Captain Andrew & Mate Leslie, Circa 2003
Welcome To Another Blog About Sailing Around the World
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to cast off your dock lines and sail away from the life you are living right now to do something different? Have you wondered what the impact might be if you leave your job, family, friends, and lawn mower behind to float 1500 miles from land in any direction or to visit distant and exotic places? What could you learn? Would you be able to face the challenges? Would you have any regrets? Are you curious - even if you have no plan to sail at all?
I never intended it to be a “How To Sail” blog. There are textbooks written by far more accomplished sailors than I on this very topic. Instead, we will tell you our story - including the strategies we used - and over time, you can see the way our decisions pan out. Hopefully, you will be entertained in the meantime. Life is so short, we can never lead all the lives we would wish. I know that well enough for my own life, and so I hope my sailing blog can bring the adventure of a life at sea home to people who hope to sail one day (of course), but also to those who want a modern day adventure at sea from the comfort of their back patio, a mug of tea or a glass of wine in hand.
For this reason, Oddgodfrey is a blog designed to let you peer into the dirty details of our adventure sailing around the world. It’s quite honest (probably toeing the line right up to oversharing at times!) about the good, the bad, the truly ugly and the utterly amazing. It will take you from the beginning to the end (still to be determined) of our hopeful circumnavigation. The moment it was hatched, to all the stages in between. So without further ado:
How Did The Oddgodfreys Decide To Sail Around The World?
Captain Andrew and I both started our days in the high mountain desert of Utah, USA. We lived our first twenty years in a location more than 1,000 miles inland of any ocean, where water is scarce and lakes are usually defined more like puddles. Sailboats, sailing, and open ocean were the furthest thing from our minds. But, a true Sea Captain can hear the siren’s call of the sea from anywhere, I suspect. And, one day, Captain Andrew heard it calling - even through the walls of his newly acquired office cubicle.
The Sudden Inspiration Offered by a Desk Job
It was nearing Christmas of 2004. I was wrapping presents, and Andrew was "supervising", i.e. drinking beer and watching me wrap. Snow accumulated in the Salt Lake Valley, the ski season was just about to get good in the mountains that surround the area. Andrew recently graduated with his Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering, and had started his first desk job in September. He was already fussing around for a new goal.
Andrew: What would you think about sailing around the world?
We’d known each other for almost two years at this point. Yet, I had never observed him or even heard tale of him coming within a mile of a sailboat.
Leslie: Do you know how to sail?
Andrew: No, do you?
Leslie: No!
Next? Learn The First Thing About Sailing
A week later, Andrew found a class at the Salt Lake Library put on by sailors at the Great Salt Lake Yacht Club. The first class we went to was all about tying a bowline knot. Andrew won a book about how to sail, and he considered that a good sign. So we continued to attend meetings until one day, one of our fellow sailors invited us to join their boat as “Rail Meat” for the Frostbite Race scheduled for February 28, 2005. This seemed like an auspicious sign, too, As fate had it: exactly two years from the day we went on our first date, Andrew and I stepped foot on a sailboat for the very first time.
The race was slow, as the winds were light. After the race was over, we ate chili on deck from a slow cooker that had been braced down and bubbling away below decks. I thought to myself: “This sailing thing is great!”
Neptune was easing this sailor in with a lull, but that’s okay. It was a pleasant start to our sailing career.
Commitment to the Sailing Goal
There is no way I could have known the full meaning of such a decision, but I returned home that night to make a starry-eyed promise to do everything in my power cast off our dock lines for a circumnavigation. I rolled up my promise and stuck it in a bottle that I painted as a gift for Andrew. (How else would you deliver a promise to sail around the world?) And the very first part of our plan was hatched.
From February 28, 2005 forward, we thought about sailing every single day: how to sail, how to travel great distances by sail, what type of boat to sail, how to fund a large trip under sail, the value of traveling by sail, what we might lose and what we might gain as we travel by sail. By the time we complete our circumnavigation - if we complete our circumnavigation - we will be at it for over eighteen years.
As I write this, our self imposed deadline is almost upon us - February 28, 2016, of course - and we are about ready to cast off. This is your chance to come along with us; see how it goes. We'll spill all our secrets and together we can find the answers to the two questions we really want to know: