Serendipidy brings sailing family together reunited - Ep 81

Serendipidy brings sailing family together reunited

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Bluewater sailing family reunited
We meet lots of interesting people on our bluewater sailing adventure. This is the story of how we met and got to spend Christmas with long-lost friends, how we Cruising Kiwis were land based on an Australian back country Wagu beef farm and how Ivan’s newfound friendship facilitated a one in a million (perhaps hundred million) chance of serendipitous significance.

Music
Luna Keller – I don’t know where I’m going
Krestovsky – National Spark
De Joie – All around me
David Mumford – Ball and chain

Additoinal footage –
Karen Wong
Hugh McMurtrie
Slice – Bower Bird

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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