I regularly dial into the webinar series "Blue Water Sailing" run by Grand Large Yachting Group in association with Yachting World. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I am a fan of Garcia Yachts. Grand Large Yachting group has built more than 1 000 professional and leisure boats at its shipyards ranging from 30 to 138ft and is well known for excellence in design, reliability and resistance. Amongst Garcia, they also own Allures Yachting, Outremer, Gunboat and RM Yachts. All pretty well-known brands for bluewater cruising. BTW, I have no affiliation with GLY, neithe ..read more

George and Kaci from the US started cruising on their power cat in 2019. As they are planning to cruise much further than a power cat would allow them their 2004 Lagoon 43 Power Catamaran is up for sale at the moment. Thanks, both for answering my questions! Where have you sailed to already? Lower East coast of the United States, Bahamas and the Dominican Republic. Where are you planning to sail? South America, The South Pacific and the Caribbean. Why did you go full-time sailing? In early 2019 we had a “what if” moment. We wanted an adventure. Something new and exciting that the two of us co ..read more

From the moment you entered this world, you were utterly dependent on caregivers to tend to your every need. When seeing the first earthly light, your brain capacity was less than 30 per cent of an adult brain size. Some experts estimate a human fetus would have to undergo a gestation period of 18 to 21 months to be born at a neurological and cognitive development stage comparable to that of a chimpanzee newborn. This has to do with the hypothesis (yep hypothesis) about the width of the birth canal and, hence, the size of the baby that can pass through it. But that's a different topic. Let's ..read more

“Journeys are the midwives of thought“ says Alain de Botton in his book “The Art of travel”. A creative metaphor that journeys and thoughts are strongly connected. If you read last weeks post, you’ll know that most people find it extremely difficult to live in the moment. Learning to do this is a fine art that requires a lot of practice - think of meditation, for example. When you travel, only experiences such as arriving at the summit after an arduous hike, turning around and having the breathtaking view of a landscape in front of you, come close to this feeling. For a short moment, you don ..read more

When you write a weekly blog, you eventually get to a point where you can’t think of anything to write. Yes, there should be plenty of content one could consider about sailing, life in general or our beautiful oceans, but this week I am struggling. It takes about 2-3 hours for any blogpost from draft to publish. Sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. This includes plotting down the initial idea plus some research if required, then the actual writing, spell and grammar checking, finding a header photo, re-reading, re-editing and then pressing the “publish” button. After that, all my little autom ..read more

Romain, Lien, Agathe, Alice & Mia have not cast off yet but are eagerly preparing their world cruising adventure. Little Mia was only born in March this year and the guys will be setting off on their 51 Outremer catamaran "EastWest" in 2023. Thanks for answering my questions! Where have you sailed to already? Normandy, Brittany and the South of the UK with our monohull Izipizi (Pogo 36). Mediterranean (France, Corsica, Sardaigne, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Turkey): with our previous monohull La Foraine (Amel) on holidays and a rented catamaran in BVI and Bahamas. Where are ..read more

A personal view on seeking a happy and healthy life. German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach coined the phrase “We are what we eat”, and he said it in the context of the stress and turmoil of the German revolution in 1848. What he referred to was the mind and body relationship. People had to eat properly to deal with the stress and anxiety of their “revolutionary” lives. You would sum up his view as “garbage in - garbage out” in today’s world. This is even more true for what we feed our brains and how this ultimately affects our mind and mental health. Our mind is our most powerful tool. It never ..read more

Following the successful posts about Sailing Alma, Feel the Breeze and SV Rehua I reached out to some more lovely sailing people to see if they'd be interested to answer some questions about their sailing lives. I find it much more interesting and it's much more fun! So, a big thank you to Emily and Adam from the UK for taking the time to answer my questions. Emily and Adam aka. Two get lost :-) set sail in 2019 on their Kadey Krogen 38 sailboat called Hot Chocolate. At the time of writing this, they were sailing in Greece and have travelled approximately 3000NM since they set off from the UK ..read more

The wind blows with 40 knots gusting 55, surrounded by 8m swells the whitecaps look like bloody mountains. Every now and then, another breaker washes over the entire length of the boat. I am hanging on for my dear life, not literally, just mentally, because I am on a 27 ton, 57-foot sloop, and she was built for this. Not once do I ask myself, "Why am I doing this?" or "Why am I here?". All that comes to my mind is how powerful nature is and what an insignificant little blob in the dark blue I am. So, why do we sail? The longing for the open expanse drives sailors out to sea again and again. A ..read more

Our oceans cover 71% of our planet and their currents govern the world's weather and churn a multitude of life. As humans, we depend on these waters for comfort and survival, but global warming and overfishing threaten our planet’s largest habitat. Global shipping handles roughly 90 per cent of our global trade. Nearly 11 billion tons of stuff per year, but the industry is also responsible for around 3 to 4 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Neither good for our oceans nor land for that matter. Although shipping is the least environmentally damaging form of commercial transport (compar ..read more