It all started when..

“I’m fed up! If it wasn’t for this latest screw-up by greedy bankers our staff would be getting decent bonuses this year! As it is I’ll just get the blame. I could just take one of these boats and just sail off into the sunset and screw them all!”

It was 2009 and we were just starting to really feel the fall out of the latest gift from our greedy bankers! Lesley and I were walking the Toronto boat Show in the midst of a cold Canadian winter just looking at anything that might take our eye for our cottage a few hundred kilometers north of Toronto as we did every year. We had just taken the decision that the company had to be frugal with bonuses this year due to the fragile economic outlook and our reduced sales as a result.   I had been thinking for several minutes on how we could do nothing. It seems that no matter how hard you try to do the right thing in a small business ‘the bigger picture’ gets you anyway. A few years back the accountancy profession in the form of Arthur Anderson gave us their gift with the likes of Enron, etc. Now it was the turn of the banking industry. Individual greed reigns supreme in these sectors and the international governments seem powerless or uninterested to act and protect everyone else (including my Mum who had saved up all her life for a happy retirement only to see the interest on her savings fall through the floor).  
Thank you bankers.

I digress. I could get quite political.

“Lets do it then”, said Les.

With those words a train of events was started that over three years has led to our current adventure to sail around the world – or at least until we get bored.

You might imagine, that of course, we had sailed for a few years and perhaps owned a small sail boat that we used at weekends and this was taking just a step further to fulfill a long held dream.
Actually, we had never sailed before – ever.
We didn’t know one end of a sailboat “the pointy bit” from the other, “the blunt bit”. We had owned and used small runabouts for the cottage and to cruise along the river Thames in England for a few years.

Within a few minutes we were inside a Hunter 39 sailboat and imagining if we could manage to live on one of these things. Then a Beneteau 40, then a Jenneau 40. (for the non-sailors, these are all sailboats.) We thought that “Yup”, at first sight, we could.
Next, we saw a tiny sailing school booth along a wall, typical of an exhibition layout. It was for the “Humber Powerboat and Sailing School” they were based in Mimico a suburb of Toronto.
The question was simple,
“Can you teach us to sail one of those in about a year or so and how much would it cost?  

The answer was equally simple,
“Yes” and “ membership is about $2,500 a year for unlimited sailing. Plus the cost of any formal courses you might take. But yes, we can get you going o/k”.  

We took out membership there and then even though sailing didn’t start until May (Ontario Lake is a bit chilly in winter!).
This has to be the cheapest, best value, and overall most exciting investment we have ever made – period!

From there on both Lesley and I set out to learn how to sail, learn how to buy a sailboat and reorganize our lives ready for our adventure. Oh, and ..

“Screw the greedy bankers that have caused so much misery for millions of people around the globe.”

We learn to sail.

Just about 90% of everything we learnt about sailing from that point on has been thanks to the Humber Sailing School, the Humber Sailing Club or people associated with them such as the Voyageur Sailing School. We can’t thank those organisations and the many many volunteers involved with them enough. Many, many incredible unsung heroes that give their time freely for people like us to fulfill their dreams.

Via the Humber School and Sailing Club we gained so much sailing experience and gained various sailing qualifications via the CYA (Canadian Yachting Association). From the outset we made sure that Les and I did everything together. Every course, every workshop, every practical sail.  After all, it was our intention to sail as a couple and so it would be important to ensure each of us could sail competently if the other was ill for example. (CYA Basic Keelboat skipper, CYA Intermediate skipper, CYA Advanced Skipper, CYA Navigation, Radio, Mahina Expeditions, St John’s Ambulance First Aid (Maritime).

We never told anybody of our ‘real’ intentions for at least 9 months. The idea of sailing around the world from a zero start seemed a little too ludicrous and would only prompt a series of questions of sanity anyway! When we did begin to open up we typically only spoke of the Caribbean or the Mediterranean for quite a few months. Eventually we came clean and dam the consequences!

After a year and following various sailing blogs we came across the sailing adventures of ‘Festina Lente’ a sailing boat called a Discovery 55 and skippered by Nick Pochin. Nick had had many sailing years of experience under his belt and made the mistake of loosely mentioning in one of his blogs that he’d be looking for crew to help sail his boat back from Miami to the UK. To cut a long story short, we put our hands up high and asked if we might go with him despite our experience. In a huge _expression_ of generosity he agreed. This gave us our first taste of a big ocean in a reasonable sized boat and long sail.
We learnt so much from him.

In the following year we joined John and Amanda Neal with ‘Mahina Expeditions’ and traveled from Auckland to Tahiti. Another incredible learning experience.

We choose a sailboat.

Just where do you start? Why are some boats three times more expensive than others? Why do boats look so different? Can a couple really sail boat on their own without other crew? Why choose slab reefing over In-Mast furling?  ..and other nautical expressions!

With a lot of advice from people associated with Humber and experienced people such as Nick Pochin, Ken Gillstrom, Scott Hughes and John Neal to name just a few we realized that for what we needed a small (relative term here!) 40 foot sailboat might be a little cramped for us. We learnt the reasons for the difference in cost between various boats of the same length. By and large we would clearly need a sailboat that could cope with anything that the oceans could throw at it anywhere in the world and that would keep going long after the crew had given up! The boat had to be very solid, very stable, easily handled by a couple and finally very comfortable for several years live aboard.
We traveled to many boat shows, visited several yards and ..

Decided upon a Discovery 55 sailboat.

“The Discovery 55 is designed to comfortably take a couple safely around the world.”   

Choosing the boat turned out to be the simple part. If we had any illusions that the job was done – tick mark – we would have been surely disappointed! Our boat still had to be specified.
Suffice to say that with only a minimum experience under our belt we heavily relied upon the advice of the Discovery people to turn our needs (known or unknown) at the time into a reality!

Worse still!
We still had to name our new pride and joy!   Arggghhhhhhhh!

It took 3 years to learn to sail to a level acceptable to us.
It took 3 years to finally come up with the boat name – Timeless. (Well done Les!)
It took 3 years to learn about sailboats and for one to be delivered.
We had sailed approximately 5,600 miles before we took delivery of our boat.

We took delivery of our boat on May 1^st 2012 – only then did the real learning begin.

These are the diaries of the ‘Timeless’ adventures
..where time seems, well just unimportant somehow.