They sailed down the east coast of the US to the Caribbean, south to Grenada, back up to Bermuda and across the North Atlantic to Med where they sailed through the Aegean, Adriatic and Libyan seas as far east as Turkey. They then crossed back across the Atlantic through the Caribbean and Panama to the South Pacific Islands where they are currently.
Readers can learn more about their cruise on their blog, Facebook, or via email.
They say: "We are enjoying a mobile home tour and global romp through the mid latitudes of our fine planet while we are still young enough to do it as a couple. We love laughter, beach fires, good stories and having our kids join us on adventures."
What was the most affordable area to cruise in your trip and the most expensive?
Turkey was the most affordable and high-end resort areas like St Barts, Mustique, Capri & the Amalfi coast, Santorini in Greece, and the Costa Smeralda of Sardinia were most expensive. When you see a helicopter parked by the pool on the deck of the boat next to you, expect prices to be scaled accordingly.
Generally the least expensive is where there are no stores and tourist locations to visit. Living off the land like remote locals is very close to free. The eastern Mediterranean (Turkey and to a lesser extent Greece) in 2015/16 offered food at a 20-30% discount of that of western Europe and the strong dollar offered another 30% discount. Gibraltar is amazing on fuel and booze. French Polynesia the locals offer fruit from their land for free and in some Tuamotu atolls we and others were given lobster for free or in exchange for a couple limes.
The most affordable places we’ve cruised have at least a few of the following criteria:
- Where there is low to no tourism or tourism is not a major industry. Living, eating and socializing as locals v.s. tourists is culturally rich and financially prudent.
- Where the food you chose to eat is grown locally and services are taught locally. Buying imported food or services is normally more expensive.
- Where we do not need to do boat work, the boat can be a major part of a budget.
- Where our US dollars have the best conversion ratio into the local currency. A strong dollar can create a 20-40% discount.
- Where your are able to speak the language. Negotiating in a foreign language is a tad more difficult.
Marina and mooring fees in some countries (Montenegro, Croatia, Italy) can add a lot to the budget. We prefer to anchor in less crowded anchorages. Where there is a nature reserve the extra fees can be well worth it: Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, Madalenas of Sardinia, Tobago Cays in the Grenadines, San Blas in Panama, the extra fees are well worth it. Even when grabbing a dock, most places will negotiate rates if they are not full. It helps to know the rates of the closest discount marina when negotiating.
Share a piece of cruising etiquette
Boating is steeped with traditions and etiquette. Where to start? Racing a dingy by a boat filled with white dressed, red wine holding cocktailers? Turning on your generator just as the sun is setting next to the couple meditating on the front deck next to you? Partying until sunrise with music blaring next to the boat that just crossed 2000 miles and have not slept a full night in several weeks? Running a mooring line from each side of your boat so it can quietly saw through the mooring leaving it ready to fail for the next boat? or Waiting until neighbors are enjoying a swim in the crystal clear waters to discharge your black water?
Cruiser rant: What is something that drives you crazy?
Even if it’s biodegradable, if it floats (citrus peels, fruit, crew members), don’t dump it overboard unless you’re well off shore. If it is plastic, or has plastic in it, NEVER dump it overboard.
What is your most common sail combination on passage?
We run an in-mast furled main sail and two furled head sails (Genoa and Screecher/Code Zero) that all get a lot of action. Direct downwind, wing-on-wing with Code 0 and Asymmetrical spinnaker or Genoa, depending on wind speed. We also love the Parasailor for effortless downwind sailing over a broader wind angle, though the combination of wing-on-wing headsails and or asymmetrical spinnaker tends to be faster for us.
What is something that you read or heard about cruising, that you didn't find to be true?
That we would sink to the bottom of the sea or be eaten by sharks or shot and raped by pirates. Most likely all of the above. That and cruising was really just working on a boat in beautiful places. We are still afloat and while we've swum with sharks and looked for pirates, neither has taken an interest in us yet. What we have found is that if you are disciplined and work on your boat on a daily basis, you can reasonably take at least one day a week to enjoy the adventure.
We were also slow to embrace having an in-mast furling system, but now we are converted. It offers flexibility of partial reefs, ability to reef single handed (more sleep for crew) and the safety of not having to go on deck in rough seas. Unless we were racing, we would not go back.
What piece of gear seems to break the most often?
My concentration, when I smell Ellen cooking something exotic, seems to break, but generally, if we have items break too often, we change manufacturers (my brain excepted). The Rule Bilge Pumps are pretty consistent in their sporadic life span given the little that they actually run. We also have a Sea Recovery Watermaker that was pure joy for a bit. It has a steel valve (Danfoss) that fails due to rust (must have been designed for saltwater during the pre-stainless era). We engineered a manual valve workaround that has eliminated any failures in the last year.
Tell me your favorite thing and your least favorite thing about your boat
What we like best about the Antares 44i is how well designed it is as a blue water cruising yacht for a couple on a global adventure. The comfort and safety of Antares’ protected helm is something we both appreciate, especially now that we’ve crossed many oceans and put in so many offshore miles in all kinds of weather. The Antares’ beautiful Brazilian cherry woodwork inside is so much warmer and more luxurious than we found on most of the other cats we looked at. From the shaft drives to dual Racors, we are very happy with Antares.
This turns Golden Glow into a big screen movie theatre. Butter up the popcorn.
Our beds are incredibly comfortable and our cabin is just the right combination of cozy and airy…we sleep better on our boat than anywhere else in the world.
Our least favorite thing is that we did not take the time for extended sailing 20 years sooner. We have a big family and were busy raising our children and getting them prepared for adulthood. Now we wish we’d spent more of their formative years sailing the world with them. The least favorite thing about our boat - when we gather together as a family (all ten of us), we could use a dozen more cabins - and perhaps a crew to handle all the cooking and cleaning while the family plays together.
What (if anything) do you wish someone had told you before you started cruising?
I wish we had done more video while talking ‘into' the camera so we had footage not just showing where we were, but of our own personal observations and expressions as we shared what we have seen. We have thousands of photos and videos of the places we have been, far less of ourselves narrating and laughing into the camera.
Have you ever felt in danger and if so, what was the source?
With a sturdy, well-built boat, we know the weather conditions we can handle. And with modern weather forecasting, especially with the easy downloading of forecasts anywhere in the world using our Iridium GO & SSB, we can pretty much avoid worse weather than we are comfortable with.
Bad people on the other hand can show up anywhere. The crime of certain places (ie. Caribbean, Colon/Panama, Tahiti/Bora Bora) takes some of the joy out of free and easy life style we look for in cruising. We are fortunate to have a boat that will always get to the other side of an ocean, and a great alarm system on the boat to warn of bad guys. We just have to not fall off or let bad people on. We have only had to confront someone once in our 30.000 mi. and that was a minor event.
We spent a lot of time in Turkey in 2015 and 2016. We even flew into Istanbul in late June 2016 and walked through the exact path that was tragically blown up four days later by a terrorist's bomb. So it is noteworthy that we remember Turkey as one of our very favorite places to live and sail, not just for its beauty, delicious food, fascinating history and culture, but mostly for its lovely people. We experienced overwhelming warmth and kindness from all the Turkish people we met and we felt very safe in the small towns and along the beautiful extended coastline that is ideal for sailing. I imagine the people have not changed much in a few years, though the politics seem to.
What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I’ve asked you and how would you answer it?
What are your favorite toys on your boat?
We love our toys and tools of our global adventure. We chose to bring inflatable sailing kayak and an inflatable paddle board. We also carry surfboard, caving, climbing, tennis rackets, yoga mats, hiking gear, fold-up bicycles, cards, a backgammon board, drone quadcopter and many beach games and toys. I wish we had started kite boarding earlier as that seems to be a great combination of what works while cruising
In addition to paper charts and pilots carry a collection of electronic charts. We use multiple electronic charts on no fewer than 3-5 devices (iPad, iOS and Android phones, Mac and PC) in addition to our Furuno chart plotter. For areas like the South Pacific where traditional charts can be very inaccurate it is essential to familiarize yourself with navigation tools that bring in satellite imagery such as OpenCPN, Google Earth (and Tallon) and SeaClear. Don’t forget to download the offline map detail on your Navionics/Boating app while you still have internet and to zoom into the routes, some reefs will not show up unless you are zoomed in to less than 20-30 miles zoom. This is quite a small area when doing a 1000+ mile passage.
Get the most powerful and highest efficiency solar you can fit on your boat. We also like our quiet D400 Wind generator to give us a boost, especially at night on anchor. It is a sweet thing to have more ice than your can use because you have more electricity than you need. Blended frozen drinks are a wonderful thing.
Compare the Iridium Go, Delorme and other satellite options before purchasing. We use SSB, Iridium Go, Delorme and have used FleetBand / KVH. There is a large price and performance variance.
Be sure you have an iPad or tablet with as much storage as you can afford. Among the apps we use every day are:
- Weather: Weather 4DPro, Windity, Squid Mobile, PredictWind Offshore;
- Navigation: Boating/Navionics, iNavx, MasSea/Nobeltec, Earthmate;
- Anchor Watch: Anchor Alarm;
- Constellations: Night Sky, Star Chart, Moon Plus, SkyView Free;
- Learning - Knots Guide, BoatingCalcs;
- Opera Mini for going online using less data;
- Tides, currents: Aye Tides XL;
- Tracking friends: Marine Traffic;
- TripAdvisor before you pull into a new place;
- Communications back home: Viber, Skype, Hangouts
- Security: a VPN like Private Tunnel , we also use this to look like we are in the USA to be able to do things online like pay your property taxes, download a kindle book, etc. that might be blocked from other countries.
We know communications can be a challenge when you’re sailing from country to country, and in diverse parts of the world, how do you make it work, and what tips can you share?
We will never take fast, easy internet for granted again. Or underestimate how much ease and convenience internet connectivity gives us, or how much we use it for. Google Fi improved our lives a lot when we switched from our old cell phone carrier to it. Before Fi, we had the choice of either paying ridiculous charges on our international plan, or we would have to go into each new country and get outfitted with a new sim card and a mobile plan before we could be connected. Google has relationships around the world - and throughout the USA - so that your phone picks up and connects, very cost effectively, to the local carrier wherever you are. No more Sim cards. No more wasting a day just getting connected. Having cell connectivity and data as you approach a new country by sea is marvelous. In places like the Mediterranean or the Caribbean where you may go back and forth from country to country as you sail, google Fi’s system is effortless. It doesn’t work everywhere yet, but it’s still been a huge improvement and time saver for us.
Beyond Google Fi, we also rely on our Rogue Wave wifi booster and our cell phone booster which are invaluable at giving us the strongest connectivity possible from the boat, even when we’re many miles offshore.
Our Iridium Go gives us good connectivity when we can’t connect to wifi or cell. We use it for texts and email, weather downloads and news.
