Shaun Newman Podcast - Ep. #133 - Tania Aebi: Sailing the World

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Originally from Vernon New Jersey. At the age of 18 she spent 2 ½ years solo circumnavigating the world in a 26 foot sailboat. Tania had practically no sailing or navigation experience when she started, she did not have GPS to guide her but instead had to trust the use of sextant or celestial navigation. Just to put that in perspective, for 30 months she travelled 27,000 miles and her guide was the sky above.   I was fortunate enough to sit and discuss the trip with Tania.   Let me know what you think   Text me! 587-217-8500

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At the age of 18, she spent two and a half years solo circumnavigating the world in a 26-foot sailboat. She practically had no sailing or navigation experience when she started. She did not have a GPS to guide her, but instead had to trust the use of a sextant

or celestial navigation. Just put that in perspective. For 30 months, she traveled 27,000 miles, and her guide was the sky above. She wrote a 1989 bestseller Maiden Voyage. I'm talking about Tanya Abbey. So buckle up. Here we go.

This is Tanya Abbey. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Okay, well, welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Tanya Abbey. I hope I got that right. and uh well first thanks for thanks for thanks for thanks for joining me um now i was saying i stumbled across your your story and what i really enjoyed about it is it reminds me of when we biked Canada because we were well we'd never really biked that far before and then one day we just decided

to uh buy some bikes travel to the opposite side of the country and start peddling and see what happened. And you learn a lot about yourself going that way. Now, for you, it's a little more, a longer journey. You were a couple of years younger. And I just thought maybe we could just start with how on earth this idea comes up to circumnavigate solo the world. It was my dad's idea. I was 17 when he thought of it. So I didn't have the imagination or I had I know I didn't have the imagination to come up with that possibility he's the one that saw that and made the offer and then I guess I was the one that took it up did but you didn't grow up sailing did you no that's why I didn't have I didn't grow up on boats I didn't know boat people

I didn't know that whole world out there so it was only when my dad bought a boat when we were when I was about 16. A friend of his had been building. He immigrated to the states with his friend Christian. They came from Paris on the Queen Mary in 66. A couple months before I was born. So I could have been born in Paris, but instead I ended up being born in New Jersey.

And Christian, they went there separate ways. They were both artists, but he was always in our life. And he bought a boat when I was about 12, a hull, a bear hull, and started building it. and he's still building it. So that's 44 years later. He's still not finished. It's been the journey,

not the destination for him. But in those beginning years, my dad was intrigued by the whole idea of sailing. I mean, this was Christian's passion, and my dad was watching, and he started looking at the sailing magazines and decided,

did you freeze up? No, I can hear everything perfectly. So obviously my connection isn't coming to you, but you're coming through beautifully to me. No, you're coming into me, but you have to say, mm-hmm, every once in a while, because all of a sudden it'll look like you froze or something. And the Zoom, like I said, the Zoom doesn't work so well.

I tell you what, if all of a sudden I start barking, it's because I'm not listening anymore. I'm enjoying the journey, Tanya. So fire away, please. God. So I have Zoom PTSD. It keeps crapping out on me. when most inconvenient.

So anyway, so he started reading the sailing magazines and decided he wanted to try it too. He's always been an adventurer at heart. He's done a lot of traveling. He did tons of traveling before he had kids, and he wanted to pick back up where he left off, but in a new way, and he bought a boat in England, and I went with him.

I was in the middle of my, well, I was coming out of my teenage, the worst of my teenage years. And we sailed from England to Spain to France, to Portugal, to Morocco, to the Canary Islands. We crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, back up to New York. I spent a year on the boat with him when I was 16, 17, and he watched me just fall in love with the whole idea of sailing, of the ocean, the people out there. I really took to it.

And he saw that happening. I mean, I was just living. He was watching how things were taking shape. And decided that he would make that offer to take it to the next level. my own boat, a solo trip around the world because he only thinks big like that. And of course, I was impressionable and young and already knew that if I said no and didn't try that, I'd probably regret it for the rest of my life. So there was only one thing to do and that was to try because I didn't have any better ideas either.

Isn't that a crazy thing for a father to suggest at such a young age and for you to know at a young age, if you turned it down, you'd regret it for the rest of your life? Oh, 100%. I've had, I have sons, two boys. And a couple years ago, I had a boat and I wanted to bring it down to the Caribbean for the, to sell it. And I asked my son if he could house it for me while I did that. And he said, why don't I take it down? So he had just graduated from college. He had marine systems engineering, not just engineering, but marine systems engineering degree. My boat was 32 feet that I would have. to bring down, which was the 32 of the version of the 26 I had on my big trip, outfitted with the GPS and all, you know, a working engine. It was a, it was a boat, a bigger, nicer boat than I had. And it was in November, though, that he wanted to go down to the Caribbean. And that's when the storm start rolling in. And I was waiting for a good weather window to tell him when he could leave. And there just wasn't one. It was just gnarly out there. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't

eat. I couldn't, I could hardly breathe. I couldn't have a focused conversation while I was waiting, thinking about all I could imagine was his hypothermic body out there until I pulled a plug. I didn't do it. I couldn't do it for my own son who was older than me, more experienced than me. With a better boat, I still couldn't do it. So yeah, that makes it, that makes my dad even crazier or more unusual or special, whatever it is. Did you, did you talk about, I'm sure you must have talked about with your dad after the trip was done like the anxiety that he must have felt having you out there with no GPS. You mentioned no working engine. You're assuming he's normal. That's the kind of conversation you'd have with a normal person.

Obviously, my dad wasn't normal to have done. I consider myself more normal and the fact that I couldn't let my own offspring do that, my own son. My dad, I mean, yeah, we didn't have conversations like that. Of course you, I was going to do it. And of course he had anxiety sometimes, but that wasn't going to be anything to stop him for letting me do with this. I mean, there was only one thing to do and it was to do it and it was to finish it. Well, let's talk then about your first day. I remember vividly my first day of hopping on a bike and it being broken and us having to wait extra days in St. John's to get it fixed. How did your first day of leaving New York go?

Actually, my first day I left New York with all the farewell pictures, everything, the big farewell. And I only went 20 miles to the first anchorage. And I spent a couple of days there because the engine broke on the way there. So I had to try and figure out how to get it going again before I actually left. spent a couple days in an anchorage just inside the entrance to New York Harbor and waited for nicer weather. It was also raining on the day that I, the big farewell day. So I waited for nicer weather and fix the engine and just got myself together, you know, decompressed a little

from all the pre-departure, the whirlwind and then took off. So the first day out there, I guess, was it was nothing, you know, it was a nice day. I left on a nice day and I pulled up the sails and it was beautiful and the waves were sparkling. And then it was the first trip as a whole was more of the the the the the um aggregation of all the experiences on that first trip or what really stuck because I had my first leaks. I had my first troubles with navigation. I had my first troubles with the engine breaking again and not being able to fix it. It was my first passage. It was the first everything. And most importantly, it was the first time I was out there by myself and realizing that I kind of liked it. That was given all the.

other problems and how long it took to get to Bermuda. It took me like three times longer than it should have. But I liked it. I liked being out there being the only person in the world that knew where I was any given moment. I was the boss of everything in as much as you can be the boss of anything out in the middle of the ocean. I liked it.

There was a, there was a, there was a feeling. There was a simultaneous feeling of power and complete like power. lessness at the same time, which was kind of cool. Going between the two. Coming from a land lover because I sit in the middle of the prairies, the ocean terrifies me just because of the sheer power it has. And once you're out in a boat like yourself, all I can hear in your story is like, man,

didn't you just wake up one morning and realize like, I'm on a 26 foot little boat in the middle of the ocean. and if any storm gets me, there ain't no one coming back. No, nothing ever happens in two seconds at all. Everything's gradual. A storm doesn't just come out of nowhere and build. It takes hours to get to a point in hours in which you have time to prepare and take in the sails and shut down the hatches. And also, nothing lasts forever.

That was definitely a big lesson. It's like there was no beautiful weather to, lasted forever and there was no storm that lasted forever. There was no calm that lasted for everything. Everything passed. It was just a matter of waiting it out and doing what you had to do until the past. And yeah, there were times where I sat out there and thought, geez, that's a big ocean out there. It's a big world. And I'm like a speck of nothingness in it. And like I said before, sometimes that was overwhelming and then sometimes it was just so empowering to think, boy, I'm the boss of me here on the little boat crossing these oceans. How cool is that? Yeah, there was a roller coaster for sure. Sometimes I was, you know,

a wreck, crying, tired, lost, scared. And other times I was like elated, euphoric. This is beautiful. How special is this? It was a huge meditation. The ocean is the big wilderness too. So just because it's the ocean, if you don't know it, it's water and it's scary and it's, mountains of water. But I mean, if you get lost in the wilderness in the mountains, you know, having to hike your way out or whatever, it's the wilderness and it's actually the last wilderness. And even less so now than it was back when I was, because now you can be out there and you can have contact with land. There's all kinds of communications equipment that didn't exist when I was doing this. Well, maybe talk just a little bit about how

isolated you were because I've had even myself I've had I got four older siblings two of which have traveled the world for extended periods of time and just in there

from their brief travels the first one could email us back by the second by the time Harley went he could Skype call us so there was like this feeling of like you're gone but I can still

see you which is a little bit of a warp for the brain because you can actually see somebody. So it's almost like they never left, right? It's, it's pretty crazy that I could sit here and do this with you. It's, it's quite cool how far the world has come on this side of communication and being able to talk to somebody. But back in the 80s, a lot of that wasn't there. So maybe you could you just talk a little bit about like as soon as you're out in the middle of the ocean, sailing away, having a grand old time, it's not like you can pick up the phone and go, hey, dad, how's it going today? I don't know. I can talk about how much there wasn't back then. Once I left, that was it.

The only communication I had with anyone anytime was with the VHF radio, which would emit as far as the horizon. So I had like a, you know, a 10 mile range that I could talk to somebody else with on the radio. So if I saw a ship and they were listening to their radio, I could call them and have a conversation, but it would be about, you know, the weather and I'd get a position from them. That's communicating. So to call home, I had to get to shore. And back in those days, too, you had to go to the post office or a telephone office and place a collect call.

And you'd wait for the operator to get through. And then they tell you which cabin you could go in, which phone to pick up. And then you'd call home and have those conversations. And then so they were just always just waiting for you to figure out when and where to make a call. So on the other end, they never knew where you were, what was going on. And it was entirely up to me to make that contact. As far as navigation went, there was no, I didn't, the SATNAV existed back then, but it didn't, would never have worked on a little wet boat such as mine.

So I didn't have that. It was a sextant. And it was a sextant with a little Casio electronic watch and the sun, the moon, and some navigation tables. everything was pretty elemental. And that's what it was, right? It wasn't like, oh, I'm deliberately cutting myself off. You could do that now, but it would be artificial.

And you'd know about all the things you could have that you've deprived yourself of. Back then, you didn't have it. So that's the way it was. Anybody that went off to sea on a boat went off, completely cut off from contact with home. So, yeah, the world has changed. just imagine how much it's changed for something that's 100 years old well that's a lovely thing that I get to do Tanya from time to time every Sunday I sit down with the older generation ladies and gentlemen from the ages of 70 to as old as 95 and get to hear of these it's a different world

right stories from a different time with different things going on and as we speed forward forward. The world ever changes, but you go back to a simpler time when, like you're saying, it's, I find it just amazing what you accomplished. And, and just for in hindsight, right? Was it simpler back then? They didn't think it was simpler. No. They thought the time before than was simpler maybe, if they did. I mean, it's all relative. It's all relative. Yeah, I would agree 100% with you there. It's pretty cool that with just a few little instruments and the stars and the moon and the sun that you could find little specks of land out in the middle of the ocean and be so precise. Yeah, it took a while to get precise about it. But that's what people did. That was one of the big

conversations. And they were at every landfill with the other sailors was talking about how they did the navigation. Everybody had a little trick that they would share or something. Some just, it was there was a navigation discussion, which definitely doesn't happen anymore. And, um,

or the different, like the different ruler you could use. I learned a bunch of tricks out there from other people. I guess it's limited how many tricks there are, but I learned them. And, um, it was, yeah,

no, that was, that's definitely something we've lost because what comes with that also. a suspense, not knowing where you are every single second. Once a day I knew where I was. Once a day, I'd have that fix where I had taken the two sites, the two lines of position from the sun, and plotted where I was. So only once a day, could I make an actual X in the middle of all that water designating I am here? And then the rest of that 24 hours were assumptions. Oh, I think

I think I'm going on this course and I think I'm making more or less this speed and, you know, I had no idea what currents were pulling me where and once a day I could find out exactly what that course was and how much, how much my speed had been. And that was a high point of every day was to get that to figure out that position. And now, you know, with the GPS, it's every, literally every second, you know what you're doing. It's a video game. You look at, you have a chart on this this little phone is all I need now back then I needed charts and I needed my sexton and I needed a compass and I needed dividers and I needed parallel rulers and you know some map kept the brain working too a little bit now I just put the um the map on the phone and there's a little

boat icon on there and that's me I'm just and there's like an arrow pointing in front of me pointing which direction I'm going and pretty brainless. You say a little bit of brain work. To me, yeah, well, to me, that's a lot of brain, like, that really keeps you engaged. I can't imagine the pureness of that suspense, like, that had to have been just absolutely terrifying it sometimes. And then to see on the horizon where you're aiming for coming into view must have been

such happiness, joy, I don't know. Pop a bottle of champagne relief? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when I tell the story, most of the landfalls had some kind of, you know, at least a hill, if not mountains, that you could see from way offshore. So the hardest, and so once you saw that, that shadow of land, as you got closer,

more things would become more defined, and that could help you point in the right direction to where the harbor you were shooting. for lay but the big test of the navigation was an australia off um i had to find a lighthouse sticking up out of the reef so there were no visual landmarks it was just like literally finding a pencil sticking up in the middle of the ocean so my navigation had to be pretty accurate to come up on that and i did that was like the ultimate test in the middle of a storm nonetheless as i recall Storm came up after I found that lighthouse and I started heading in between the reefs

And then the storm came in while I was coming in through the reefs and then I went back out again And waited for the storm to pass before coming in to all that reefy water Because if you tag one of those reefs you're pretty much kaput Yeah, it's not good You know you don't want to hit a reef offshore because if you hit a reef inside a lagoon while you're puttering around It's just, you'll crumb, the boat will crumble the reef. But if you crash onto a reef with the swells pushing you for, you're done. You know, I've had this, I've had this thought lately that we keep kids, kids for longer.

Oh, definitely. Like, I hear your story and I go, while you even said it, you couldn't send your older, more trained son with more technology out to do the same thing that your dad had done to you years before with less. Yeah, no, my, well, I'm not going to say that people were less afraid. I mean, my dad was weird. My dad was unusual. And that's why I had this opportunity because I had my father. And, you know, it's, it's on him here. In the end, I did it. Yes, I pulled it off and I made it back home. But it would have not been possible without him saying it was possible. Yeah, but you just, you say unusual and weird. I just wonder if he knew something, you know, like when you look back at your life, that's a pretty big course change, right? You're heading here and then you can just veer that way. Like, I mean, that is like almost a 180. But who else at 18 gets to experience something like that and learn to learn what they're capable of?

Well, to use that metaphor, to be fair, I was, he put me, he put me on a course. I didn't really have a course to change. At 18, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I didn't have a big plan. I was like, I actually just answered an email for some kid yesterday. It asked me what I wanted to be when I was little. And I never wanted to be anything. I didn't have, I didn't have this big dream or this big push.

I wasn't an inspired child. I wanted that fun. I wanted to travel. I wanted to have friends. I didn't even have a plan to go to college. I didn't know what I was going to do if I went to college. I liked writing a little bit, but that was even, you know, a little bit. It wasn't a passion.

And my dad actually plotted a course by giving me this. And then I was on it. And that's actually something I've said a lot too, that it was a bit of a tumultuous childhood and adolescence in New York. It was a lot of fun. had a lot of fun being a young person in New York, but it wasn't really like setting a good, well, maybe it did, whatever. That wasn't a career path, though.

It was fun. Or a life path rather than a career. But giving me that trip or having taken on that trip gave me something for two and a half years, which was unusual also, was a clarity of focus, a clarity that. you don't have at that age. I mean, I could have continued to be unsure about what I wanted to do. But for two and a half years, I knew I had to head west and head home. And that was every single morning I woke up and I knew what I had to do.

For two and a half years, that's probably character building and life forming right there, having had that daily reinforcement of knowing what I needed to do. You know, that was given to me. It wasn't something. People have that kind of drive. They have those passions that, and they know it. There's plenty of people. There are plenty of inspirational stories of people that are born with a drive or a passion or interest or whatever it is that they have that keeps them going from day to day. It's that string that pulls them through life. I didn't have that. But this trip gave that to me. I'll say this. Yes, there are people with that inner drive and know exactly what they want to do in life. That is my wife. then there are people like you just I got I don't know what I want to do that was me and things like what you just talk about there's so many people that are still are going I don't know what I want to

do right like and then I just I look at all all of everything you just said there's more people um that at that age are kind of like I don't know like maybe I'm going to work over here maybe I'm going to do this and they're just kind of waffling and yet at eight 18 when you have to appreciate at that young age is that you're not tied down to anything. Like you could just pick up and go anywhere and live off a box of craft dinner because honestly, you don't need much else. And you don't need, you don't have payments. And, you know, I just, I always think of where I am at today. And I love my life today. But three young kids at home, a job, a wife, which is all fantastic. I love my life. I'll say that.

again. But you just can't pick up and go somewhere. You can. It's just a little bit difficult. And you can't live off a box of Katie. Yes, you can. But now you have other people to think about and kids and what you're going to do with school and blah, blah, blah. It just goes and goes. And at 18, when so many kids are going out, I don't know what I want to do. They have the opportunity to do whatever they want, which is such a cool thing about that age because you have the ability. Like, you literally can do anything at that age and go anywhere and survive off of pretty much nothing. Right. A lot of nothing.

But, I mean, I guess there's a thing about also seeing a door getting cracked open and then stepping through it instead of just walking past it. And I guess we all have doors and we all have choices that we make. I could have said no, and who knows where I would have been now. And many times during the trip, I felt like quitting. I'm like, what am I doing here? This was just abnormal. I should be in college, making friends, networking, whatever. You know, the grass is always greener.

But then that moment would pass and I pushed through and keep going. Because in the end, it was a lot harder to quit than to keep going. You had to have. You had to have met some absolute characters. on the sea. Like, I mean, at the ports. Like, I mean, there must have been the most fascinating people wherever you stopped. I even met some characters at sea. So one time in the Red Sea, I met my husband out there on land, Olivier, and we sailed on the same trajectory up from the South Pacific until the Mediterranean. So we met up in different harbors. So we had left Djibouti

together and then his boat lagged behind it was slower and at by this point we never tried to stay together we didn't have the communications we didn't have the lights whatever it was harder to try and stay within sight of each other than it was to just go and meet up at the next place so i left i i was ahead of him and i lost him the first night and then like two days out i ran into another group of sailors three other boats and we stopped at uh outside of of some reefs too so we sailed up to Sudan in tandem I stayed with them and they did one guy towed my boat for a while when we um um had no wind it was flat calm and my engine wasn't working and they would turn on their engines and they tow me behind to keep up with them and the total characters

but literally I met them at sea there's no land involved and then yeah um land definitely lots of good stories, lots of inspiring stories, because everybody that's got out there had to leave behind a whole world to just head out to sea and to be on this boat with limited everything, especially back then. Boats have gotten bigger and much more luxurious now. You have air conditioning. You have every single entertainment system on the boat. You've got water makers so you can use as much water as you want. And of course, all those things mean you have to fix more stuff because they're always breaking. But back then, people really lived with. with, you know, you took off with 30 gallons of water and that at the last you for a month.

And the same with all the rubbish you generated. You knew exactly what you made. You did. Yeah, it was, it took, it was a different person that was able to cast off the dock lines back then. And that made a lot of character meetings, meeting with characters. What did you do for entertainment back then? Because you mentioned all the fancy entertainment they have now, right? like the ability to have your phone and watch pretty much anything on it.

What did you, I assume you read, yeah. Tons, that's it. I read and I knitted and I crocheted. And then I stared at the water for hours and the navigation and then the cooking and the meals. I mean,

there was the daily duties. You know, got to eat. Got to do the dishes. Got to take care of the cat. Got to clean up. Got it. And then,

there was the sailing piece of it too. Don't forget that. I had to do sales and be on the road. What did you eat? What was the main meal that I assume, you know, going out for that extended periods of time? You weren't taking, you know, everything fresh and like, I assume it was something that was easy storable and easy to cook and everything else. That's like you said, macaroni and cheese. I didn't even have that.

I guess I had some boxes of that stuff sometimes, but a lot of the places didn't have all those kinds of foods either. It was a lot of rice, a lot of rice and a lot of tuna and a lot of tomato paste and onions. There were things like onions and garlic and cabbage and potatoes. Carrots got kind of rubbery. They didn't last that long. And then there were citrus fruits that could last a long time too. There were just these rooty things.

And I made a lot of, um, just in the pressure cooker rice and onions and garlic and then you know hot sauce made everything good or like a little mustard i have posthumets that would really jazz up the days it wasn't a culinary adventure when you and i often feel like cooking i didn't i did not gain weight on this trip not not an ounce i bet she got stronger though got stronger but then only certain kinds of strengths too. Like when I'd get to shore, your legs don't get a lot of exercise out there, especially on a little boat. There wasn't very much opportunity to stand and use the legs. So walking was, you know, that was my exercise when I got to shore because you have to walk

everywhere. When, you know, when you look at all the destinations you went through and it was like 27,000 miles aboard a 26 foot boat, uh, What's a couple or one of the destinations that just sticks out to you that you're like, man, that was a special place? The French Polynesia, you know, it depends where I'm, what memory gets triggered by what. But because there were a lot of special places and wonderful experiences. But French Polynesia was just geographically gorgeous. It was a beautiful place. And then the food was really good there.

speak French, so it was fun to be in a place where I could be understood and culturally diverse and beautiful. And I spent also, like four months, they're outweighing hurricane season, so I really had an opportunity to get to know people and to get to know the place. Oh, crap. I hadn't even thought a hurricane season. Yeah, like that'd be something you'd be constantly paying attention to, I assume. No, you know when it is. And you know, the typical voyages avoid hurricane season. There's the time of year to cross an ocean. And then there's a time when you don't.

Well, I guess what I was meaning in a two and a half year voyage, you're spacing yourself into when you can sail and when you have to be at a destination, harbored up, locked down. Yeah, and fixing the boat and making sure things are, you know getting ready for the next journey or the next leg and so you're probably spacing that out of when listen we can sail now and we got to make some miles and we ain't sailing today because man she is uh she's nasty out there well the nastiness is a season thing so but that definitely kept me

going were those seasons and knowing that i was always a little behind too i was always trying to catch up i was never ahead of myself i'm rarely ahead of myself actually I'm always just, I'm always facing a deadline, but always pull it off too. So, and then then also, so I did a trip with the boys, speaking of cutting off the dock lines when you get older with kids and everything. When the kids were teenager, Nicholas was a junior in high school and Sam was in eighth grade. I took, I got a boat, a 36 foot steel boat in the Caribbean and took them out of school for a year. and by then Olivia and I were divorced.

So I did half the trip and he did have to trip. We took joint custody to sea. And I sailed with them from the Caribbean to French Polynesia. So we had our big ocean passage. We had 32 days at sea, I think, together, just the boys and I. Anyway, getting ready to do that trip, you know, pulling it all off was probably, you know, it was bigger to do than my first trip because I had those boys to worry about their safety, their happiness, everything.

I was worried like all the time. There was never a moment when I wasn't worrying and stressing out about their safety. But what I did do too, just to add to the worry was we crossed the Pacific at the beginning of hurricane season. So the eastern Pacific, the hurricanes in the Pacific are more on the western half of it. So coming across from Panama to the French Polynesia, there's virtually no hurricanes, and it was a La Nina year too. But we were in Panama and then in the Marquesas and then French Polynesia completely off-season.

It was hurricane season. So there were no boats there. So we actually ended up having an experience much more like the one I'd had 30 years earlier without the harbors being filled with boats because now people go in season and they go in flotillas And every harbor is just at the right time of year when it's the right time season-wise. They're just chalk full of boats. And you can't, you know, there's no room to anchor anymore. But then at that time, the boys and I, we had every anchorage to ourselves.

So it was a mixed blessing. I took the chance of going in hurricane season and keeping a very close eye on the weather. So I was always, I had a shortwave radio and I was able to download weather forecasts. And I did that constantly and obsessively. but we also then had a qualitatively different experience as far as being the only people where we went. You know, you as a teenager got to go with your dad for a year on a boat. And then you got to impart the same kind of experience on your kids.

What was the being in your dad's shoes, so to speak? How was that? Like, did your kids enjoy that experience where they, like, was that amazing to them? Has that changed their trajectory, so to speak? Well, it definitely shaped their trajectory because they both went into marine systems engineering and they both work on big ships. So what they learned from that trip is how much they liked, even with all the differences and the modern conveniences that had come in the inter intervening years, people are still resourceful out there. You still have to figure out the more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to learn how to fix. and they met people who built their own boats who were always,

they appreciated knowing, learning how things work and keeping things working. And that's what they came away with, that they wanted to know how things, they wanted to have a hands-on life. They didn't want to, it wasn't going to be in books, and it wasn't going to be abstraction with computers or anything. It was going to be hands-on.

And that's what they both did. So now they both work on the big ships, and they actually make a lot more, a much better living than I ever did with the small boats. And I, but it wasn't always great. The older son loved it right away, but the younger son resisted it.

He wanted to be, but he was a middle schooler. He just wanted to be back with his friends. But in the end, he ended up loving it as well. So it just took him longer to realize that. Nicholas liked it right away. But the difference was,

they were both, I just, you know, you always remember yourself better. So I just remember being a lot more engaged. and interested in thinking, wow, what a cool thing this boat is right away, like standing watches, learning how to pull up the sails and navigate. I was just interested.

I remember being interested in it. And obviously I was because my dad saw that and gave me that he capitalized on that by giving me the chance he did because he saw that. And they were just a lot more like, well, mom will do everything. They'd get up when I'd ask them to do something. but it wasn't like self-starting interest my boys yeah my eye oh that's that's awesome i just think of boys in general that that sounds like a lot of a lot of us back at that age where you're just like yeah mom'll do it for me yeah and you'd think they'd start becoming a little neater picking up after themselves that's what you have to be on a boat yeah just whatever i was good i took care of them

here i was going to take care of them there i was just the caregiver and Here we are having a boat experience now. Like when we did a cross-country trip in the little car every night. I had these visions and you have these ideas that the kids are going to get out of the car and go set up the tent. Well, you went, I just did everything and they'd sit there and read. Whatever. So you're stuck between nagging and being the constant nag. Or just like letting it go.

In the middle of the ocean, was there anything that ever seen? surprised you. I think it was the Saragosa sea, I hope I pronounce that right, like where you talk about the seaweed. Was there parts with the dolphins or whales or wildlife that just like stuck with you over time? There are definitely moments that I remember were there just that the whales that came or the huge pods of dolphins that would follow me for hours. There were also the puzzling times where they'd be these like really weird tidal or current rips in the middle of the ocean that just were inexplicable like there's just some phenomena out here that you know i don't know what it is but you pass over it and then it'll be over um when you mean that do you mean like

the the current the way the waves are moving and like the water yeah and that would be in a in a in a largely windless place too because you don't see that stuff when the waves are big. You don't see the little differences in the in the texture of the water. So it would be largely windless. Yeah, but there'd be like ripples or different waves or you could see just where the water, one water is going one way and in the other you pass over these lines of currents. And the big, it's a huge, like the Gulf Stream, I guess I didn't spend that much time in it.

I spent a lot more time in that now because. that's off the East Coast, and I do a lot of offshore East Coast passage making. And there you see just all that there's, the Gulf Stream is a river, and you cross a river when you go across it in the middle of the ocean. And it's cool. Yeah, certainly an experience like to actually probably feel that. To know it, and sometimes to feel it, sometimes you don't feel it, but you know it, like the weather will change too.

And then the way weather would change also coming, out of the doldrums, for example, and back into the trade winds. There was one time, there are these just moments. Like one time it was in the doldrums, and it was maybe right on the cusp of the trade one area and the doldrums.

And we were, it must have been, it was with the boys, actually. It was with that trip. There was a, it was the edge of the doldrums, and all the clouds dropped down. There was all the puffy little white clouds that normally are,

normally or up in the sky, they were like just hovering above sea level. And we were just sailing. That was a very surreal. That was one of the cooler memories I have. Inexplicable. Like all the clouds were just right above the water and we were kind of just sailing through these like little puffy clouds. It was beautiful and surreal.

I got to ask about like storms or thunderstorms. You mentioned earlier that you could, it wasn't like it just popped up on you. You could see it coming for quite some time, which I assume had to be a different type of suspense because you can actually see it slowly entering closer and closer and closer to you. But like, when you talk about batting it down and taking the sails down and everything else, like when you're in the middle of something like that, are you just basically cork just kind of bobbing and weaving on the waves? Was there a little more strategy to it? And how bad did it get? Well, a thunderstorm or a squall, as you say, you can see it coming. Sometimes they go around you.

They could be pretty localized or small. Or sometimes it would take up the whole sky. But like you said, you could see them coming and there was time to take down a bigger storm or a bigger system. It wasn't something that you just saw coming at you. The weather changed. the everything changed, the smell, that the pressure dropped. You do, there was something bigger out there coming. The thunderstorms were just something that you could ride out.

Take down to sails, it would pour, and it would pass over, and then the trade winds would fill back in behind it. But, yeah, when I had the storms, which happened on occasion, where it would be a day or two of just lots of wind and big waves, The boat was closed up and I would sit down below. And I, there was, I had self-steering, which worked with the wind. It was a mechanical thing that steered the boat the whole time. I wasn't out there steering the boat for two and a half years.

I never steered the boat, in fact. It was always that mechanical self-steering gear. And so I'd set that so that the boat was pointed as close to the wind as possible so that the waves were coming more off the bow and just wrote it out, sat down below. the reading and the knitting and the crocheting and writing letters down there and you know probably not a lot of cooking but um it was like being in a blend you got tossed around a lot but that's I just write it out I was a little cork Varuna was a little cork out there and she'd just shake off the waves and you know

I'd pick things back up off the bed and put them back on the shelves and keep going it was also wet. It wasn't like I was in my dry little cocoon down below. It was always moist and damp and there'd be that smell. There's a smell that I'll get every once in a while again. That'll bring me right back there. Like a battery acid and metal, like a metallic stormy smell. So you didn't have a dry place then? No, that wasn't my life. Most of those two and a half years were not very dry. It was a very small boat.

Those waves would just plop right into the cockpit very easily. Didn't even have to be rough weather. Nice weather too. So in the middle of a storm then, or even through the night maybe, were you constantly having to pump out things? I'd go out and pump the village. frequently. But I mean, she was tied out. She was, she was

watertight. It wasn't like waterfalls of water coming in the boat. It was just these steady drips and just the moistness of being so close to the water all the time. It was just a damp moistness that was never ending.

What was your round right wet? What was your longest stretch out of sea? The North Atlantic that was 50 days. It was the longest ever. I've never done longer than that.

And what did 50 days do you? Yeah, like we said before, things become relative out there. So it was, you know, it could have been two weeks, could have been three weeks, could have been four weeks. Could have been seven weeks, as it turned out. It's just the time became, time to slow down out there. And I've described that plenty, too, about how it was the first couple days that were the hardest. which were the withdrawal from civilization because we're so accustomed to being surrounded by all our sight,

sound, smells, everything that comes with being on land. You don't realize how much it is part of your life until it's taken away, until it's gone. And you have to go through, I had to go through with withdrawal. It was stopping smoking or something.

It was agitated, emotional, just on edge constantly. We are dreams, but that would last about three days. that withdrawal would pass and then it was just okay here i am in the middle of the ocean with that you know again that clarity i got to head west got to make miles got to stay the course got to watch the weather and you know make my meals hang out with the cat read some books whatever

it just the days melted one into the other i was always marking time too so the other thing was leaving new york wasn't about going around the whole world right away it was more about getting to Bermuda. It was passage by passage. And that's kind of what, that's kind of how I faced, you know, the months was passage by passage. Okay, first I had to get to Bermuda. Now I got to get to St. Thomas. Now I got to get to the, get to the Galapago. So each, it was like broken down into each those smaller passages slash challenges. And then on each of those passages, I broke down the time into increments, like four hour daily into days and then four hour increments in the days. So every four hours, I crossed off that time.

I would make these like tiny little charts on the side of my chart or in my logbook or just in a scrap paper. And I would just cross off those four hour increments. And the more I crossed off, the more time was behind me and the less time was ahead of me until the next landfall. So the whole trip was kind of compartmentalized into four. hour increments. That was another coping thing. I used to do that with my mother also, unfortunately. When I'd go visit her,

she was, it was, being with her was not easy. And my visits with her, I would break down also into little increments at cross-off. And then I think about that now as a mother, how heartbreaking that would have been if she saw that, if she noticed it.

But this two-pass mentality. And that helps it pass by being able to cross-on. off the passings. Yeah, a way of a way of tracking your progress owed on the ocean at least. I get that. The world is a big place. And if you didn't have that to do, it could look like you're pretty much moving nowhere. And that would be defeating, I would assume.

I also do that on my trips now because I lead trip. I take people. I regularly do the Bermuda back to the East Coast passage every year. And with the people, I set up a watch system so they know when they're on and off. And then we cross them off. So we can, and I know pretty much, okay, this trip's supposed to last five days at the most. So as you get closed, you see, you can see how much you've crossed off in relation to what you have it. And everybody gets to have that feeling of seeing it go.

marking time. So for a prisoner, right? It's like being a prisoner. You're a prisoner all you're just marking time. Marks. You know, for a... Otherwise, yeah. For a woman who had hardly been on the sea or on a sailboat at, you know, 16,

that's become your lifelong passion then. I guess. Like I said, I don't know. I feel like I have huge passions. I look at people with passions and I know, and I know that's not me. It's just my job. It's what I do.

I went sailing. I did this big trip. I wrote about it and so now I, I continue to write and I continue to sail. And I do a bunch of other things too. It definitely made me resourceful, made me be able to figure out other things. So I take care of people's properties.

And now I take care of my father, actually. So I've had to learn all about that too, you know, taking care of all his business. so he's not he's he lives up the road from me we've come full circle now it's my turn the kids are gone and now i got my dad i find that i find that interesting that you don't i guess when i when i listen to you talk and the story of uh sailing around the world uh you could have easily just not sailed again like I mean, obviously you enjoy it and maybe passion isn't the right word, but the fact every year you go back out on the boat and you're making passages and you took your kids and you've done multiple sail trips or tons of sailing.

I guess you have you've framed it different than I would. I would frame that as definitely a passion because you're doing it. Whereas you look at it as a job and I find that interesting. it is it's kind of like i guess it's maybe maybe i got uh maybe i got this way from being on the boat but just taking taking things as they come like i didn't go out and look for these jobs people have called me and said do you want to do this and so i do it i did take on the trip with the kids that was completely motivated by me and pulled together and everything but that was for my kids it wasn't for me it was about well it was partially for me i wanted to have that experience

with my kids, but I really wanted them to have that too. So without the kids, I wouldn't have done that. I did end up getting another boat. I had this dream that at 50 I was going to do the great circle route. I did want to go back out to see. I love it out there, but I love it here too. I'm kind of surf and turf. But I did get a boat and then the plan was to take a year and do the great circle

and just have kind of like the beginning of my life started off with all that time at sea. I kind of wanted to bookend it with the, you know, midlife 50. Now I can have all that time at sea to process and reflect and remember because you never have that time to really follow a thought through on land like you do at sea. I'd see you really have time to dream and think about things. It's a huge meditation too is a big part of that or that's what I remembered, which is probably different now because I'd, you know, I'd be nowadays I'd have to go out there and be sure to let people know I was still alive with some device or whatever and my days wouldn't have been spent wondering where I was with the sex next to the GPS whatever it would have been different but still it's a long meditation out there but then I didn't do it I had first of all I had my own little health issue and then my dad it became clear that I couldn't just leave for a year that somebody had to take charge and that's what I did so that's why that's how I had that boat

And I did sail it a bit here on the East Coast. I brought it up from the Caribbean. So I had one more solo passage from St. Martin up to Bermuda. That was the last one. And then I sailed it around here. And then it was when I wanted to sail it back to the Caribbean to sell it. That's the trick that my son ended up not doing. You know, you talk about being on the water for long periods of time as a form of meditation

and getting to follow a thought through to the end. was there different thoughts then that you meditated on while you were on the trip that you got to think through? Not deliberately. It just happened. I mean, you don't, there's nothing but time and loneliness and space. And it's, I mean, you cut off from all other distractions other than what's the most immediate. Yeah, I was able to probably, you know, I'm not going to analyze myself until the cow's going to home, but I definitely was able to work out a lot of the childhood stuff up until that point. We had a bit of a crazy upbringing and to be able to work that all out in my head. And then my mother died while I was out there too.

That was a big one. And then another huge piece of it was coming home and writing the book about it. You know, figuring out what that whole story was about and what was important enough to put into words and make a story out of it. to find the beginning in the middle and the end to it all, which led to another beginning. I should say, your book is fantastic. It is a very easy read. Thanks. That was a huge part of the trip, too, was to sit down and do that book. That may have been the best part of it. I had Bernadette with me. She was the best teacher. We worked together and very closely for a year. I was just, it was another meditation. I was at home. But now I didn't.

I didn't have to worry about leaks. I could run the water. I could take a nice hot shower. I could have a laundry machine. All those things I dreamed about for two and a half years I now had in our, and we lived in a basement apartment. Olivier complained bitterly nonstop, but how could we be in such a beautiful world on the boat and now live in a basement?

I was like, that basement's not leaking. Everything works. I can flush the toilet. I loved our little cave down there. And I spent that year writing the book in it and remembering, and looking at the pictures and rereading the letters and the logbooks and, you know, it was all fresh still. I was able and then take that and integrate into what the story of the life that led up to it.

Helped really sort things out. Got it all neatly sorted out so I could move on. Well, with roughly five minutes to go, I'll bring us to our final segment of the podcast. It's a crewed master final five, just five questions. quick or as long as you want to go. If you could, I enjoy this. It's been something that I stumbled into and I've really enjoyed tracking down different stories from around the world.

If you could sit down and pick the brain of somebody, who would you take? Dad are alive? Sure. I'm not sure. Who do I have the, I don't, probably one of my kids. I'd love to know what goes on inside those meatheads. What's inspiring me? What inspires me is what I don't know.

I don't, I don't, that's a tough one. It's a good one. I'm not, I don't, I don't, I'm, I'm not the inquisitor. I'd rather sit down and just have a conversation with somebody. And there's many people, there's many writers, there's people who've written books. I don't know. I can't think, ah, if you put me on a spot. I'll think of something later. Sure. If you could travel back to your 18-year-old self before or maybe in the first alone day and just hop aboard the ship for 10 minutes and impart some wisdom, what wisdom would you impart on yourself? I guess I'd impart this same wisdom on myself throughout life to not spend as much of it as I did, you know, being angry.

try to subvert the anger I'd be angry at my parents angry at the past angry at the situation whatever I did have I had a lot of anger to work out and probably

say just let it go it's a waste of time doesn't do any good what while you were out at sea and had no contact from the world what's one of the biggest events when you got back to land

that had happened one of the biggest events yeah like world events while I was out there yeah I think out there

Chernobyl happened Chernobyl happened yeah I think that happened in 80 right when I was in Tahiti I think that's when that happened

um pretty sure that happened but we could Google it but that was a big one and then um my I had actually the big thing that happened with my friends is I had friends in New York when I was part of my teenage.

A big part of my teenage years were these friends that they became the Beastie Boys. While I was gone, that was they got famous. So that was big on a personal level. When I came home, I had friends that were just like. You know the Beastie Boys. Yeah. That was part of the crowd. That was our crowd.

We were the Beastie girls. That's epic. I mean, that's pretty cool. I don't know. I love reggae. Peter Tosh died while I was out there. That was a big one. What else happened?

I mean, Chernobyl and the Beastie Boys, at least for my sense, those are pretty big. I was just curious when you came back to land and we're like, oh, that happened? Like Chernobyl's a big one. What? My buddies are famous now. They're singing all over the U.S. and the world. That's pretty big stuff. Of course, I heard about it. People would write to me and stuff. It was, yep, it was in April 86, exactly, Chernobyl.

Wow. Bailey's comment happened while I was out there, too. But that was disappointing. I thought I'd see this comets streaking across the sky and it was just a fuzzy star. No, that's pretty good. That was the big one. My mother died. Yeah, well, I mean, that that was, how about how would a book suggest? And you talked that your entertainment was, was reading books. Do you got one book from back then or a couple of books that like really stick out or even now?

Do you have a book that really grabs your attention? I can tell you the books because there were books that I'd read that really, like one passage would be flavored by that book. That book was the book that gripped me. I was in that world because you. you know, books are transporting. So the mists of Avalon was a huge one. That was the, it was about King Arthur's days. It was from the point of view of Morgan Lefei.

I was just like in King Arthur's world out there in the middle of the ocean. Tessa the Derbavilles was another really big one. That, that flavored my one passage in a big way. Let's see what else. Nature's End was another one. That was a scary book about, you. you know, climate change actually back then already. It was a, it was a dystopian book about that.

Um, I didn't love it, but it was definitely a book I felt proud of reading and getting through. It was a big slog, just like that passage I was on to because I had to cross a doldrum. That was a slog, but lemies there up. I read that one. And I, you know, I read a lot of pulpy books, too. That were just quick reads. Tons of them. I calculated once.

I did write down a lot of the books that I wrote, but I calculated that I read something like 360 books while I was out there. Your final one. Your final one, you've seen different parts of the world, been through some crazy things along your trip and a long life. And I always look for people's truths. And maybe there's a truth you took that,

developed that was common amongst all the different stops or out in the ocean or what have you. What's one of the truths you took from your trip that trend, you know, that you took along with life or took into life? Oh, well, I also repeat it often. People are good. A big question that I've gotten over the years is, did I ever have a problem because I was a girl alone out there? Never.

And even the one time where I thought maybe I came close to having a problem. problem ended up being a connection I've had in the years ever since in a really good way. People are good. People want to help. People are kind. People are generous. That's the reigning trait of humanity is goodness. And we ever more and more are being told to forget that, that it's not true.

We're being more and more polarized in many bad ways, I think, that make us forget that. And especially with the dumb little phones, we're losing the chance to experience that. Now you don't ask people directions anymore. You have a map all the time. You don't have to stop and talk to people. You can find out answers to everything on your dumb little device. You can't, you don't, it's robbing us of our connection with people too. It's telling us about our relationships.

It's not letting us live them. I couldn't agree more. And I'm addicted to it also, though, at the same time. We don't have a meeting anymore where it's like a question can go unanswered. We're going to have the answer right away. Look, I just found out when Chernobyl was. I couldn't even trust my memory. I knew that I, okay, now that I'm saying it, was it Chernobyl then?

Let me check. Two seconds it took me to find out. Yeah, it did happen. I couldn't agree any, or I couldn't agree more with what you just said. I 100% agree with the phone. And here's the thing, you're not alone in being addicted to it. It's hard to have access to knowledge like that, just sitting inches away from your fingertips if you just take the two seconds to type it in.

And yet, when I come into this space, other than being able to use the technology to reach people, I like to, I try and turn everything off so that I can engage fully with the person on the other side because that engagement doesn't happen anymore on day-to-day basis. It's actually pretty rare. It's a rare thing that I try and I try and get a lot of by doing these talks with different people. And it's a lot of fun. Passages, too, with the boat, maybe that's partly what Polt attracts me to the trip,

to being at sea still with other people, is you just have those days with other people. You get to talk to them. You get to know people. You really get to know other people out there. which is why I wanted to have a trip with the boys, too, in ways that we just can't anymore. So many things pulling up apart and just distracting. The world is a fast-moving place, and it just keeps getting faster.

Yeah, and you have to be a special person and be able to pull away from that. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me this morning. This has been thoroughly enjoyable for myself. I hope I, you know, you enjoyed sitting down here as well. And just thanks for, thanks for doing this with me. Thanks for having me. I hope I didn't look like I was being tortured or anything. It was fun.

No, no, not at all. No, like I say, this is, I've really enjoyed sitting across from you. And wish you the best in what comes up next for you. Thank you, you too. This is cool that you've done this. Like I said in the email, that's inspiring too. So you had an idea and you followed through. It's big.

Cool. Thank you. Hey folks, thanks again for joining us today. If you just stumble on the show and like what you hear, please click subscribe. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday a new guest will be sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you find your podcast fix. Until next time.