Its only a few days now before I head off to the USA and its been a crazy month with a whole lot of changes so I thought I better fill you in by updating the blog.

The first big change is that Tim and I decided to break up. I guess sometimes when you have something like this trip planned it can make you think quite hard about the big things and in this case we talked it over and decided to go our separate ways.

So Nick and I have decided to carry on as planned. We have had to make a few small changes and realign some of our yacht searching criteria etc. but in general we are still on track. One of the big exciting changes that has happened is that we have decided to add some full time crew. Ann Parkinson and Dean Carr will be joining us for the trip. These two fantastic weirdo’s will be a welcome addition. They are good fishy friends of Nick and I and will mean we are a full team of marine biologists on board. We are super excited about having some help and no doubt lots of good entertainment!

I will try and get a profile of each of us together for the next blog update so you can get a good idea about us all and how we decided that not growing up, leaving jobs/study and sailing across the Pacific was a good idea. Four hard out Peter Pans sailing off across an ocean together – what could go wrong!? haha

Other than all the sailing changes I have been able to have a fantastic last month with my amazing family. I have been super lucky to have the whole family with me for some good quality time before we leave. We managed to get some good mini NZ adventures in; including waterfalls, caves, surfing, swimming, mini tramps, paddleboarding and lots of eating. The weather wasn’t amazing but great to have time with the mini Briggsy and Porter toddlers. Those two are hilarious and I will miss them a lot while I am away.

So its all coming together and things are feeling pretty real. I fly in 3 days with Mum and Dad (expert yachties) to LA and then onto Miami. We plan to do some good yacht searching around Florida and then hopefully buy the yacht a bit closer to Panama. Nick will be a few weeks behind us then closely followed by Ann and Dean.

Wish you all the best for 2016. I hear it’s the year for adventures….