My husband Jirig and I have decided to write this blog to allow our friends and family to follow us as we cruise in our sailboat around the world. By way of background my husband and I have been married for 23 years and have 2 sons, Daniel 21 and Nico 12. For years we have dreamed of sailing around the world with our family. We have had boats for most of that time but in July of 2013 my husband finally found the boat he had been searching for (after a three year search) that could comfortably take us where we wanted to go. We bought a 52 foot Cheoy Lee Motor Sailer Ketch. For those not into boating it is basically a sail boat and a power boat in one. It is a long range cruiser that was built to sail the oceans. We had talked about our plans for years but once we had the boat we really got down to business. We made a 2 year plan to wind down our businesses and careers to fund our adventure. Jirig, who is a licensed captain by the US Coast Guard, started preparing the boat to cruise and I started to read everything I could get my hands on about the cruising life. We went to boat shows and took seminars. I read every magazine and blog I could find. I knew from everything I hadread that we had to set a date if we were really serious about leaving. We finally agreed that we would head south on July 9thof 2015 (my 54th birthday). We also agreed that our plans were open ended, we may not be coming back to live in the US. We would cruise at our own pace and continue cruising as long as we were still having fun. Our kids are as committed to this trip as we are. My older son Daniel will be a senior in college this year so he will be staying in Long Beach for one year to finish school and then he plans to join us about the time we will be transiting the Panama Canal. My younger son Nico can’t wait to get started. He is particularly interested in the home schoolingaspect of our trip. He started middle school this year and hates it. Ironically homeschooling is the part I find most daunting about this trip. It is an awesome and hefty responsibility. The idea of traveling around the world on our boat and being home schooled by his mom is about as good as it gets for him. 

It has not been easy winding down and wrapping up our landlives. It is hard work and emotionally draining. Not everyone understands what we are doing or agrees with it. Many of our friends think we are stark raving mad. They cannot even fathom what we are about to do. Others are enthusiastically supportive. It was hard for me to walk away from my career. I was working for a fabulous company and was at the top of my career. My husband ran 2 successful businesses that he had built over 35 years. To dismantle our land lives was complex and difficult. But we just stayed focused on the goal. The idea of working our butts off for the next decade and then retiring in the US just did not appeal to us. We were going to pursue our dream and nothing was going to get in the way. We wanted to go while we were still healthy and strong enough to do so. 

Our travel plans are flexible and subject to change but the overall plan is to cruise in Mexico and the Sea of Cortez for the first year. Around May of 2016 we will head south throughCentral America headed for the Panama Canal. The big question for us was do we turn right and head for the Galapagos and then across the Pacific to the Marquesas or to turn left and go through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean? The 3200 mile slog across the Pacific seemed daunting for our first year of cruising so we decided to turn left and head through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean . We will spend a year there and then head across the Atlantic to Europe and the Mediterranean. We will spend a year cruising Europe, Turkey and Greece. Unfortunately due to the turmoil and piracy in the Middle East and the Red Sea we cannot take that route safely. We plan to put our boat on a transport vessel and meet it in Australia. We will spend a year cruising Australia and New Zealand and then head to Asia. We have a 5 year plan and after that we will determine if we want to keep cruising or return to one of the places we loved along the way and set up residency there. 

People ask us if we are retiring and we say no, we are changing our lives. When we stopped and looked ahead at the next ten years and saw what was in front of us if we stayed on the path we were on; we did not like what we saw. We wanted to drastically change the course of our lives and that is exactly what we are going to do! 

Teresa Nersesyan