Photos and diagrams referenced in this audiobook live on a website, according to the last line of the publisher's copy. That single sentence deserves reading twice before anyone buys a practical guide in audio form, because it means the boat-selection material, the outfitting sections, and whatever the diagrams illustrate are not in the six hours and twenty-six minutes Liam Gerrard recorded. They are somewhere else, and reaching them requires stopping the recording and opening a browser. Tantor Media issued this in April 2021, and nobody who has written about it since so much as mentions the arrangement, which leaves a buyer to work out the practical cost alone.
What Rick Page Delivers
Rick Page's argument is that the belief holding people back is a false one. The idea that you have to be rich to sail the world on your own boat goes largely unquestioned, the copy says, propped up by endless pictures of wealthy men sipping martinis on superyachts, and the book exists to dismantle that. Page has some standing to make the case: his appearance on Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild covered the budget life he actually leads aboard Calypso, and the book is pitched at the audience that program reached, people who had never considered that the dream might be affordable. The pitch names both halves of the audience: anyone not rich who wants to see the world from the deck of their own boat, and any experienced sailor looking to cut through the marketing and work out what is genuinely needed at sea.
Six hours and twenty-six minutes makes a lean container for this much practical content, and the reviews suggest the compression is deliberate. The praise is consistently about tone before substance: an engaging, humorous, direct style; writing that reads like a conversation; witty, conversational, and no-frills. Underneath that, one reader lists what actually gets covered, naming boat selection, boat outfitting, and financial advice aimed at reframing a mindset. The book is trying to remove an obstacle that is psychological as much as financial, and the brevity is part of the method.
What Rick Page Gets Right
Liam Gerrard reads it, alone, and the record names no other production credit beyond Tantor Media. For a guide built on a first-person voice, a solo reading is the right structure, and the conversational register everyone describes should survive the transfer intact. What will not survive is anything visual, which brings the opening problem back around: this is the rare title where the format genuinely changes what you receive.
Trevor Bilquin's response is the strongest recommendation any book of this kind could hope for, and it is not about the prose. Two people used this book and its sequel to quit their jobs and move onto a thirty-four foot sailboat, and the response was written from Scotland, where they now live aboard. The stated condition matters: the claim is that following the recommendations produced the result, all of them, not a selection. That is a testimonial with a verifiable outcome attached, which is more than most practical guides ever collect.
Kevin S., writing this January, places the book on a specific shelf. Both of Page's titles now sit alongside a collection of Lin and Larry Pardey, and for anyone who knows that literature the comparison is a serious one. The response adds a useful qualifier: the writer has no sailing background and is not yet a sailor, but follows the logic anyway. A guide that works for someone with no experience and still earns a place beside the classics is doing two difficult things simultaneously. The phrase that response settles on, common sense and no nonsense information that works in the real world, is about as good a summary of the appeal as anyone has managed.
Where Rick Page Loses Some Ground
None of the five write-ups mentions the recording, the reader, or the format, and every one of them reaches for the language of reading. An amazing, accessible read. A very enjoyable read. Writing that reads like a conversation. That would be unremarkable on most listings, except that this one carries an audio-specific production note in its own copy, promising material that lives outside the recording. The people best placed to say whether that arrangement is a minor annoyance or a real handicap have said nothing about it at all.
Series metadata on this record is not much help either. The series field repeats the title exactly, Get Real, Get Gone, with the position given as one, which tells a buyer nothing that the title had not already said. One reviewer names the actual sequel, Stay Real, Stay Gone, and credits both books together for the life change described; a second refers to owning both without naming the other. The listing itself never names that sequel, so a listener who finishes this one and wants more has to go looking unaided.
Reddit is where at least one reader found this, on a liveaboard forum, which fits the chronology on the page. The audiobook came out in April 2021 and the earliest written response is dated June 2023, more than two years later. Nothing at all was posted during the first two years. That is the shape of a book spreading by recommendation instead of promotion, and it also means the star average sits on a very thin foundation: the vote counter reads two while five detailed write-ups sit openly beneath it, which means the number on top and the column beneath it are not counting the same population.
Who Should Pick Up Get Real, Get Gone
Anyone whose objection to the sailing dream is money should start here, because that objection is the entire subject. Page is writing for people who are not rich and want to see the world from the deck of their own boat, and also for experienced sailors who want out of what the copy calls consumerist yachting. The financial and psychological material is the core; the technical detail supports it. Six and a half hours is a small investment against a decision this size, and the shortest possible way to find out whether the dream survives contact with a budget spreadsheet.
Sailors who want rigging tables, navigation theory, or a maintenance reference should recognize that this is a mindset book with practical sections attached, not the reverse. And whoever listens will need the website open at some point, because the pictures are not coming through the speakers. Opening a browser mid-listen is a real cost, and six and a half hours still repay it.
The Short Version
- Read by: Liam Gerrard reads a practical guide whose photos and diagrams were kept out of the recording and posted to a website instead.
- At its heart: Budget cruising, boat selection and outfitting, escaping consumerist yachting, money as the only real obstacle.
- Vibe: Blunt, funny, and relentlessly practical.
- Short version: The most useful six hours and change available to anyone who assumes a boat is out of reach, pictures excepted.
