BLUEWATER SAILING to VANUATU - Ep 64

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Bluewater sailing to Vanuatu
There is nothing like bluewater sailing to let you know you are alive. Our technical analysis and scientific approach to spinnaker dropping may not prevent disaster and may be classed as sailing anarchy, but our unique method gets the job done.
Our sail boat bobs around like a cork on the ocean, and we are cooped up in a tiny space, miles from everywhere, on a crazy roller coaster ride, yet free as birds. That’s sailing life and it makes us happy. Happy to have the opportunity to be a traveling family, taking our catamaran home with us from country to country and happy that on this sail we have become a sanctuary for tired seabirds.
In this episode you get to see Ivan’s happy place. The bouncy bow cabin that really isn’t for the faint hearted. And we change our minds mid passage, about which country we are sailing to. But don’t get too comfortable, it could all change again tomorrow.

Music
Luna Keller – I don’t know where I’m going
David Mumford – Night without sleep instrumental – creative commons
Heartbeat – Sailr – Musicbed
Fly away with me – Anders Sohn – Musicbed
David Mumford – Ball and chain

Who are we?
In 1997, after a disastrous Olympic rowing campaign, Rob decided to row a seven-metre plywood boat, 2500 miles from Tenerife in the Canary Islands to Barbados in the Caribbean. It took 6 weeks and he and his rowing partner, Phil Stubbs, won the inaugural Atlantic Rowing Race.

Skip forward to 2014, we invested in Javelot a 43 ft Fountaine Pajot catamaran. Armed only with Robert’s 3 years of racing P class yachts from the age of 11 to 13, and Rachel’s non existent sailing knowledge, we set off to learn the ropes of ocean sailing. We broke stuff, replaced stuff and got to know our boat before heading offshore with our three children, Finn 17, Declan 15 and Ivan 12, in tow.
Through trial and error, we have become confident wayfarers, kind of.
Our plan? To sail around the world, meet the locals and record our adventures. Part of the journey will be retracing Rob’s eldest brother Kerry’s travels at sea. Using Kerry’s original letters from the 1970’s we will re trace his movements from Australia through Indonesia and South East Asia to Cambodia where Kerry’s life was cut short after straying into Cambodian waters in 1978. Kerry and two friends were attacked by a Khmer Rouge gun boat, captured, tortured and executed.

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Never stop wandering, never stop wondering.

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