I am writing to share the news of our family’s upcoming sailing adventure. Mark and I have dreamed of and are planning to sail around the world when we retire. However, we have recently decided to bump up our departure date and sailing plan to include our girls…not around the world (at this time) but for a 2 year stint through much of the Caribbean—leaving from Florida this November and returning to Wilmette for the fall of 2019. We hope our journey will take us south through the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Haiti, Dominican, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, St. Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and down to Grenada. From there, we plan to head back north by way of Trinidad, Venezuela, Panama, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, and back to Florida. I’m sure our plans will change a hundred times before we return home (and likely before we even head out). I am looking forward to many new adventures sailing, boat schooling, learning about new cultures, and living a different lifestyle. We are still learning lots about the best ways to stay in touch, where to blog, packing lists, food lists, boat parts lists, and things we don’t even know about yet.
So, if your children come home and tell you that Heidi, Lucy, or Sally is going on a sailing trip—we are! We look forward to a new and different lifestyle camping on the water. The girls will all be learning how to sail, how to stand watch on ocean passages, how to fish, how to wash laundry in a 5 gallon bucket using seawater, right along beside us.
In the meantime, we are purging all kinds of household stuff, looking for renters, thinking about property managers for our house, inexpensive storage units, etc.
We look forward to sharing more as we get closer. And, we would love to have visitors and/or meet up with friends along the way. Now, to find a boat…