The next adventure

 

Having loved the idea or fantasy of a boat, thinking about how it works, and where it could take me has been a bit of an obsession since was a little kid playing with toy boats in the bathtub. I got pretty excited about the idea again after I graduated college and found myself doing some consulting work for the US Navy. I was doing pretty well financially and had been able to save a lot of money that seemed to growing exponentially as the dot.com bubble continued to rise. It was during this time that my wife and I first started talking about buying a sailboat, taking a year off to sail the East Coast and "the islands" for a bit before we had kids. Well the bubble burst and our cash stash did not look so promising anymore thus we put that dream on hold for a while. About 10yrs and two kids latter we came back to it and finally bought our first sailboat that we purchased in Sea Bright New Jersey. Concidently we flew up to look at it the same day Captain Sully landed the USAir flight in the river. We were actually scheduled to be on that flight but changed our plans at the last minute to go on an earlier flight. Getting back to the story we brought that boat back via the Erie Canal as documented in previous posts here and sailed it on the Great Lakes for a few years before upgrading to a bigger sail boat that we also enjoyed on the Great Lakes. Then COVID happened and my step mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. At that point we were reminded that time is finite and decided it was time to revisit the day dream buy a trawler and do The Great Loop with the hopes of one day doing more. Well it seems life is once again passing us by pretty fast and as Ferris Buller says "it's time to slow down to take a look around" once again. After completing the Loop and another year of prodding my wife we have expanded our goals and decided to try a circumnavigation. YouTubers make it look pretty easy, we should be able to manage this right? Seems my wife was not so confident in our abilities and frankly was not enthusiastic about an open timeline to complete it in. She likes seeing her friends and family regularly and frankly after a couple of days finds that I don't meet her conversational needs. So I went googling to see what kind of options might be available for group travel and came across the World Cruising Club. Over COVID we joined several of their virtual webinars to learn more, then went to one of their breakfast events during the Annapolis Sail Boat Show where they brought in several sailors that seemed just like us that had just completed the rally or were in the process of it. They did a great job of making it feel achievable and real. After that my wife was sold. We were going to do it.. One day.

Last summer I got a call from the Sailing Fleet Captain at our boat club asking if I was willing to stand in as the committee boat for the racing fleet that night. I said no problem but had no clue how to do the flags, horns, scoring, etc. He said no problem he would send a bunch of experts with me. After dropping anchor I got to talking to the guys with me and it turns out one of them had recently done an Atlantic crossing with a friend that went on to do the World Arc and he would put me in touch with the guy. After a few weeks of back and fourth I managed to set up a dinner with the this guys friend that had just made it back from his circumnavigation with the World Arc and only lived 15 minutes from us. I hate to admit it but I was in full fan boy mode and pretty excited to talk to both he and his wife about the adventure. I had found his blog and read everything I could find on them. After what felt like forever.. Maybe a week :) We finally got together for dinner with Eric and his wife Yong. They answered all our dumb questions and more and encouraged us to do the trip ensuring us it was much less intimating that it sounded. He was a fantastic resource for us and we even ran into him again at the Annapolis show again last fall. After that dinner we went home and decided it was time to put a date down to do the trip. We decided we are going to join the 2028-29 World Arc fleet. Now we just need to get the boy graduated from high school and sort out all these minor logistics like what do we do with the house, what do we do with the dogs, will the kids be ok at college if we are not in the country. Then there is the fun stuff like we need a new boat, what should that be (catamaran or mono haul, maybe a big trawler), what sails do we need, safety equipment, etc.

For a bit of background the World Cruising Club was initially started to help group folks together for Atlantic crossings then having helped a lot of folks tackle that task went on to create an around the world trip that they run once a year that follows the trade winds and allows cruisers to hop on and off with them at any time. If one follows their route/schedule it takes about 18 months to do the trip leaving from the Caribbean. From what we have been told some boats will stop for a season in Austrila or New Zealand then rejoin the next years group as they come back around allowing them to spend additional time in French Polynesia which I would like to do but may still be up for negotiations at our house. Below is there high level outline for the trip. There are several other groups that do similar rallies but a few of them require you own a certain boat (Oyster, Gun Boat, other) and there does seem to be a new one starting up soon but for now I think we are going with the ARC.

Route: First Half from Saint Lucia

Month	Details	Miles
January	Saint Lucia to Panama	1100 NM
	Sail independently to Colon, Panama
	Transit Panama Canal
February	Las Perlas to Galapagos	850 NM
	Cruise Galapagos
March	Galapagos to Hiva Oa, Marquesas	2980 NM
	Cruise French Polynesia
April	Cruise Society Islands
May	Bora Bora to Niue	1055 NM
	Niue to Vava'u, Tonga	230 NM
June	Tonga to Fiji	290 NM
	Cruise Fiji
July	Fiji to Tanna, Vanuatu	450 NM
	Cruise Vanuatu
	Port Vila, Vanuatu to Mackay, Australia	1150 NM
August	Cruise the Great Barrier Reef

Route: Second Half from Australia

Month	Details	Miles
September	Darwin to Lombok	920 NM
	Lombok to Christmas Island and Cocos	625 + 525 NM
October	Cocos to Mauritius	2350 NM
	Mauritius to Reunion	130 NM
November	Reunion to Richards Bay, South Africa	1370 NM
	Cruise South Africa
January	Cape Town - Namibia	715 NM
	Namibia - St Helena -Recife	1215 + 1785 NM
March	Recife to St George's, Grenada	2300 NM
	Cruise Caribbean
April	Saint Lucia parade of sail
	Final prize giving in Saint Lucia

We have lots to figure out and what seems like a long time to do it. I'm excited to have put a stake in the ground that we are going to do it. It gives us something to be excited about and a goal to be working toward maybe as a family. If it goes anything like our last trip everything will seem like it we have loads of time right up until the last two months before we have before we leave from the dock!