We are two young-ish adults who want to sail around the world. Neither of us had any experiance sailing before (minor detail)…so now what?!?! We prepare! First things first..learn how to sail. We have a lot of navigational instruments and it’s probably best if we learn how to use them. And because we both enjoy being alive we also need to learn how to not die on a long distance cruise. Our lifestye will completely change. The biggest change will be our home…it will be boyant, and because there will be little room for improvisation while we are sailing we need to prepare ourselves for the worst that our new environment can throw at us. We want to feel as safe and secure as possible. So before leaving the safe harbour of Carantan, France, we are making ouselves aware of all the possible difficulties we can encounter. We will know how to handle or prevent a problem when or if it arises.

Practice how to sail as often as possible. We have a lot of memorable experiences with our first boat Baladin who taught us about sailing. And we have great memories of experimenting with Deborah.

We had to obtain different licences. One to be allowed to drive Arbutus on a French river and canal, and another to legally use radio waves for the ham radio.

Read, read, read and read. We read all the time to educate ourselves about anything and everything to do with long distance cruising. We’ve learned a lot from reading about other sailor’s experiances and troubles.

When the preration for this trip started our trip began. So right now it feels like we’ve already mentally left.