking for a boat that was cheap. Of course, I got a boat loan, but it still wasn’t that much money. So, yeah, I had to buy as much as I could get at the time, and I was looking at damaged boats because I had the intentions on fixing one up. So, bought one that was terrible, and we overcame the obstacle of fixing it up over the course of the next year and a half.

Sascha Meyers  5:55

Yeah. We pretty much agreed to start dating the second we started rebuilding that boat. So, we went through, I guess, the test of time.

Rafael Echemendia  6:03

Yeah. I bought the boat. She came to see and was like, “What have you done?” And she was like, “But I’m down.”

Denis Phares  6:09

Okay. So, you fell in love fixing up a boat, not spearfishing.

Rafael Echemendia  6:14

I would say we fell in love spearfishing.

Sascha Meyers  6:16

Yeah. But we didn’t want to admit our feelings to each other.

Rafael Echemendia  6:18

We both had intentions on sailing around the world and…

Sascha Meyers  6:22

We didn’t want each other… We didn’t want to get held back, and we didn’t know each other enough to know if the other person was going to follow through with it.

Rafael Echemendia  6:29

If we were compatible.

Sascha Meyers  6:30

And compatible. Because living on a boat with somebody is a lot. You spend, literally, every second together.

Denis Phares  6:37

I’ve done it.

Rafael Echemendia  6:40

It’s good, it’s the ultimate test. The ultimate relationship test. Even on a dock, dude, there’s got to be tons… The boat work never ends even on a dock. So, it’s the ultimate test and we went through that, the ultimate test, and now we know we’re compatible.

Denis Phares  6:56

So, when did the channel come about?

Sascha Meyers  7:00

He actually started the channel before we got together. He started with his buddy on the catamaran.

Denis Phares  7:06

And it was called Spirit Animal.

Sascha Meyers  7:09

Spirit Animal, some boozing and cruising going on.

Rafael Echemendia  7:12

But I probably only did 10 episodes. I was just learning how to edit and do YouTube and stuff, and her and her sister also had a channel called Sailing the Far Side. And they actually had up to 75,000 subscribers.

Sascha Meyers  7:29

It was a shit show.

Rafael Echemendia  7:30

The first year, actually, we came to the Annapolis Boat Show four years ago.

Sascha Meyers  7:35

Yeah. He was my bodyguard.

Rafael Echemendia  7:36

Yeah, they came as Sailing the Far Side, and I showed up as Spirit Animal. No one knew Spirit Animal, and, yeah, I was literally their bodyguard the whole time. So, it’s funny. So, now she’s joined Spirit Animal, and now everyone recognizes us.

Sascha Meyers  7:51

We built the channel together.

Denis Phares  7:51

What of your sister?

Sascha Meyers  7:49

She’s actually a charter Captain [Inaudible 7:54] I thought she was going to come this year, actually, but I think with the hurricane and everything, she just had to keep working. So yeah, but she’s still sailing. It’s tough. It’s these drinks. So yeah. And then, we started rebuilding the boat, thanks to you guys too.

Rafael Echemendia  8:20

Yeah. We couldn’t have done it without you. It wouldn’t have gotten this luxurious, I guess.

Denis Phares  8:25

There’s a luxurious aspect to it, but there’s also a functional aspect, obviously. There’s certain things you can’t do without a good power source.

Rafael Echemendia  8:33

Listen, from cruising full-time, you start out by thinking, “Oh, that’s luxurious,” and then it transfers into, “That’s a necessity.” Seriously, I don’t know how we did it without the battery bank before. I do know how we did it, we woke up to battery alarms every night and it was no fun.

Sascha Meyers  8:55

Yeah. I lived on a boat with 400 amp hours of AGM and couldn’t even charge my phone once the sun went down.

Rafael Echemendia  9:04

Yeah. No laptop running a YouTube channel.

Sascha Meyers  9:08

Running a YouTube channel. We had a watermaker that made a gallon in half an hour, but realistically, was only maybe half a gallon. And so, when we got our BattleBorn system, I didn’t know you could live on a boat as comfortably as we do now. And we are strictly off-grid too. We don’t have a generator, so our battery bank is our, literally, the heart of the boat.

Rafael Echemendia  9:31

Yeah. And I would say that we were both so scarred from not having a battery bank that the next boat we bought, and I knew it going into this boat, I was like, “I don’t care what it costs, we’re getting an awesome battery bank, and I’m not waking up to another battery alarm.” And I don’t want a generator either because my last generator put me through hell and back.

Sascha Meyers  9:58

Yeah. He was in there every day.

Rafael Echemendia  10:00

Like she said, we have no generator. We didn’t even have an alternator on our boat for like over a year because we have 3,000…

Sascha Meyers  10:06

We didn’t even have our DC-to-DC system set up.

Rafael Echemendia  10:08

Yeah. We have 3000 watts of solar on a Monohull and a 1250-watt bank, 1350-watt bank, and it’s killer. And now I wouldn’t even go less than that. People think it’s overkill, I would stick with that.

Denis Phares  10:22

So, you have 3000 watts of solar.

Sascha Meyers  10:24

Yeah.

Rafael Echemendia  10:24

On a Monohull.

Denis Phares  10:27

Wow. Did you calculate that’s what you needed? Did you know how much you’re going to use?

Rafael Echemendia  10:32

We started out with 2200, and then we added some soft panels on the hardtop after we got some AC units. Yeah, not to mention, we have 3 DC 12-volt AC units. And we run two of them all night long.

Sascha Meyers  10:50

24/7.

Rafael Echemendia  10:51

And wake up with like 13 volts still in the bank. So, we have air conditioning, a battery bank, no generator. Yeah, we’re living large. Of course, the cloudy days kind of…

Sascha Meyers  11:04

That’s what made us realize we should probably get a backup power source. So we did, since then, add a high-power alternator.

Rafael Echemendia  11:12

But when did we do that?

Sascha Meyers  11:14

Literally, like a month ago, maybe.

Rafael Echemendia  11:16

Three weeks ago, we added a high-power alternator just to have some sort of backup.

Sascha Meyers  11:21

Well, we added a 110 AC unit, a bigger unit for our salon, and that was kind of like the, “Okay, just in case, let’s top off our batteries so we can run AC at night too.”

Denis Phares  11:33

That’s pretty incredible that you’re able to live exclusively off the sun for a long period of time like that.

Rafael Echemendia  11:39

No wind generator either, just totally solar.

Denis Phares  11:42

Yeah. Well done. So, you’re spearfishing still, and that’s your lunch and dinner.

Sascha Meyers  11:49

Yeah. When we were in the Bahamas, that was literally how we fed ourselves.

Rafael Echemendia  11:54

Every day.

Sascha Meyers  11:55

The groceries are pretty expensive over there, and you go and you buy some peppers, potatoes, onions, and then we just go catch fish, and we eat a lot of poke bowls. We love raw fish, so whenever we can, we do that. But then, of course, grouper, Mahi if we’re sailing. So, we stock up on a lot of fresh fish and just buy fresh veggies. And that’s how we live out there.

Denis Phares  12:18

And you have a lot of refrigeration then on the boat?

Rafael Echemendia  12:24

Yeah. For a mono, we have a freezer, a fridge, and a portable cooler that’s like…

Sascha Meyers  12:32

Yeah. We have a really good ICECO. ICECO, so it’s a fridge freezer. So, depending on our location, if we’re in an area where we can catch a lot of fresh fish, we make it a fridge and just constantly fill it. If we’re in a place where fish isn’t as readily available and we need to store some chicken and meats, then we’ll turn it into a freezer and freeze meat so we don’t have to run to the grocery store as often. That’s one thing we realize.

Rafael Echemendia  12:56

But, on average, we draw about 30 amps. With our fridge, it’s running with everything.

Denis Phares  13:00

30 amps at 12 volts.

Rafael Echemendia  13:04

At 12 volts, yeah. Like with the Wi-Fi, the Starlink, the fridges, all the basic stuff, it’s about 27 amps at 12 volts.

Sascha Meyers  13:11

That’s not with AC, though. With AC, I’d say it’s 47, like an extra 20 amps. 37, 47.

Rafael Echemendia  13:18

What do you mean with AC?

Sascha Meyers  13:13

Once we have our AC units, air conditioning. Air conditioning adds an extra… The DC units add an extra 20 amps.

Rafael Echemendia  13:26

That’s at night. Yeah. Without AC.

Sascha Meyers  13:28

Without AC, yeah.

Rafael Echemendia  13:30

So, it’s not like we’re the most conservative. We’re not.

Sascha Meyers  13:35

No, we’re not conservative. We have an air fryer…

Rafael Echemendia  13:37

We live large for sailors, and our bank holds up great.

Denis Phares  13:40

What’s the name for that? With RVing, they call that glamping.

Sascha Meyers  13:43

I know, right? We gotta make a name for sailing.

Rafael Echemendia 13:47

(Laughs) What are we? I don’t know.

Denis Phares  13:49

Yeah, you got to come up with something.

Rafael Echemendia  13:52

[Inaudible 13:52] We’ll come up with something.

Sascha Meyers  13:53

Yeah. That’s a bad one. That’s a really bad one. Delete that. (Laughs)

Denis Phares  14:02

All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast, and it was great to meet you guys.

Rafael Echemendia  14:07

Well, actually, I want to hear your take. Did you get to watch the full episode we made on the BattleBorn?

Denis Phares  14:13

I did. That was the one that was the one that I saw, yeah. So it was very…

Rafael Echemendia  14:18

Or you were like, “Mmm…”

Denis Phares  14:19

No, I thought it was great. Yeah, that was an awesome video.

Rafael Echemendia  14:22

It’s okay because I know we weren’t textbook with it. We kind of compared high voltage and low voltage to beer and liquor…

Denis Phares  14:30

But the biggest thing was…

Denis Phares  14:33

That’s not inaccurate.

(Laughter)

Rafael Echemendia  14:33

Thank you. Everyone’s an electrical engineer when they’re behind the scenes on the comp, the keyboard warriors. So, we said, “DC is low voltage,” but they’re like, “No, DC is high voltage.”

Denis Phares  14:46

I saw that too, DC could be high voltage or low voltage, AC can too. But, typically AC is high voltage…

Rafael Echemendia  14:54

We’re talking about your standard liveaboard cruiser boat because there’s many people that, myself included, before I came to the boat world, I could rewire an entire house in 110 voltage, I have multiple times. But you get onto a boat where you have all these energy sources charging your bank, and it’s 12 volt…

Sascha Meyers  15:15

Two different voltage systems.

Rafael Echemendia  15:26

And then that charging an inverter that’s producing 110, and it’s like a just a big spider web of electricity and it’s hard to understand. So, we really try to break it down to the common folk.

Denis Phares  15:26

Liquor and beer. Absolutely. I got it.

Rafael Echemendia  15:30

Okay, cool.

Sascha Meyers  15:30

I think that’s the biggest thing with being on a boat. And the most confusing thing is 12 volts and 110, it’s like…

Rafael Echemendia  15:37

Or AC-DC.

Sascha Meyers  15:40

AC-DC, yeah, just to try to wrap your head around. It took us a while, to be honest, and the amps, volts, watts. Everything.

Denis Phares  15:44

Well, that’s the thing. A lot of folks are like, “Well, I’m drawing 10 amps,” Well, is that 10 amps at 12 volts or at 20? That makes a big difference.

Sascha Meyers  15:54

So, to even try to grasp that somewhat of a concept of the two different voltage systems, but…

Rafael Echemendia  16:02

Try to break it down for the dummies.

Sascha Meyers  16:04

And fun to watch because you got to get people through the whole entire video to understand what it actually is. So, yeah.

Rafael Echemendia  16:14

I’m not going to lie, before that episode aired, I watched hours of the most dry… When you’re talking about electricity, it’s pretty dry.

Denis Phares  16:24

Was that me? Did you watch me? Who are you describing?

(Laughter)

Rafael Echemendia  16:31

I did watch a lot of you and a lot of other BattleBorn shows. But no, no, no, whenever I’m like… Your videos are very informative. There’s a lot of good resources on your website.

Sascha Meyers  16:45

You guys did a… Especially your alternator videos, the wake speed. We watched that four-hour video…

Rafael Echemendia  16:52

Probably three times.

Sascha Meyers  16:54

Yeah, three times.

Denis Phares  16:55

That’s impressive.

Rafael Echemendia  16:56

Yeah. Y’all really get to the point. When you go off on these YouTube tangents, it’s like these guys, most of the videos just confuse you the more you watch them. So, we really wanted to just keep it as simple as possible when we made this video to just give people the basic concept.

Denis Phares  17:16

Yeah. Well, kudos. I think you guys did a great job. I did like it.

Sascha Meyers  17:20

Thank you.

Rafael Echemendia  17:20

Thank you. Awesome.

Denis Phares  17:21

Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for joining us today on the podcast, and special thanks to Spirit Animal.

Sascha Meyers  17:27

Cheers, guys.

Rafael Echemendia 17:29

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Sascha Meyers  17:31

Thanks for having us.

Denis Phares  17:32

Thanks for joining us in Annapolis, Maryland, at the Annapolis Boat Show on The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast. Be sure to subscribe on any of your favorite podcast platforms.

[End Of Recording]