With so many boats afloat what percentage of people actually live the dream of taking off and sail around the world. The answer is not many, according to Jimmy Cornell, probably around 250 boats circumnavigating at any one time. So what’s the impediment? To try and understand the answer we started with the questions we’re asked about our own lifestyle.
How do you afford it? Do you worry about health issues in remote places and offshore? What about pirates? What about storms? And probably the biggest question how do you leave friends, parents, children and grand-children behind?
Our answer to the first question about money is a mix of good fortune and planning. The cost of buying and maintaining a boat increases exponentially according to size so you have to match your choice of yacht with your available finances.
Being healthy enough to start the voyage may well be significantly down to luck and keeping it that way is about attending medical courses and having decent medical resources aboard to keep any minor issues that way and stop them from escalating.
Fi and Jon
So far as piracy is concerned, we plan to be as far away as possible from known hotspots and plan our routes accordingly.
With satellite phone connections and downloaded weather files we keep abreast of any real-time storm issues and with the help of pilot books we observe ‘no-go’ areas during hurricane seasons - so far this has worked for us.
‘Cutting’ the traditional family ties is certainly the most difficult and we suspect the biggest factor in stopping more people from doing what we’re doing. It’s especially difficult, and brought back into focus, when we make those trips back to see family and friends, just as we’ve done for three weeks this February. Skype is a wonderful tool for keeping in touch when connected to the internet and we certainly make regular contact when we can, however, there are significant gaps when we’re offshore or in remote places. Untying the reins was certainly very difficult when we first moved onto Amelie and then we have to replicate that each time we visit - it’s tough.
One thing we notice during our visits is how little time we spend talking about our adventures. Apart from pretty superficial enquiries about where we’ve been and where we’re going, conversations seem to focus on reminiscing what did happen in our former lives and what is going on now in what we used to call home. This was a big surprise to us. It’s as if our cutting the traditional ties is the big elephant in the room and we all get along by ignoring it! Having said that we had a brilliant three weeks back in the UK and many people made a big effort for us, many coming to see us, bearing in mind it’s just impossible for us to do all the travelling whilst back.
The grand-child and parents are pretty tough to be away from because things can change so quickly. Stephen lost both his parents within a year of setting off and having been in the UK when Charlotte, our grand-child was born, she was then 21 months old when we returned and we missed the firsts of walking and talking.
The children are especially difficult to be away from because we’re not there for them to celebrate their successes and not there to support them with there challenges.
We’re enjoying our retirement as an entirely new chapter in our lives and revelling the adventure, new experiences and friendships so speaking for ourselves, not our family and friends, we do think this is worth it and we’ll just have to take the pain of being in a different country from our family and from our friends in what we used to call home.