One Direct Message Changed Everything for This Engineer, Forcing Her to Abandon Her Stable Life for a Dangerous Journey Across the Pacific
Going against the tide.
One direct message from a stranger on a sailboat crew-finding website sent Amanda Hi-c on a journey that would uproot her entire life. After nearly a decade as a civil engineer in Los Angeles, she quit her job, packed up her belongings, and set sail across the Pacific Ocean. What started as a one-year adventure turned into a years-long exploration of remote islands, coral reefs, and a new career in marine conservation.
Hi-c had spent years building the life she thought she wanted. A stable engineering career, a downtown apartment, and a clear path forward on paper, everything looked perfect. But beneath the surface, she felt increasingly disconnected. “Even though this was the exact life I had systematically designed for myself, it felt like I was spending 95% of my life waiting for the three weeks of vacation I got each year,” she said, according to PEOPLE.
The future she had carefully planned no longer excited her. The turning point came after her mother’s death, which forced her to confront a question she had been avoiding. “What am I doing with my life?” she wondered. The answer didn’t come immediately
A series of experiences began to reshape her perspective
In 2018, a friend invited her to get scuba certified in Honduras. The moment she breathed underwater for the first time, something clicked. “Every dive felt like waking up a part of myself that had been asleep for a long time,” she said. “I was instantly hooked.” A few months later, another trip to Portugal’s Azores islands introduced her to a different way of living. Sailing with friends, she met people who had built their lives around travel, living on boats and exploring remote corners of the world.
Swimming with oceanic manta rays and watching dolphins race beside the boat left a lasting impression. When she returned to Los Angeles, the idea of a different life had already taken root. “I became completely fascinated by the idea,” she said. “When the trip ended, I returned to Los Angeles and went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘One day, I want to do that.'”
Instead of making an impulsive decision, Hi-c began preparing for the possibility of change. She embraced the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement, downsized her lifestyle, and saved aggressively. She created a profile on a sailboat crew-finding website, not expecting much – until a message arrived from a captain planning a round-the-world voyage.
“Hey, I’m leaving from San Diego on November 1st to sail around the world. Are you interested?” the message read. After meeting the captain in person and deciding he “probably wasn’t a serial killer,” she quit her engineering job the next day.
Within weeks, she was living on a sailboat, leaving California behind
What she thought would be a regular adventure stretched into two years at sea. The journey took her down the coast of Mexico, across the Pacific Ocean, and through the remote islands of the South Pacific. Her days were filled with snorkeling over coral reefs, exploring tiny islands, and encountering marine life unlike anything she had seen before. “The South Pacific was where my love of underwater photography and coral reefs really began,” she said.
That passion deepened after she met a couple who worked as underwater photographers. Inspired, Hi-c picked up a camera and started documenting her experiences. What began as a way to share her travels with friends and family evolved into something more meaningful. The more time she spent underwater, the more she wanted to understand the ecosystems she was photographing and the challenges they faced.
After two years at sea, Hi-c realized she wanted to spend less time sailing and more time underwater. She began volunteering with marine conservation projects in Borneo before joining coral restoration initiatives in Indonesia.
Today, she works with Ocean Gardener and Murex Resorts in North Sulawesi, where she helps maintain coral nurseries, restore damaged reefs, and educate visitors about marine conservation. She also shares her work on Instagram and TikTok, where her videos have reached thousands of viewers.
Hi-c describes her role as an ‘underwater gardener’
“Just like a land gardener grows plants, removes weeds, and manages pests, we do those same things underwater,” she said. Her days involve growing coral fragments, monitoring reef health, and transplanting coral onto damaged sections of reef.
Along the way, she has witnessed both the beauty of thriving ecosystems and the growing threats facing coral reefs worldwide. “Coral reefs support an incredible amount of life, but they’re facing immense pressure from climate change, overfishing, pollution, disease, and destructive fishing practices,” she said.
Despite the challenges, the work provides moments of hope. One of her favorite experiences is returning to a restoration site months later and seeing fish and marine life return to areas that once appeared barren. “If you take a dead rubble area, start dropping in some restoration structures and plant coral on them, you will literally start to see fish and marine life there by the end of the dive,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
Hi-c never could have predicted that a single message would become the important catalyst that led her across the Pacific and into a career restoring coral reefs. Her one lesson from the journey is that some of life’s biggest changes begin with the small decision to say ‘yes’. “I hope people recognize that when you feel a calling to do something else with your life, you should take it,” she said. “Don’t sit in the familiar, quiet discomfort for the rest of your life.”
(Featured image: Jeffry Surianto on Pexels)
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