Welcome to our family travel blog!
We are accidental sailors but life long travellers.
My name is Vanja, I am the chief blogger of the family and share this journey with my partner Graham, and our two children, Lara and Jake.
The seed for our cruising journey was planted back in 2011 on a short holiday in Fiji, when we spotted a sailboat anchored near our small island resort. As the family with three small children came to shore every day, the story of their travels spread like fire among the resort guests.
They live and travel with their children on that tiny monohull? They just sailed here from New Zealand? How?!
Whilst impressed with the perceived fearlessness, cruising as a mode of travel was such a remote concept back then that I didn't give it much thought once the initial awe had settled. I was pregnant with our second child Jake then, so you could say we had other things on our mind.
Fast forward a few years and it's 2016, we're living in a newly renovated beach house in Newcastle, Australia with our young children Lara and Jake. Life is pretty good if somewhat hectic when Graham casually mentions boats again. Could we buy one and give it a go?
Cruising vloggers like Delos and La Vagabond had just taken off and Graham was definitely a keen convert. I was a little less sure about the chosen mode of transport but intrigued enough to indulge this middle aged crisis, in theory at least. Or so I thought.
It should be said, we both really love travel and have spent a few unforgettable years backpacking around South America, Europe and Asia in our 20s. Exploring new places makes me come alive more than anything else in life. Wild horizons, eccentric modes of transport, new food, languages and funny misunderstandings make my heart beat with purpose. Having lived a life of constant change from a young age, I am not afraid to mix it up. Still.
Living on a sail boat was an entirely left field idea. Mentioning it to friends and family invited the predictable questions. What about weather? School? Medical care? Staying in touch with family and friends? The list goes on. We continued to chew on the idea, chat, watch some videos and let our minds actually get used to the concept.
Graham persisted with his grand ideas, bought some books on world cruising routes, sailing in storms and the boat mechanical manual, none of which I would read in full except for browsing the storm book for hours in sheer fascination. Credit for fully turning me around to the idea of sailing around the world goes to Bumfuzzle, a book written by a traveller who had just enough devil may care attitude which I could relate to.
The rest is history - we bought our first boat, a small catamaran we named Toc at the end of 2017. We signed up for a basic sailing course at the Newcastle Yacht Club which was fun but really irrelevant to what we were about to face. Then an ocean crossing with a professional skipper, I sailed from New Caledonia to NZ and Graham from NZ to Sydney to get some ocean sailing experience. Useful in that I realised I wasn't afraid of the water, in fact I found it quite exhilarating.
Then we packed up, sold the house and the possessions and motored away into the sunset in June 2019 when Lara was 9 and Jake 7. Whilst this sounds drastic, it was a six month period of decluttering, both before the sale of the house to clean up, and after. It felt good to get rid of possessions, after almost a decade with kids, we had accumulated so much junk. After I was done with it, we were left with maybe six boxes of memorabilia. Very freeing!
Four years later, we're onto our second catamaran now, which is bigger, faster and more comfortable. The kids are teen and pre-teen now, we've survived the covid years and our spirit for adventure is stronger than ever.
This blog is a little insight into our world. It's definitely not a story about the technicalities of sailing except for when things go wrong, which I describe in great detail in order to debrief and process :)
This is a story about people, places, animals, nature, food and everything else that makes travel enjoyable, frustrating and memorable. It's a reminder that people largely enjoy the same things with different spices wherever we happen to dock. More than anything, it is a reminder that we live on a beautiful but fragile planet which needs us to look after it if humanity is to survive and thrive.
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