In about one week we will be heading to New Caledonia to join John and Amanda Neal on Mahina Tiare III for Leg 7 of their 2019 sailing expedition and training series. This is really exciting for us as it will hopefully give us hands-on experience with heavier seas and some practice with other things we haven’t considered yet for a life on board and longer ocean crossings.

It was actually at cruising seminar hosted by John and Amanda in 2015 that we decided not to wait until retirement to start cruising around the world. We realized that if we wanted to be sure to have the experience we shouldn’t wait until we were older and started working on our five year plan.

Since then we’ve done so much preparation, not just enhancing the boat and learning new cruising relevant skills, but also reducing our possessions in the home and preparing ourselves physically so that we can be confident we have the strength and stability we need.

So next week will be a chance to practice all we’ve learned though books and through experience on our own boat and also learn a ton more.

In a few weeks you can read about our journey on Leg 7 in the Mahina expedition log updates.