catamaran impi

Catamaran Impi: Net Worth, Boat and YouTube Earnings (2023)

Everything you always wanted to know.

Joshua Smith

Founder and Editor at Cruising Freedom

This is the definitive guide on Catamaran Impi for 2023.

Over the last 6 years, I have spent more than 37 hours watching and researching everything I could about Catamaran Impi to learn more about their story.

(Yes, I really am *that* obsessed with Brent and Ana on YouTube 😃)

If you wanted to know:

➜ How Catamaran Impi afforded their boat

➜ How they make their money today

➜ What boat do they have and its upgrades

➜ How old is Ana Hills (Brent’s beautiful wife)

➜ How you can start crossing oceans

Then you’ve definitely come to the right place.

Before we start, a quick introduction from me…

The Cruising Freedom Author

Ahoy, Matey! I’m Joshua from Australia.

I’ve built the perfect business to sail the world.

A business model which can allow me to:

➜ Own a catamaran debt-free

➜ Go for weeks without WIFI

➜ Create semi-passive income

➜ Inspire others to dream big

But more on that later… 🙂

Catamaran Impi FAQs (April 2023)

Crew members.

Brent Grimbeek (age 55)

Ana Hill (age 52)

Yes, they are married. Brent’s son is Kent Grimbeek and works for Just Catamarans in Florida. If you’re ever in the market for a catamaran, I highly recommend reaching out to him. He does attend most of the boat shows too.

Both Brent and Ana are from South Africa but left Cape Town in November 2011 for their global voyage.

Brent and Ana from Catamaran Impi own a Lagoon 440. While it’s built as a charter vessel, they have modified it to suit ocean crossings. This process took around 18 months.

Brent and Ana did a ton of upgrades, including:

➜ Replacing their 8 AGM batteries with Lithium

➜ Conducting numerous teak deck repairs

➜ Reassembling the anchor windlass➜

Catamaran Impi are currently in New Zealand. This isn’t their first time in the country. They loved it so much the last time!

Past Cruising

Where have Brent and Ana explored in 10+ years? Not as much as one might expect, but they’ve been taking it quite slowly.

They have been to:

➜ The South Pacific

➜ Australia and New Zealand

➜ The British Virgin Islands

➜ Indonesia and soon SE Asia

Affording It

Brent and Ana aren’t rich…but they aren’t poor either.

They worked hard for many years and diligently saved as much as they could. Once they sold their house, they had enough money to purchase Impi from Lagoon and set sail around the world. Their catamaran at the time cost them $670,000 and this was more than 10 years ago.

They have as much wealth as you might imagine.

As of 2023, I estimate that Catamaran Impi has a net worth of $4,720,000.

This is based on the value of their boat and stock portfolio.

Making Loot

How does Impi continue making money while sailing?

➜ They run ads on their YouTube channel

➜ They have Amazon Associates links on their website

I estimate they only make $2,700/month on their YouTube channel. It’s way under-monetized and many other sailing channels are doing much better.

Collaborations

Catamaran Impi hasn’t collaborated with anyone on their channel directly but has been featured in other channels.

They gave a shoutout to Sailing La Vagabonde in this video:

They were also featured at this guest speaking event alongside Sailing Zatara and Gone With The Wynns :

Just Catamarans is the same company that Brent’s son works for.

Big Moments

It hasn’t quite been smooth sailing for Catamaran Impi. Some challenges include:

➜ Almost running out of diesel and asking for help from a passing container ship (was risky…but it worked!)

➜ Finding an abandoned dog on Casy Island in New Caledonia

➜ Sailing in 40-knot winds en route to Tasmania

➜ Anchoring in the heart of Brisbane City

Future Plans

Where to next? Now that international borders are mostly open, Catamaran Impi is aiming to explore Asia and slowly return back to South America.

Key Takeaways

We can learn a ton from Brent and Ana, including:

➜ You can definitely sail short-handed

➜ Catamarans offer so much more room

➜ Keep things as simple as possible

➜ Your circumnavigation could take much longer than expected (and that’s totally OK!)

Overall, aim do this for the journey AND the destination.

Many say that Lagoon Catamarans simply CANNOT sail around the world. Clearly, that’s been proven wrong in this instance. With some preparation work, almost every charter-ready catamaran is capable of crossing oceans and seeing the world.

Your dream might therefore be closer than you think…

Create Your Own Cruising Freedom

Hey! 😃 it’s Joshua again…

Clearly I’ve been very inspired by Catamaran Impi and their travels…

Some say I’m obsessed, but sailing the world is my childhood dream.

They’re living the dream, but that dream isn’t actually that far away.

I mentioned earlier about discovering the #1 cruising business model.

With this exciting opportunity, I’ll be able to:

➜ Generate a sustainable full-time income through learning basic skills

➜ Fund the purchase of my first sailing catamaran without any loans

➜ Do it without selling to friends and family (I found a better solution!)

➜ Share my lifetime passion for sailing, cruising and global adventures

Keen to discover more? Jump on the free training right now. 👨🏻‍💻

(I share more about it on the next page…🙂)

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What's Your Magic Number? Lagoon 440 'Impi'

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Sailing La Vagabonde explain their multihull criteria

• Toby Hodges
• February 12, 2021

Why do sailing’s most successful influencers think the best boat for novice ocean cruisers is a performance multihull? Asks Toby Hodges

Over the last seven years Riley Whitelum and Elayna Carausu have advanced from novice sailors to logging more ocean miles than most of us will sail in a lifetime. And they’ve managed to translate their journey in the most engaging way, reaching more people than any other sailors on the planet via their YouTube channel, Sailing La Vagabonde .

This Australian couple are actively influencing a new generation of bluewater cruiser s. Millions of viewers watch their weekly episodes of the Sailing La Vagabonde channel, which brings multihull cruising into your living room (or office).

In them they share their liveaboard lifestyle by providing 20-minute hits of endearing weekly escapism.

But their reach is now ensuring they have the ear of the industry too, with the couple starting to leak plans of a new emission-free vessel, which will be sponsored by marine manufacturers.

One of Riley’s latest videos is more opinionated and advises people what to look for – and what to avoid – when buying a new catamaran. Just how much do these influencers want to influence?

Sailing La Vagabonde: Novices to experts

For those unfamiliar with Sailing La Vagabonde, the channel has accrued over 1.5m followers thanks to the fresh, self-deprecating, and admittedly easy-on-the-eye nature of its bronzed protagonists. Riley and Elayna are supported by the crowdfunding model Patreon, through which they have accrued over 3,600 paying members, and make a healthy return from YouTube revenue.

Riley Whitelum. Photo: c/o Sailing La Vagabonde

Their journey began when Riley, now 33, bought a 43ft Beneteau Cyclades in 2013, financed from eight hard years spent working on oil rigs. He met Elayna in the Greek islands, where she was working as a musician for a travel company. Seduced by his characterful moustache and the appeal of life afloat, the 21-year-old from Geraldton soon agreed to join Riley aboard.

She began documenting their budget cruising adventures for family and friends, including the myriad trials, challenges and plain scary moments of liveaboard sailing, before sharing the videos publicly.

After three years, including crossing the Atlantic and Pacific, they struck a deal with Outremer for a new 48ft catamaran on a hire-purchase agreement. This provided a more comfortable base for shooting and editing video, which has transformed into slick TV-quality production for their Sailing La Vagabonde episodes.

It also provided a stable platform to bring a mini Vagabonde into the world in the shape of their son Lenny.

In November 2019 they made headlines by carrying climate activist Greta Thunberg eastwards across the North Atlantic (along with 11-month-old Lenny). However, it was only once Riley had completed this intense, stressful passage as skipper and topped up his estimated 80,000 sea miles that he says he felt more “comfortable handing out advice or behaving like an expert”.

Riley’s video on buying a new catamaran centres on why it makes sense, particularly in terms of safety, for anyone thinking of going long term cruising to opt for a performance multihull over a charter-style production cat. He thinks more buyers should look at the numbers, demand the polars, ask more relevant questions of brokers and not get sidetracked by sales talk.

“If more people start going into boat shows asking better questions and it all filters back through, then the second-hand market would be full of much better-performing vessels,” he reasons.

Cat among the pigeons

He describes people being attracted to a multihull that looks like a comfortable house as the ‘great safety paradox’. “You’re drawn towards, and inevitably end up buying, the exact vessel that you don’t want to be in when faced with a difficult forecast,” Riley argues. He believes that the performance potential of multihulls is one of their biggest safety factors, pointing out that during their passage with Greta they were “jumping from one safe piece of ocean to another, while surrounded by fairly inclement conditions”.

Riley lists a multitude of further benefits of a fast cat, including allowing you to: “pick your path across an ocean; keep up with weather systems; travel twice as far in a day; maintain the same boat speed with half the amount of sail up, making your passage dramatically safer”.

Riley and Elayna struck a deal with Outremer for a new 48ft catamaran on a hire-purchase agreement. Photo: Robin Christol

These are valid points, but I’m left wondering how far up the performance curve he recommends going for ocean cruising. “So that’s the question,” Riley replies enthusiastically. “If you’ve got a multihull that can really perform, you don’t need to sail it at full throttle all the time.” Therefore, excluding full race boats, he thinks performance craft from Outremer up to the more minimalist speedsters such as Marsaudon’s TSs are actually fine for beginners.

“You end up with a lot better sailors because those people will learn to sail on a boat that performs. You get that feedback, it talks to you more.”

That said, Riley and Elayna think that selling a performance machine to the less experienced sailor should come with responsibility.

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“I think that they [the buyers] need to be trained by 
the company that’s selling the vessel. So it’s sort of like, ‘yeah, you can have this, but you need a license’.”

I point out that a high proportion of multihull buyers are coastal holiday sailors, while many new performance cats are too costly. But Riley confirms that his video is aimed at people who want to do some miles. “And I also said be aware that if you start doing this you’ll probably catch the bug and end up doing a lot more than you think.”

The ‘truth about buying video’ is more focussed on getting people to ask the right questions in the first place. Elayna thinks the larger companies selling production catamarans “need to give a truthful option of what is best for coastal sailing and what is best for crossing oceans.”

Creating, filming and editing accounts of liveaboard life are all part of the daily routine for Riley and Elayna. Photo: c/o Sailing La Vagabonde

Despite their opinions on production catamarans, Riley and Elayna make it very clear they don’t want to put anyone off sailing. “People are very emotional and I need to be really careful,” accepts Riley. “The last thing I want to do is upset Ma and Pa Kettle, who just spent their life savings on a Lagoon 45 – I really don’t. But all things considered, I just felt obligated to point out a few things… and because people do want to know our thoughts and ideas and opinions on stuff.”

Life in a slower lane

They emphasise that cruising is not all about sailing far or fast. “You don’t have to sail around the world to have fun, in fact the slower you go the more fun you have.” They refer to another channel, Catamaran Impi, inviting a response from South African couple Brent and Ana who’ve lived and cruised extensively aboard a heavier-style catamaran for 11 years.

Brent and Ana had to modify their Lagoon over 18 months to make it bluewater ready, but maintain they are comfortable on a heavier cat, especially during storms, when they’ll actually slow the boat down to avoid weather systems. In particular they highlight the ability for one person to be able to reef on any point of sail.

So, two different vloggers, two different views. It all shows how easily we can now gain rich information based on first-hand experience.

In their opinion, Riley and Elayna have the ideal boat for their adventures in their relatively new 48ft performance cat. Yet over the last couple of years they have been working away on a new zero emissions project, and have attracted sponsors, including Oceanvolt and Doyle Sails.

“The whole idea is to have a very good performing vessel… that can sail right up to the anchorage, before motoring in that last part,” Riley explains. He admits they don’t expect the new technology to be faultless and that with a young family they’ll err on the side of caution.

They already live relatively frugally, with minimal waste and use their reach to promote an awareness of ocean health. But do they feel the pressure to influence others with their new project too?

“With the emissions thing, it’s just so politically charged that we’re just generally going to lead by example,” Riley answers thoughtfully. “We’re going to do our own thing and just show you that either the technology works or it doesn’t.”

The bigger picture

Sailing La Vagabonde’s lifestyle may seem enviable, but when you consider the exhaustive hours of editing work, the endless search for wifi, and issues such as trolling which flourish when you make your personal life public, it’s heartening to find that Riley and Elayna still genuinely seem to love what they do.

Juggling the not insignificant trials of producing and uploading content along with parenting the newest Vagabonde, Lenny is not an easy task. Photo: c/o Sailing La Vagabonde

It seems viewers are increasingly turning to them for guidance too (they now produce digital sailing tutorials). “The journey itself is going to be harder than people think and probably more rewarding as well,” is Riley’s advice to those considering long-term cruising.

“So it’s not easy and you just have to love it. And once you do really love that time on the water, which is a massive reset, everything just disappears. Your worries, your concerns, all of the things that seemed important, just evaporate.”

He says his enjoyment of sailing has enriched his experience of becoming a capable skipper. “If you love the lifestyle and everything around it, then the learning side of things – and upping your level as a sailor – just becomes easy… it just happens.”

“But you do have to love the hard times too,” Elayna cautions. She is heartened that their typical viewers have evolved with them and moved on from older men to younger dreamers and doers.

When Nikki Henderson wrote her ‘Across the Atlantic with Greta’ account for Yachting World last year, she put Sailing La Vagabonde’s success down to the relatability of Riley and Elayna. I’d add to that their genuine desire to communicate the positives of sailing.

“One of the main things is getting people interested in sailing that aren’t already sailors. That’s really cool,” thinks Riley. Somewhat influenced, I couldn’t agree more.

If you enjoyed this….

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DOGGONE DAYS ON CATAMARAN IMPI

ting up with Brent and Ana from Catamaran Impi is a breath taking experience – the intrepid travellers have been sailing their Lagoon 440 around the world for many years now and their video blogs have quite a following.

The ever present GoPro is pulling viewers in with stunning scenery and exciting takes of extreme sailing.

One of their latest adventures saw them crossing paths with Moose the Island Dog on Casy Isle, New Caledonia. The connection between Brent and Ana and Moose is clearly very special. Watch as Moose dives off the jetty to catch a sea cucumber, and takes Brent and Ana on a guided tour of the island.  Cat-Impi.blogspot.com/

Top of mind for Brent and Ana right now is support for animal welfare around their beloved New Caledonia. Having met up with Moose, and having enjoyed some of their best sailing over the past few years in the region, they are determined to be a part of the solution.

To do this they are they are mobilising the sailing community to become aware of issues and to fundraise towards sustainable solutions.

For everyone who has ever run along a beach with their favourite canine, enjoyed a warm nuzzle for a pat on the head, dig deep for this worthy cause. Island Dog Moose is the celebrity front runner – with a little bit of a effort by the incredible cruising community could change the outcome for hundreds of animals for the future.

Brent and Ana have joined up with  Down Under Rally , the Australian support website for rally sailing to New Caledonia. Their initiative has been added to the established program  Cruising with a Cause . The Down Under Rally are now proud supporters and patrons of   Bien Naître Animal  New Caledonia and have got behind the program with a call to action for their members. This where you come in.

Special announcement: For every vessel that registers as a participant in the 2017 Down Under “Go East” Rally the  Down Under Rally  will donate the amount of  $36.00 (AUD) to  Bien Naître Animal New Caledonia . This is the cost of a one year membership for one person. The membership will be created in the name of the person provided at the time of the vessel registering for the rally. Details and donations here.

Cat-Impi and Moose – How it all came about Subsequent visits to Casy Island by Cat-Impi included a Flying Vet visit by local New Caledonian vet Guy Kane. On their second visit, it was obvious Moose was unwell. Brent and Ana ensured he got proper care. Both agreed they needed to provide ongoing care and soon they were dealing with the wider issue of Animal Welfare in New Caledonia.

If you enjoy seeing sailing experiences first hand or if your life needs an Aha! moment, join Brent and Ana on their adventures  Cat-Impi.blogspot.com/  – or if you have a GoPro lying dormant, dig it out and get filming. Brent makes it look really easy!

Note: We can’t promise you will be content with your humdrum life after encountering this remarkable couple

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In Moscow we offer you a city tour to discover most of the city in an original way as well as a night tour to admire the lights. Our pubcrawl is ideal to explore Moscow’s night-life and have fun. If you are craving to discover Russian culture, come impress your senses during our monastery diner or join our 100% Russian Banya Excursion . The latest will also bring you to Sergiyev Posad and it’s famous monastery!

For the most extreme travellers, our shooting tour will deliver your daily dose of adrenaline whereas our tank excursion will let you ride a real tank and shoot a bazooka.

We also offer help to receive your visa , safe and multilingual airport transfers , as well as organisation services for team-building events or bachelor parties .

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