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Chapter 1: What inspired Captain Ben Swanson to rebuild a derelict yacht?
I lost 100 days of my life in the hospital, and I find Discovery in a derelict state shortly out of the hospital. It's kind of interesting of who rebuilt who, because Discovery was kind of some of my reborn identity coming out of
burn accident and raising a family that was just thousands and thousands of hours of blood sweat and literal tears transforming it from basically a derelict captain ben swanson is a seasoned mariner entrepreneur and the founder of discovery journeys drawing from a lifelong dream and a decades-long journey of perseverance he creates unforgettable experiences on the waters of alaska while inspiring others to pursue their passions overcome adversity and define success beyond financial achievement
You almost live in a Discovery Channel or National Geographic. Wildlife around every corner, fresh food for dinner. Every now and then you've got to pinch yourself and just say, you're living somebody's dream.
It spans the globe like a super high school internet. Elvis! Elvis! Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. It's not over until I win. The Living Your Legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. That's extraordinary. The impossible. Oh, that is sensational. Open.
Chapter 2: How did a burn accident change Ben's perspective on life?
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Welcome back to another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast. For Inside Success, I am Ray Gutierrez. Joining me today is another amazing legacy maker, Bence Swanson. Bence Swanson has transformed a neglected yacht into a world-class vessel, sharing the beauty of Alaska with guests from around the globe. Good God, man. How does one get into sharing the beauty of Alaska around the globe?
Well, fortunately for me, my dad was my or my folks were pretty adventurous. Right on. So my dad was a commercial fisherman in the 70s in southeast Alaska and fell in love with southeast Alaska. But the reality of having a wife and young son at home was they were apart a lot.
Trying to combine both worlds, he ended up selling the fishing boat and buying a sailboat, which originally we were going to sail around the world. Right on. And just as life happens, things change, circumstances change. And we ended up exploring Alaska with that boat. And that was in 1980. And so I grew up doing it. I grew up on boats.
Some very early memories are on and around the water, living on a boat. We moved on board when I was eight years old. And until I left home at 17, we lived on a boat.
I got to preface this with a small story. Living on a boat. Like, we're on a boat. Sorry. One of my first early clients, I'm born and raised in Miami, fresh out of high school. One of my first early clients, he lived on a sailboat with his twin kids and his model wife, and they would travel around the world, and he was a photographer.
I'm like, wow, here I am thinking I'm all cool living in Miami, but this MFR is living on a freaking boat.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Ben face while transforming the yacht?
Talk about the lifestyle of being on a boat versus being inland like us simpletons.
Well, it's an interesting question because you really don't know the difference until you know. I mean, as I said, some of my youngest memories were on board a boat. There's just so much to do. There's so much recreation. Yes, sir. There's no necessarily yard to go play in, no cats or dogs, no farm animals, none of that kind of stuff. But the marina, boats, I... Had probably my own boat.
My dad's friend built me when I was eight years old. Wow. So I put, I don't know, tens of thousands of miles on a rowboat. And then when when I could find a outboard motor and make it run, somebody would give you or something. So went from rowing to motors and haven't looked back since.
That's crazy. It's almost like speaking to like a dancer that starts being a ballet dancer and they end up doing hip hop. Like there's obviously like a transition there. I always find people that just have their, their Navy stripes so profound and leave a completely different life.
How similar is your life to say a pirate or, you know, give us the fun, give us the fun stats of what it's like to live in the open seas.
Yeah.
Well, it's almost unfair in some ways. I mean, the arduous task of working on the boat and restoring it to the condition that it's in, that was just hours and hours, thousands and thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and literal tears, getting it, transforming it from, as you said in the opening, basically a derelict... It would likely have not sold had I not bought it. Oh, sure.
And it was just my dream to make a fancy classic yacht. And it had the bones for it. That's what it started as. Sure, sure. And just years of neglect, what we brought it back from. And it's become amazing. But to your question of the lifestyle, once moving past all that, and even now, because it's an old wooden boat, it takes a lot of man hours of
uh of labor off season but when you're there uh we have a lot a lot of repeat guests oh for sure that of course start its guests and become friends that have uh taken as many as 22 trips but a lot of guests that have taken five or six cruises that we've visited in the off season and um They're paying us good money to come and you almost live in a Discovery Channel or National Geographic.
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Chapter 4: How does living on a boat differ from living on land?
For sure. What inspired you to renovate this boat, to save this boat and put your blood, sweat and tears literally onto this boat and then manifest it into what you created today?
Well, the onset was a lack of money. So, as I mentioned, it was good. It had great bones to start with. The hull and the integrity of the boat was good. The years of neglect, I guess from a young age... my folks were kind of misers because they started this adventure tour company when it really wasn't a thing. Oh, sure. So we were the first charter operators in Southeast Alaska in that era.
And there's just no internet. It was hard getting the word out. So it was meager financially. And they kept that throughout there and still to this day are a bit meager in spending. So Even though my dad had owned several classic yachts, he almost wasn't willing to give them the time and attention and money that they deserved.
And so I was able to just... From a young age, I kept... It was kind of a dream, basically, to just take one of these boats to completion. And Discovery just happened to fit that bill. So it was a long time coming, but 25 years of...
of painstaking labor and now it's just such a great that's awesome platform to see alaska that's great i gotta ask when when you are when you were uh painting and when you were bringing it to life what was going on through your head did you have like a a fan of people cheering you on did you kind of envision like gosh i can't wait till it's done because this is gonna happen that's gonna happen what was keeping you motivated especially in such a a lonely derelict place like
Alaska and you're just there like brushing away like I'll show them like what was going on through your head bub at that time it started to become it was a passion but um my wife and I had three we had a young son at when we bought the boat and then um later had two other boys so um so it was there was a lot of driving factors to build something successful for sure
That one day they could, in an ideal scenario, that they can take it over and enjoy some of that livelihood. Literally building a legacy. Yeah, yeah. I was young and ambitious. Coming out of the hospital, I lost 100 days of my life in the hospital. And I kind of was like, gosh, I got to make that 100 days up. Funny enough, I don't know that I knew that then.
But subconsciously, that must have been going on. And the satisfaction of... There are so many compartments in the boat from the wheelhouse to the galley to the guest accommodations. And so finishing one of those projects and that reward, like when you paint a room, for example, that reward is just so satisfying that that kind of keeps you going.
And then you're inspired to, well, what could I do better in this room or that room? And so that's taken place on the boat since 1998, basically.
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