NautiStyles: A YouTube Channel in Nautical Mode
Victoria and Rico are the creators of NautiStyles, a YouTube channel with more than 500,000 subscribers. During the presentation of a catamaran, we had the opportunity to meet them and discover their story — a nautical and media story, and above all, a story full of adventure.
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Publié le
11/04/2025
Par
Dominic Salander
Numéro :
201
Parution :
May.
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Jun.
2025
Victoria: I grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia. But I always dreamed of becoming a film director, so at 16, I moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA film school and pursue my dream. It’s a very competitive business, and to make a living, I started acting in movies and TV shows, soon after transitioning to commercials. I ended up joining the Screen Actors Guild and working in Hollywood for over 20 years, something I would have never imagined my life would be like growing up. As a passion project, I created Fashion Minga, which went on to become the largest audience show during LA Fashion Week.
Rico : I was born and raised in Germany. After four years in the military, I spent six years working as a paramedic with thoughts of becoming a firefighter, but my passion was house music and DJing. Hazards of life sometimes make you want to change direction, and so at the age of 27, having just been accepted into the fire department, I decided to drop everything and move to Los Angeles to pursue my dream of becoming a DJ. It was not an easy path, but I was fortunate enough to make my living doing what I love, playing alongside some of the world’s biggest DJs in major nightclubs and festivals, becoming a resident DJ for Insomniac Events, and even getting to play on the main stage at EDC Orlando, a festival with over 100,000 attendees. I was hired as a DJ on the popular TV show Castle when I met Victoria, and we hit it off immediately.
MW: What brought you to boating?
Rico: When Victoria and I got together, we realized we shared a passion for boating and living on the water. So, I got ASA-certified, we joined a sailing club, started chartering monohulls, and quickly moved up to our dream goal—catamarans. Our plan was to gain enough experience and save some money to buy our own boat to take people on whale-watching trips.
Victoria: In the meantime, I joined a Whale Watching School to become a certified Marine Naturalist, started volunteering at the longest-running migration census observing gray whales, and we got our USCG Captain Licenses while looking for the perfect center console for our charters. During our search, we realized that we could combine our big dream of living aboard with the charter business—so that’s how we ended up buying our first liveaboard Meridian 408 and living on it for eight years, with the plan to step up to a larger catamaran in the future.
MW: What was the turning point in your business?
Rico: As we started to make more connections in the boating industry, one thing led to another, and I ended up opening a yacht management company, which later expanded into a marine dealership, called RJ Nautical.
Victoria: Things were going well - I was still working in Hollywood but had just sold the fashion show business and had a little more time on my hands for another passion project that had been brewing in my head for a while: a nautical blog. I felt there was a big content gap when it came to women in boating and yachting, so I started NautiStyles.com and using social media. While attending local boat shows, I started doing boat walkthroughs on Facebook Live. They were getting lots of traction, and Rico convinced me to start a YouTube channel right before COVID started at the end of 2019.
Hull #1 of the Sunreef 60 Eco was our first video, because we’ve always been catamaran fans. To my surprise, the video went viral and monetized the channel. I posted one more tour of a mega yacht, it went viral as well, and the rest is history. In April 2020, I quit my Holly- wood job and became a full-time YouTuber—oh, shall I say, YachtTuber!
MW: Were you still planning to buy a catamaran?
Victoria & Rico: Absolutely. We were working hard, saving, and actively searching for that perfect catamaran!
However, things took an interesting turn in 2021 when we filmed a Bering 77, a real steel explorer yacht, at their shipyard in Turkey. We were completely blown away by how they build their smaller vessels (under 80 feet) to the same standards as their superyachts, and once again, that video tour went viral!
At that point, we were very close to signing a contract on a 70-foot power cat, and now we were obsessed with having a Bering Yacht. Unfortunately, they didn’t yet have a catamaran in their catalog, so we decided to put our catamaran dreams on hold and ordered a Bering 82 instead. But we are proud to say that after two years of persuading the Bering Team to start building catamarans… they finally gave in and are now offering a range of 60’, 70’ and 80’ full-aluminum long-range explorer power cats.
MW: Do shipyards pay you to film their boats?
Victoria & Rico: Absolutely not! From the start, we decided to keep our independence and not charge or get paid by boat brands for our yacht tours. This way, we get to tour what we feel our audience will find interesting, keep our creative freedom, and never betray the trust of our subscriber base. We get paid by YouTube revenue, and the yacht brands get exposure and leads at no charge – it’s a win-win!
MW: What does the future hold for you?
Victoria & Rico: To start with, we’re awaiting delivery of our Bering 82 later this year. To keep up with the project, we’ve created a second YouTube channel, Nautiguys, dedicated solely to our “mini- superyacht” Bering 82 “ADAMAS”. When the boat is ready, we can’t wait to start chartering in the Bahamas, as we already have some bookings for the end of 2025. We also recently purchased a canal-front property with almost 300 feet of dock space to be a home base for “ADAMAS“ and potentially rent out the rest to a couple more vessels.
Just over a year ago, Bering asked us to take on the position of Sales Manager for the Americas and Caribbean, and we have been pretty busy with this project. One of our American clients is now building a Bering BC80, an absolute monster of a catamaran, and we are looking forward to helping more people realize their dream of owning an Explorer Yacht. We are also working on a couple of very interesting new ventures at the moment that we can’t wait to share more about soon. And who knows — there might be a multihull in our future…
