Yes it has been a while since I have posted. I hope you hadn’t thought we had given up on our dreams and plans. Nothing further from the case. We have had a busy 18 months and are right on track for our March departure. We couldn’t be happier with the way it is all progressing and as we are coming into our last 3 months before moving aboard, right now  is no better time to update as succinctly as I can, everything that has transpired to date that has lead us closer to Scout

It has been a whirlwind of changes and developments over the last year and a half, but I can confidently say that it is all coming together, perhaps even better than we may have planned it. Eighteen months ago, the prospect of what we had to do seemed daunting to me and our two year time frame seemed endless but, on the contrary the time has gone by so fast and everything seems to have naturally fallen into place.

The Farm.

One of the biggest decisions we had to make was what we were to do with our business and our farm and our home on the Gold Coast. Something had to go to make our purchase of Scout attainable. Lengthy discussions and analysis ensued and we made the initial decision that we had to sell our farm and wind up the business, leaving us with our home on the Gold Coast. We had a coffee farm in the beautiful hinterland area of Byron Bay and a business, roasting and selling the coffee to customers online and in markets.A successful boutique business with lots of loyal customers. Not such an easy decision. Mike had poured so much of his life into being a coffee farmer and we passionately loved the property but we soon came to the realisation that to make our next dreams come to life, it would have to be sold. If it didn’t sell, then it was going to be back to the drawing board for plan B.

After what felt like a long time, the farm sold successfully in May this year and over the last 6 months we have wound up our coffee company. While the decision to sell was a difficult one, when the sale went through it was with a feeling of relief and excitement that we could now focus on Scout and our journey to move aboard.

Our Children- now all adults.

When we started making our plans, we knew we couldn’t possibly have left any earlier than planned as we still had our youngest at school and our older children were still finding their feet and starting to make their way in life. So the plan was to begin our adventure after the youngest had been out of school for a year and was in a settled position. It has turned out to be perfect timing. Of our 6 children, the three eldest have settled into very happy job paths and careers that have taken them interstate or overseas. No 4 is about to graduate from uni next month and move into the work force. No 5 is cruising along with part time uni but happy to move in with friends and away from the apron strings and the youngest, well he is loving his studies at uni which involves attending college in the country and has to spend his semesters living there.

The Dog- the hardest of all to accommodate into our plans.

Our dog Gemma is a farm dog. She is a Maremma and if you know this breed you would be familiar with how difficult it would be for them to live in a small property. That just about ruled out everyone we know who could possibly look after her for us while we are away. So rather than rent out our house for a year, we have found some friends, a retired couple who are going to house sit and look after her for our first six months aboard.

With the logistics solved it was now time to get on with the preparation of Scout and ourselves as sailors.

Sailing Training

We both knew that we had to supplement our basic sailing abilities and skills with some additional training to at least give us some confidence in sailing offshore and handling a larger boat.

Mike has attended two live aboard off shore courses, both with Sunshine Sailing at Marooychdore on the Sunshine Coast. He attained his Day Skipper qualification with the RYA and  gained experience with both passage planning and hands on practise. I completed my competent crew qualification with the RYA at  Pacific Sailing School at Rushcutters Bay in Sydney. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Our course was conducted by Lisa Blair who at the time of writing this blog is about to set off to become the first woman to circumnavigate the Antarctic solo, non-stop and unassisted. Good luck Lisa. I will be following. It was  a terrific 5 days and the information  and experience I attained was extremely valuable. And what better place to do my training than in beautiful Sydney Harbour and Pittwater, near where I had grown up.

French

The New Year arrived and I also decided to add to my goals and conquer French this year. I sat down with some books, tapes, videos and subscribed to a social media language learning site called Italki. My goal was to be at least conversational by the end of the year. We have, of course a french boat and what better way to get to know her and her builders and environment than to learn the local language. I am pleased to say that my French has greatly improved and while I am by no means fluent, I am conversational ( just) but my comprehension, listening and reading has met my target for the year and I  have one more month to go to still improve. I also have dabbled in some Spanish and Italian – enough to get by.

That sums up briefly the very hectic changes in our life over the last 18months. We have also spent a lot of this time reading blogs…. thank you zerotocruising for being our initial motivators, Miss Catana ( fellow Australians) – watching hours of Youtubes….La Vagabonde, Catamaran Impi, Trio Travels, which have not only been entertaining but a source of great sailing cruising information. Also a special mention  to the series Distant Shores, whose sailing adventure TV series was invaluable and highly enjoyable. On top of that, countless hours researching all the conflicting information on everything from what anchor to buy to what bedsheets are best in the tropics. I don’t think we have turned on the television for 18 months. We have been constantly glued to the internet.

I am hoping our blog posts will be more frequent now as we approach our departure date. We recently returned from a visit to Scout, who has been built and is waiting for us in La Rochelle. I will write a post about that visit shortly but for more up to date posts on what is happening please have look at our Facebook page – Scout Around The World– and our very new youtube channel where I have posted my first attempt at making a movie showing our first meeting with Scout a week ago.