Destination Baeumler – Blue sky adventuring with HGTV stars Bryan, Sarah and their kids

A tale of blue sky adventuring with HGTV stars Bryan, Sarah and their kids

By Lorie Steiner

Explorers, risk takers and entrepreneurs, HGTV celebrities Bryan and Sarah Baeumler are forever taking on challenges when a new business opportunity pops up. Sometimes to the extreme – as in moving with their four children (Quintyn, Charlotte, Lincoln and Josephine ‘Jojo’) to Andros Island in the Bahamas to reimagine a derelict resort into a tropical paradise they call Caerula Mar Club. This loving power couple is fearless when it comes to bringing their ideas to life, but family always comes first, and fun is a main ingredient. 

I had the pleasure of speaking with the Baeumlers remotely – Bryan noted, “Sarah’s under a palm tree (Florida) and I’m by a frozen lake (Northern Ontario).” As you’ll discover, even when apart, they are totally in sync and already planning their next fabulous adventure for us to watch!  

H: How do you manage the balancing act between family and business when you’re juggling so much?

Bryan: I try to make Sarah laugh when I can. When she gets that angry look in her eye, I start cracking jokes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s dangerous. If you have a job and a family and friends and hobbies, you’re always searching for this state of equilibrium, but I don’t think anyone ever achieves it. Sometimes the kids need more attention and the business needs less. Or you have to take time from your marriage to focus on work or take time from work to focus on the kids. It’s like a clown on a unicycle trying to balance a chair on its nose, you’re constantly moving and adjusting. 

Sarah: We’ve learned that what works for us may not work for other people. We chat together and discuss things with our kids and understand what works for our family. I think that’s key. We’re able to turn the noise off from everyone else and focus on our family needs and our business needs and keep that top of mind.

H: How do you prioritize multiple ventures at the same time? Lists?

Sarah: Yes, Bryan makes fun of my lists and my notebooks and trying to keep everything moving along – especially with family and young kids. At this point in our career, everything is at a different stage. We have some businesses that Bryan started over 20 years ago, and others that we’re just looking at launching. It’s wonderful to see the evolution and then we can prioritize what needs our attention at any given time.

Bryan: We have a bit of a dreamer/realist relationship, where Sarah is 90% creative and dreamer and I’m 90% realist and 10% dreamer, and there’s that overlapping circle in the middle where ideas and dreams and reality meet. I’m often laying in bed awake until two in the morning with thoughts of businesses and opportunities floating around. When ideas continually come back, I start to take a deeper look at them and put them into Sarah’s dream pouch. Then we get some reality, and where they meet is the sweet spot.

H: When you first laid eyes on Caerula Mar, did you envision what it could ultimately be?

Bryan: It was not the Caerula Mar Club when we first laid eyes on it – it was a Walking Dead set. Abandoned, rusted, crab-filled… both of us look at something, whether it be piles of material or a building, and an image pops up in our head and we each see the finished product. It’s usually more expensive than I anticipated and more realistic or scaled down than Sarah’s initial vision. But the two in the middle just seem to work and today Caerula Mar is a dreamland where people enjoy spending time.

Sarah: Bryan and I are aligned in what we believe tourism and travel looks like. We don’t follow that mass tourism environment. We look at things that are more meaningful, experiential. We like to travel where there are smaller groups. Where things feel more off the beaten path, and you can explore. We have a family full of scuba divers and we love to be adventurous when we travel. That’s what we saw on the island of Andros, and especially Caerula Mar.

H: Were you able to bring eco-friendly practices into the resort?

Bryan: Well, we definitely reused. If you drive the 90 miles of Andros Island north and south, you’ll see bits and pieces of the hotel in almost every home. Doors and windows, electrical outfits, furniture, pots, plates, you name it. We donated materials to people from different settlements and there are now bars and restaurants on the island built with materials that came out of the old resort. Anywhere you’re going to do business, becoming a part of the community and giving back is important. We’re partnering with a lot of locals in the Bahamas on new businesses to help them provide a living for their families, as well as experiences for visitors coming in.

We’ve done a huge solar field on the roof of the hotel, as well. On many of the small islands here, all the power is generated with diesel generators, so the more load we can take off those reduces fuel consumption and environmental impact. 

Our ocean activities and our adventure team are into coral restoration. Until people experience the impact of ocean plastic on the reefs and fish, they don’t really connect with it. So, our resort experiences are very education-driven. Our kids even spearheaded some of it. We put in a small plastics recycling plant on the island, where ocean and beach plastics are collected and packaged for distribution and we’re looking at more ways of doing that. Every child you teach about it will stop them from throwing their garbage in the forest or the ocean or wherever they go. 

H: Has travel always been a big part of your family life?

Bryan: Every year, we used to go to Islamorada in the Florida Keys and rent a house for the month of March – Sarah and I started this before we were married and eventually with the kids. Because we worked a lot during the year and banked those hours, we spent them as a family. We ended up buying property there and the kids would jump off the back of the boat and swim with the manatees. So, we did in a way set them up for an adventuresome life on the ocean.

Sarah: Even prior to filming, we had family vacations that kind of set the stage for us. Islamorada became a second home for the kids, and it shaped their love of the ocean and being adventurous. When we started spending more time in the Bahamas, we realized that we’ve raised these young children to like the road less travelled and immerse themselves in a new environment and explore on their own. 

H: Is crossing borders by plane or in the RV all part of the norm for you now?

Bryan: Our head office is in Burlington, Ontario and the majority of our employees work from there, so we travel back and forth quite a bit. Then you throw in a little Bahamas trip once or twice a month from our home in Florida, as well. Being a pilot, I fly us, locally, to the Bahamas and anywhere in the southeastern US. For long haul trips, I’ve got my feet up and I’ll watch a movie and let someone else do the flying. 

RVing is great! We’re kind of like the farm boy met the Manhattan girl but Sarah does have fun with it. We throw the kids in the RV and I’ll take the scenic route, pull off at all the viewpoints. When we were renovating Caerula Mar, we lived on the island in a 690 sq. ft villa for three years with Sarah and I, four kids, two dogs, a lizard and a cat. So, we’re used to kind of being on top of each other. We had an incredible RV trip to the west coast, through Colorado and Utah, and the east coast to Newfoundland and back. I think if we’d been born 200 years ago, we would have been pirates or explorers. 

Sarah: Before we even started RV adventuring, we spent a lot of time on the boat. Another small, confined space where the children learned at a young age that everyone needs to help. Quintyn got good with fixing things on the boat, we all helped with food preparation, and we transferred that knowledge to RV lifestyle. We love planning where we’re going, who’s in charge of the map, what we want to see. It’s about involving your kids in the process and ours fell in love with the RV. We have streamlined what we pack… Bryan laughed when I stepped inside and said, “We just need to set this up a little better; I need some totes to put things away” and he let me. Now we can all live very comfortably in the RV.

H: There’s a fun Matt Damon movie called “We Bought a Zoo” that kind of parallels your life at times. You’ve taken on so many diverse projects that we, your fans, are wondering – What’s next on the HORIZON? 

Bryan: Put it this way, we’ve been working on something very big… definitely looking at more hospitality, more boats, more palm trees, more adventures – even the ocean, mountains. We’re not done yet. This is going to be a significantly larger, ‘oh my god they’re crazy, what are they doing now’ project – we bought a zoo! Haha, no, that would be easier… we live in a zoo some days!

Sarah: We took some time this year to think. Bryan’s been travelling, and it’s been hectic for both of us, and we finally looked at each other and said, “We’re ready now.” We’ve taken a breath to figure out what we really value and where we want to go next and what we want to do, and I think we’re aligned on this next chapter and eager to get started. There’s going to be exciting things coming everyone’s way.” 

So that’s it, you heard it here first – almost! Stay tuned…