From coastal adventures in Wales to transatlantic sailing, Becka and Zach of ‪Teulu Tribe began their on-the-water journey by turning their vintage 1987 Colvic Victor into an off-grid dream home.  In this episode of the Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, Teulu Tribe joins host Denis Phares at the 2024 Annapolis Sailboat Show to share insights into upgrading their 40-foot sailboat, adjusting to an off-grid lifestyle, and building a close-knit online community. Tune in to hear how they made the leap from land to sea and their plans for exploring remote destinations.

Sailing Off the Grid with Teulu Tribe

Originally from the UK, Becka and Zach embarked on their sailing adventure in March 2022, when they purchased a vintage 1987 Colvic Victor and transitioned to full-time cruising. Six months after purchasing the boat, they set off from the UK, crossing the Atlantic soon after. Their boat’s name, Teulu, means “family” in Welsh, a fitting tribute to their goal of creating a space where friends and family could experience sailing. After falling in love with sharing their sailing adventures, Becka and Zach started their YouTube channel, Teulu Tribe. As they sail across oceans and explore new places, Becka and Zach bring their followers along for the exciting horizons and technical challenges of owning a sailboat.

In this episode of The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast, Becka and Zach joined Denis Phares at the Annapolis Boat Show to discuss their unique background and what led them to life on the sea. Upon purchasing their 40-foot boat, Becka and Zach found it needed significant. upgrades. Initially set up for casual day sailing, the boat came with three basic lead-acid batteries, which proved inadequate. To transition their boat for off-grid living, they upgraded to 800-amp hours of Battle Born lithium Batteries, enabling them to power appliances like induction cooktops, an air fryer, and more. Additionally, 2000 watts of solar capacity allows them to remain self-sufficient at anchor for extended periods.

Listen to the full episode on YouTube or wherever you stream podcasts, and follow along with Teulu Tribe as they continue to sail around the world on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Podcast Transcript

Denis Phares  0:11

Welcome to The Li-MITLESS ENERGY Podcast. We’re here in Annapolis, Maryland, at the Annapolis Boat Show. And it’s my pleasure to welcome my guest today, Teulu Tribe. We have Becka and Zach. Welcome.

Zach Seward  0:25

Thank you for having us. Yeah, we’re really excited to be here.

P3  0:25

Thank you, it’s good to be here.

Denis Phares  0:27

Yeah. So, it’s kind of cool at the show here. We have a whole slew of YouTube channels that are here, sailing YouTube channels. And you guys started up when? When was your channel?

Becka Eva  0:43

So, we bought the boat in March 2022.

Zach Seward  0:46

We’ve been doing a little bit before that, but more kind of just hiking and kind of our weekends exploring around South Wales.

Becka Eva  0:53

When we bought the boat, that’s when we kind of went all for it. And we bought the boat in March 2022, and we left the UK six months later, and we crossed the Atlantic two months after that. So, we were all guns blazing.

Denis Phares  1:06

So, in the universe of sailing YouTube channels, it’s grown over time. Are you relatively early, are you kind of mid or are you newcomers?

Zach Seward  1:16

Maybe not newcomers, but we’re still relatively new to it. I guess a lot of the people here have kind of been doing it for five years, or so. We’ve been doing it for two, three years now. So, I guess relatively new, but definitely not brand new to it now. No.

Denis Phares  1:32

Okay. But you’re from the UK, is that pretty unique?

Becka Eva  1:34

Yeah, from England? There’s a few channels from the UK here, but not many. Yeah, we’re definitely one of the few here.

Zach Seward  1:41

Yeah, it’s nice to hear some English accents again, but it’s quite rare for us to hear it anymore now.

Denis Phares  1:44

Yeah, I believe it. And so, Teulu Tribe, you said this is Welsh?

Becka Eva  1:50

Yeah.

Denis Phares  1:50

Does it mean anything?

Becka Eva  1:51

Yeah. So, Teulu is the name of our boat. It means family in Welsh, basically. Our boat was kind of a symbol for us to be able to invite friends and family and be able to give the experience of sailing and travel to people that might not usually have it. So, that’s where the word ‘Teulu’ came from, and Tribe is everyone who follows along with us.

Denis Phares  2:09

Right. Why is it spelled wrong?

Becka Eva  2:12

We get that along

Zach Seward  2:12

The Welsh language is pretty complex. It’s a Celtic word. So, in kind of brest in front and a few other like kind of Celtic regions in Europe, the word is really similar as well. So, there’s a similar word in Cornish for it as well, but it’s a difficult language to learn. We lived there for a while, and we struggled to learn much Welsh, didn’t we?

Becka Eva  2:29

Yeah.

Denis Phares  2:30

Tell me about your boat? Was it a nice boat when you got it, or was it complete rebuild?

Becka Eva  2:35

She was a boat which was perfect for our budget at the time, meaning she was an older catch from the UK. She’s a Colvic Victor, so you don’t really see many of them over here. She’s 40-foot, and she needed some upgrades.

Zach Seward  2:50

She was set up for kind of weekend stuff, I guess, mostly just day sailing. I think…

Denis Phares  2:54

So, she was already seaworthy when you got it?

Zach Seward  2:56

There were some things that we needed to do to make a kind of open ocean seaworthiness. For coastal cruising, I think she would have been absolutely fine, but there was a few skin fittings and kind of fairly essential things that needed changing out before we did some big offshore stuff because if any of those failed, you don’t want to be kind of caught out with any of those. But in the most part, she was alright. The rig and hose gear, we need to change standing rigging and a few other bits. But yeah, we were pretty happy with what we got with her.

Becka Eva  3:23

Yeah, for sure. We had no solar. She wasn’t set up at all to go off grid. And I remember the first few days of owning her, when we went off sailing, we anchored overnight and we were like, “Oh, what now?” So, we were using our phone torches to make our way through the boat. She wasn’t designed to be offshore hookup. So, that whole upgrade was a big one we had to do.

Zach Seward  3:43

It came with three engine batteries to begin with, that was pretty much it.

Denis Phares  3:46

Three AGMs?

Zach Seward  3:46

Yeah.

Denis Phares  3:47

How big were they?

Becka Eva  3:50

100… No, it came with two…

Zach Seward  3:50

There were three lead acids to begin with, weren’t they?

Becka Eva  3:54

Yeah. We had a bow thruster one, we had one engine and one kind of other engine one. It was very complex what the previous owners had done with the boat.

Denis Phares  4:01

So, to get it off grid is a big deal. You have to first of all figure out how you’re going to get the power, and then figure out how to store the power, and how much you use. And so, talk me through that process. Was there a lot of math?

Becka Eva  4:13

Yeah, a fair amount, and a lot of learning actually.

Zach Seward  4:15

Yeah. We kind of had to figure out where we’re going to keep everything to begin with, because we had some space in the engine room but not quite enough where we wanted to kind of keep all of the batteries and everything. So, we ended up making an old wet storage room on the boat, which is the locker about that big by maybe about that big. Ripped out everything, put a load of shelves in, and kind of use that now as our kind of main domestic battery area for it. And it’s nice to keep it separate from the engine room because it gets pretty hot in there as well.

Becka Eva  4:43

Yeah. We aren’t from an electrics background, and luckily, an electrician in the marina became a good friend of ours. He took us under his wing. We sat down together, and that’s how we kind of learned what we know about electrics. And I’ve kind of fallen in love with it a bit. I’m usually creative and artsy, so going from that to mathematics where I’m figuring out all these different wiring stuff.

Zach Seward  5:05

You did get a bit of a shock in the early days, didn’t you.

Becka Eva  5:09

I did get a shock. I messed up. I short circuited a spanner, which… Don’t do that. Yeah, a little shock, got it on camera. It’s a wonderful video, we watch it sometimes. Yeah, 10 out of 10 don’t recommend. But no, we’ve just learned as we’ve gone, and we’ve loved the process of just figuring out what we need and working within our means to live this self-sufficient life.

Denis Phares  5:28

So, did you guys have previous careers or this was right out of school?

Zach Seward  5:31

So, I worked for a yacht manufacturer on the south coast in environment and sustainability. Worked for them prior to that, and then worked for the tech industry before that a little bit, and then…

Becka Eva  5:41

Yeah. I was pretty much fresh out of university when we bought the boat. I’d done some part time media jobs for the university, but literally, YouTube was my big… My first career, I guess.

Zach Seward  5:52

We got the boat, and we moved down to where the boat was. I had this job lined up, and then you had an interview lined up, but YouTube was just kind of taking off at the time and we were like, “It’s a good opportunity to try and see what we can make of it.” And then, six months later, I left my job and we left the UK.

Denis Phares  6:10

You said YouTube was your first career, is that something that you kind of fell into, or you were thinking, “I want to get into this world?”

Becka Eva  6:17

I always filmed things, I just loved filming. I was a photographer in Greece for a few summers, just as a little part time thing. But I loved filming and capturing life, and so I just did it for fun. I think we had about 80 subscribers for about four years, and I loved it. That’s my whole passion. And so, naturally, when we got the boat, we started filming the boat, and that’s when people started joining and enjoying the videos. And then, yeah, we just kept going from there, and now we’re here, and yeah, we couldn’t dream of doing anything different.

Denis Phares  6:47

So, what do you want to share with your viewers, typically? What kind of information do you really enjoy sharing with them?

Zach Seward  6:53

I guess a little bit of everything, isn’t it really?

Denis Phares  6:56

Technical or just visual?

Becka Eva  6:57

It’s just our journey through, like, buying a boat… From before we bought the boat, to buying a boat, to cruising. And I think we made a vow very early on that we’d show the whole picture.

Zach Seward  7:08

Yeah, we try and keep it quite honest with the mistakes we’ve made, and stuff like that. Like you getting shocked with the spanners in one of the videos, and…

Becka Eva  7:15

Yeah it happens, life happens. And I think it’s really important to show what and all on camera and to show the whole picture, because cruising isn’t always that easy.

Zach Seward  7:23

And we made a lot of mistakes on the early days with wiring we did initially, and just kind of learning from all those mistakes. We ended up messing up the engine a little bit in Panama, didn’t we? We’ve learned a lot from that.

Becka Eva  7:36

Yeah, it’s all a learning experience. And I think to be able to either share that with people so they don’t make the same mistakes, or for them just to feel less alone in their own mistakes, I think it’s really nice that like everyone’s in it together and we’re showing that this is the cruising life, the honest cruising life.

Denis Phares  7:51

And have you been around the world?

Becka Eva  7:54

Not yet, it’s on the list.

Zach Seward  7:54

We’re going to go up to Alaska for next summer and do a big loop around there. So, we’re currently in Pacific Coast Mexico, and we’re gonna work our way up to mid Mexico, and then cross over to Hawaii, and then do Alaska, and be up there for that summer. And then, after that, we’ll, hopefully, head back down and then go to French Polynesia and carry on going around.

Denis Phares  8:15

Nice. So, you’ve spent most of your time so far in the Atlantic between here and UK.

Zach Seward  8:20

Yeah.

Becka Eva  8:21

Yeah. So, we bought the boat in the UK. We went all the way down through Europe, Africa, to Antigua, down to Grenada, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, through the canal. I think we hit 19 countries when we arrived in Mexico, about seven half thousand miles. So, we’ve been kind of go, go, go. It’s gonna be exciting to do this loop now in the Pacific Northwest.

Denis Phares  8:41

Sorry, go ahead.

Zach Seward  8:42

No. Go on.

Denis Phares  8:42

Do you typically dock and hang out in a place for a long period of time? Are you on traveling?

Zach Seward  8:46

Most of the time, we try and be an anchor whilst we’re on the boat, and kind of avoid going into marinas during the hurricane seasons and stuff like that. We tend to keep the boat in a marina. But, outside of that, we try and kind of stay on the hook, don’t we?

Becka Eva  8:59

And we’re moving quite often, like we don’t settle in a place, usually. Unless there’s a reason to stay, we usually keep going.

Zach Seward  9:05

Yeah. Maybe a couple of weeks at most in anchorage, but that’d be quite a rare thing for us. Normally, it’s about a week or so we spend in a place, and then kind of start moving on again.

Denis Phares  9:14

Mm-hmm. So, how big is your battery bank now?

Becka Eva  9:16

So we have 800 amp hours, and it has quite literally changed our life. We’ve got an air fryer now. When we bought the boat, we were there boiling our kettle on the gas, and we’ve got induction hogs, we’ve got an air fryer, and our boat has actually become like a proper home because of the lithium.

Zach Seward  9:35

We’re just in the process of upgrading our solar as well to 2000 watts as well. So, we should have a good amount of solar as well now.

Denis Phares  9:42

Oh, great. I was going to say how do you charge them now? So you have some solar, but you have an alternator, or what’s your…?

Zach Seward  9:47

We’re looking at potentially getting a bigger alternator for at the moment. We’ve got an alternator on a DC-DC charger at the moment, which has been really good for us. But, primarily, most of our power comes from solar.

Denis Phares  9:58

Mm-hmm. When you’re in the marina, you plug in?

Becka Eva  10:00

No.

Zach Seward  10:00

No. So, we’ve been avoiding marina stuff for most part. We’ve plugged in occasionally here and there, but…

Becka Eva  10:07

We can’t in the Pacific now because we’re 230 volts, so there just isn’t the option for us to. So, unless we change the boat to 110, we are off solar.

Zach Seward  10:16

But I think 2000 watts should be able to cover us for pretty much every need we need. Yeah, it should be alright, shouldn’t it?

Denis Phares  10:22

As YouTubers, I imagine you have a lot of interaction with your tribe.

Becka Eva  10:27

Yeah.

Denis Phares  10:28

So, what do they like the most? Is it the technical stuff? Are they interested in the electrical?

Becka Eva  10:35

Genuinely, I think they enjoy it all for different reasons.

Zach Seward  10:39

There’s definitely some who like the kind of refit more when we started doing the refit series in Mexico this time around, there’s a lot of people are really excited about that. And then a lot of people are more excited about sailing and the traveling.

Denis Phares  10:49

What’s going on in Mexico?

Zach Seward  10:50

So, the boat’s just down in Mexico at the moment for the hurricane.

Denis Phares  10:53

You said refit?

Zach Seward  10:54

Well, not a massive refit, but we’re building a hard dodger. We’re adding a lot of solar.

Becka Eva  11:00

We’re doing a navigation upgrade.

Zach Seward  11:02

We added a solar arch, hydrovane.

Becka Eva  11:05

We’ve done a head refit, galley refit. Little things, I guess.

Zach Seward  11:08

Yeah. We’re making it a bit more of a home this year because a lot of the interior of our boat is very 80s-esque, and we’re kind of trying to drag it out of the 80s a little bit into a slightly more modern looking. And less green walls.

Becka Eva

And functional. Less green walls. (Laughs) That is the goal.

Denis Phares  11:24

Okay. Well, then what’s playing on the speakers?

Zach Seward  11:27

On the speakers.

Denis Phares  11:29

Yeah, what music is playing?

Becka Eva  11:29

What music’s playing on our speakers?

Zach Seward  11:31

Oh, God, mine is a bit of everything.

Becka Eva  11:33

Yeah, I like folky stuff.

Zach Seward  11:38

I think most of the time, in my headphones, it would probably be like drum and bass and EDM for painting work and stuff like that.

Becka Eva  11:43

Very different than what I like.

Zach Seward  11:44

Nothing that anyone is going to like.

Denis Phares  11:45

Folk music and EDM, so nothing’s really playing on the speakers.

Becka Eva  11:50

Nothing. It changes a lot.

Zach Seward  11:51

You’d never guess, by the way, I’m painting.

Denis Phares  11:55

Okay. So, you started out with lead acid batteries and ended up upgrading to 800 amp hours of lithium. Was there a reason that you decided to do that? Did you need more power or what precipitated that?

Becka Eva  12:05

So, we actually went from the lead acid and then we upgraded to 400 amp hours of AGMs in the middle there. And, for a while, they worked okay, and then they ran low. They ran low. Trying not to get under the 50% was a big thing. So, basically, we only had two batteries, and then one day we woke up to the smell…

Zach Seward  12:26

Well, we were in a room, weren’t we? And it was like the middle of the night, and  you woke up, didn’t you? You were like, “Something smells really hot…”

Becka Eva  12:35

And the bulk my feet were up against was burning hot.

Zach Seward  12:36

So, the battery cupboard and the way it works is where our cabin is on the bulkhead in between our cabin and where the battery cupboard is. It’s probably like an inch of plywood, or so. And we went to the cupboard, something was hot, and we could smell it was really hot. We put our hand on the back of the bulkhead there, and it was like you couldn’t hold it on the wood. It was so hot. And so, in the middle of the night, we ended up taking out all the batteries, unwiring everything, getting… How did I get the battery out of there, it was so hot?

Becka Eva  13:05

I can’t remember, but the battery was a balloon, and the battery dripped through the boat. At that point, we got it off the boat and we…

Zach Seward  13:11

And we managed to winch it down because we were on the hard.

Denis Phares  13:13

Were you in the marina?

Zach Seward  13:14

We’re on the hard in the marinas. We had to winch it down off the boat because I couldn’t carry it. So, we got it outside of the boat, which is good. And then we had to rig up some lines and winch it down off the boat and just put it a long way away from the boat out in the middle of the yard where no one would kind of get in the way of it, or anything like that. But that thing was so hot.

Becka Eva  13:30

And dangerous. And that really woke us up. We were like, A) We need more power, this is the perfect catalyst to get us to get more power. And we need smarter power too. These have BMSs in them, and they are so much safe. We would never go back now. yeah, that was the big thing that made us change.

Zach Seward  13:49

I think we were initially nervous about going with lithium ion phosphate batteries because there were some older saltier sailors in the marina who had always told us stories about it, but after we had done our research into it properly and looked into it we had no idea what they were on about because all of these… Yeah, it’s just…

Denis Phares  14:04

What were these salty stories?

Becka Eva  14:08

Just them getting hot, not having smart enough systems to be able to cut the batteries out. But then you guys have come in and actually put something specifically in place, like BMS, to be able to stop that from happening. There are so many fail-safe methods in those batteries, they’re smarter than me.

Zach Seward  14:24

I think some people get very stuck in their ways with this kind of technology, and stuff like that, and just don’t want to change. But everyone that we know, everyone who owns a bow, everyone here has all got lithium-ion batteries now.

Denis Phares  14:35

The industry is changing a lot, and they’re getting a lot better at regulating and deciding what’s safe and what’s not safe. Yeah, good for you guys for finding us.

Becka Eva  14:47

Yeah, can’t have it any other way.

Denis Phares  14:50

Thank you so much for joining the podcast.

Becka Eva  14:51

Yeah, thank you.

Zach Seward  14:52

Thank you so much for having us.

Becka Eva  14:53

We love them. We genuinely love the batteries, it’s easy to be enthusiastic about them.

Denis Phares  14:56

Thank you for saying that, we work hard at it. 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]