By: Jamie Chase

So what exactly is it that we are scheming?  Dina and I have been dreaming about, talking about, and finally planning for this adventure since before we even had kids.  We wanted to take our family abroad for one year of travel.  The options came down to either: 

a) travel around the world for a year via planes, trains and automobiles; an extended backpacking trip to places across the entire globe.  

Or, b) focus in on a region of the world that we could explore by sailboat.

“B)” only became an option after the time we spent exploring the British Columbia coast on Mirage, and we discussed (for several years) whether it would be an option.  Of course, I loved the idea of sailing for a year; however, Dina was initially not quite as enamoured at the idea of spending a serious amount of time “living at 30 degrees” (sailboats lean over when underway- a sensation that can take some adjusting to, especially when you have to live that way for days or even weeks at a time).  She loved the exploring and living that we were doing onboard Mirage, but wasn’t totally sold on the actual act of sailing.  Through our experiences sailing as a family on our little 31′ boat, we discovered some hard truths about sailing:  Dina and Aria, in particular, are prone to the “mal de mer” (seasickness).  Rising and falling relentlessly on large ocean swells has caused me to “feed the fishes” as well, but Dina would often begin feeling unwell with far less motion-induced provocation.  As a family, we also learned that riding out strong winds, driving rain, pounding choppy seas, and waves crashing into the cockpit isn’t exactly what most landlubbers dream about when they fantasize about life in serene tropical anchorages.  Drying out clothing, bedding and cushions soaked in seawater that somehow still managed to leak in through tightly dogged hatches– after finally making our way into a safe harbour– was a salty taste of the reality of life at sea.

So why even consider it?  The idea of being able to travel and explore while based in our own mobile home was one of the greatest appeals.  To be able to have a space to call our own, that we could truly make into our home while exploring foreign lands was an idea that we all liked.  To be able to discover places that are often only accessible from the water, away from the often fast-paced tempo of life ashore.  And of course, that whole notion that a well equipped sailboat could turn its bow towards any corner of the planet and travel there using nothing but that that mystical, magical (yes, I do understand the physics of how a sailboat works, but I still prefer to see it as pure magic) concept of harnessing the wind to propel us where we want to go.

I don’t know what the final deciding factor was, but sometime in early 2018 that decision was made.  I powered through multiple trips from Kamloops to Vancouver, in order to repair all those little issues on Mirage that I had always wanted to fix, and got her into the best condition she’d been in during our years of ownership… and then promptly listed her for sale.  (If you are interested in what Mirage looked like, here’s the link to the YouTube information video I made at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXPLfQOjWo&t=11s )

Once Mirage was sold, “things got real”.  That was the first step towards actually turning our dream into a reality.  I will write more in other posts about the road to our acquisition of “Merdeka”, but in December of 2018, she became a part of our family, and we become officially and totally dedicated to our “2020 Vision”.