CHANGES
With reports this month from Aretha's 'reverse' commuter cruisers who live in London but come here to sail; Atea living a Beach Boys song; Feel Free on a find-facting mission; Raven having 'one of those days' — and Cruise Notes.
The Craven family (left to right) — Caspar, Bluebell, Columbus, Willow and Nichola.
Nine years ago, experiencing such a morning was beyond my wildest dreams. Back then, my wife Nichola and I spent a lot of time arguing about money. I was running my own business, working 18 hours a day, and money was tight. Our relationship was under pressure and I was feeling guilty, as I never got to spend any time with our two young children. We asked ourselves the same question many times: "Is this all there is to life?" Everything would change in a single moment on June 13, 2009. That was the day someone mentioned the idea of sailing around the world. The joys of provisioning . . . NOT!
What a crazy idea. Although I was a sailor, at that time, Nichola had only sailed twice — and had been seasick both times. Plus, we didn't have the money (not even remotely close), and we didn't have a boat. Still, the idea resonated. We talked. We planned. Then we set a departure date: August, 2014. We believed we could do it; we had five years to figure out how. They say that when you step outside your comfort zone, that's where the magic happens. And the magic did happen. We rearranged jobs and priorities. We got a boat. And on August 20, 2014, Nichola and I slipped lines from Southampton and with our now three children, Bluebell (9), Columbus (7) and Willow (2), we headed out to sail around the world. We had only finalized the purchase of Aretha three months earlier, and had completed a huge amount of refitting and testing in a short time. Was everything perfect when we left? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Did we trust that we'd be able to figure out answers to whatever came up? Absolutely. As it turned out, despite all those little fix-its that we did eventually get to, Aretha turned out to be the boat of our dreams. She is solid as a rock and sails beautifully, both upwind and downwind. The early days of our adventure unfolded memorably. As we headed south toward Portugal, the gray weather of North Biscay turned sunny, the seas calmed, and gentle breezes carried us along. Our spirits rose. The wind even veered north, giving us easy downwind sailing and flat decks with the mainsail and genoa flying wing-and-wing. Dolphins swam playfully in Aretha's bow wave — a first for the children (and a great distraction from the schoolbooks). In South Biscay, we fished for the first time since Plymouth. It was only 30 minutes before the reel started screaming and the rod bent over. We slowed down by furling the genoa and within 10 minutes we had landed a 10-pound bluefin tuna. I particularly enjoyed night sailing. It was stunning to look at the sky ARETHA
ARETHA
Aretha — Oyster 53 Craven Family Commuter Cruising in Reverse San Francisco and London I'm sitting in the cockpit of Aretha, our Oyster 53. To starboard, the fog is rolling down the side of the Sausalito hills. Astern, Mount Tam is looking spectacular in the early morning light.
ablaze with stars, then glance astern to see the water ablaze with phosphorescence streaming in torpedo-like wakes that the dolphins left behind. For the next two years, we truly lived our dream — experiencing the world with our three young children as we sailed its seas and oceans. Our route took us down the European coast before joining the ARC fleet in the Canary Islands and sailing to the Caribbean. In Panama, we joined the World ARC and spent six months traversing the magical islands of the Pacific, eventually ending up in Australia. We then headed north and, via Indonesia, picked our way through more island paradises to South Africa. Early 2016 saw our re-entry to the Atlantic with fast downwind sailing to Brazil via St. Helena. We crossed our outbound track in Grenada to complete our circumnavigation. On our second Atlantic crossing, we
