We’re Austin & Leigh

Hi! We are Austin and Leigh and before RV life we were living in beautiful Charleston, SC. We were married and bought our first home in 2014. Our house was a 1960’s home built on a tidal creek. It was amazing to be able to live on the water, but as Hurricanes Matthew and then Irma rolled through Charleston (and left us with flood damage) we began to think a little differently.

Not sure where we would live once our house sold, we started exploring options. We loved where we lived but we have both always craved adventure. After a month spent in Europe in 2017 and another month in South Africa in 2018, we decided that once our house sold we would buy an RV and explore the USA. We both work remotely so we feel fortunate that life has given us a window to fulfill this dream.

After two years of exploring the United States, we decided to take this journey to the water and buy a sailboat. We bought a 1979 Allied Seawind II in November of 2020 and set sail for the Bahamas in December.

How We Got Here

2016

October 8

Hurricane Matthew

Hurricane Matthew was kind of fun in the week leading up to it. Everyone got off of work, and there were neighborhood get togethers every evening. The actual storm was not fun though. Our crawlspace flooded which meant we had to replace all of our ductwork and AC units. We were 6 inches away from getting water in the house, so it could have been worse.

2017

September 11

Hurricane Irma

Less than a year later, Irma was swirling around in the Atlantic. We thought we would be ok until the day before Irma was set to brush by Charleston. We realized 24 hours before that we would experience storm surge like we did with Matthew – maybe worse. We frantically prepped the house all day. The day of the hurricane we stress baked lasagna and watched the water rise. It was in that moment as we were waiting on high tide to see how high the water would get that we decided we didn’t want to deal with this any more.

2018

January 30

House for Sale

We listed our house and hopped on a plane to South Africa for a month. We hoped we’d be under contract by the time we returned.

May 5

The RV Idea

After three months on the market and no ideas of where to live next, we stumbled onto the idea of buying an RV to live in while we figured things out. We visited Camping World to get ideas because neither of us had slept in one before.

May 29

Buy the Bounder

The more we researched, the more we were sold on the idea of RV living. We found an old Bounder on Facebook Marketplace of all things and decided it was the one. With no leads on our house, we bought the Bounder with the intention of renovating over a few months.

June 15

House Under Contract

We are finally under contract on the house! The new owners want to close in less than 3 weeks so this moves up our renovation timeline quite a bit. We bring the RV home from the storage lot and get to work.

July 17