For the past decade, the couple has lived aboard a 13-meter-long sailing yacht, traveling across the Pacific and at times raising their three children at sea. Their floating home has taken them from San Francisco to South America and as far as New Zealand.<\/p>\n
They aren\u2019t retired early or backed by generational wealth. Instead, their nomadic life is powered by something far more practical: Lauducci\u2019s flexible nursing job in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n
About every five or six weeks, Lauducci flies from wherever the boat is docked\u2014most recently in Mexico\u2014back to the Bay Area. She works eight 12-hour shifts as a per diem neonatal intensive care unit nurse, making over $100 an hour. While per diem roles don\u2019t guarantee shifts, they offer far more control over scheduling\u2014and in Lauducci\u2019s case, enough pay to cover her family\u2019s expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat rhythm is what makes this life possible,\u201d the 44-year-old told Fortune<\/em> from the airport, en route back to Luana<\/em>, the family\u2019s newest vessel.<\/p>\n The arrangement might sound extreme, but it\u2019s increasingly familiar at hospitals across high-cost cities like San Francisco.\u00a0In fact, there\u2019s a growing class of workers who live far from where they\u2019re employed, compress their schedules, and travel long distances to make the math work.<\/p>\n Lauducci is one of them: a supercommuter.<\/p>\n Lauducci has worked as a nurse for more than 20 years and started out full-time, with stints as a travel nurse along the way. But as she gained seniority at her Bay Area hospital, she began to notice a different path emerging, one taken by per diem nurses who traded predictability for flexibility.<\/p>\n Some would fly overseas after completing their required shifts. Others lived out of vans, exploring the U.S. between work stints. What they shared was a willingness to reorganize their lives around compressed schedules.<\/p>\n This idea of supercommuting has long existed across the corporate ladder, from interns to CEOs. But its popularity soared during the pandemic, when workers got a glimpse of a calmer, cheaper life outside major cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Researchers from Stanford found that the share of workers in the 10 largest U.S. cities who commuted more than 75 miles each way had grown more than 32% since the pandemic. In the U.K., Trainline found that the number of Brits spending more than three hours getting to work and back has doubled since before COVID.<\/p>\n Work-life balance also now matters more than ever. A report released last month found that it has overtaken both pay and job security as the most important factor for job seekers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The healthcare system\u2014under pressure to fill critical roles while reducing burnout\u2014has thus increasingly made room for flexibility, particularly for experienced nurses whom hospitals are eager to retain. For Lauducci, that means if she miscalculates time to port and misses her flight, preventing her from working a shift, it\u2019s not the end of the world.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can self-cancel (a shift) and they don\u2019t cry about it,\u201d Lauducci said.<\/p>\n Courtney El Refai is another example. She is also a nurse working in the Bay Area, but her home is some 5,000 miles away in Sweden.\u00a0<\/p>\n She stacks the four-shifts-a-month requirement together at the end of one month and the beginning of the next. So she spends about 10 days working eight shifts in California before heading back to Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cThe commute is absolutely outrageous, but imagine having six weeks off after working 10 days on a repeated pattern,\u201d she said in a TikTok video that\u2019s racked up over 500,000 views.<\/p>\n Moreover, since her husband and daughter made the move to Europe last year, she said she\u2019s been enjoying an enhanced work-life balance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt basically feels like I am a stay-at-home mom, but I\u2019m still a working mom\u2026\u201d El Refai said. \u201cThat is something no 9-to-5 job will ever give me.\u201d<\/p>\n With the median sale price for a home in San Francisco being $1.48 million\u2014241% higher than the national average\u2014living almost anywhere else is going to be financially lower, including a sailboat.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lauducci said the low-consumption lifestyle was part of what drew her to her husband, who grew up sailing and once lived in a low-income artist co-op. Today, the couple is intentional about keeping costs down.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t spend much time in marinas, so when we anchor, it\u2019s free. We sail, so we\u2019re not using much energy. We create energy through solar power. We make our own water through a desalinator,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Josie Lauducci and her family once sailed from San Francisco to New Zealand, a trip that took over three years. (Photo courtesy of Josie Lauducci)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n One of the most common criticisms she hears is about retirement. Lauducci understands the concern but rejects the idea that security must come from \u201cthe golden handcuffs of the pension.\u201d She still contributes to a retirement account and worked long enough full-time to become vested.<\/p>\n While two of their three children have since grown older and moved on to college or careers, she said life at sea gave them a rare perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cYour kids aren\u2019t just out there by themselves,\u201d she said. \u201cYou end up on the same sailing trajectory as other families, and you meet up at the beach, or you do potlucks on each other\u2019s boats, and it\u2019s just a real, instant community.\u201d<\/p>\n And thanks to Starlink satellite internet, staying connected\u2014when they want to be\u2014is easier than ever, whether that means downloading a school project for their 12-year-old, checking the weather, or mapping out the route to their next adventure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe rise of supercommuting<\/h2>\n
Life on the open waters<\/h2>\n
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