FAQs

As news of our sabbatical broke, reactions were mixed, but questions were common. Below are our FAQs:

Are you insane?

No.

What is your route and timeline?

We are departing from San Francisco, California in December 2017 and intend to sail south, then east. We are planning to leave the hurricane zone before July 2018, then make our way back towards land life. We’ve got ideas on specific destinations but the longer we choose to stay in one point, the less time we’ll have down the line to explore new spots. So, to get the most of the experience, our plans need to be fluid. When it comes to sailing, the riskiest things you can do is to try to plan your every move, because you don’t know what mother nature will have in store. And we mother nature speaks, you listen. Unfortunately, this is a sabbatical, not retirement, so our timeline is restricted by a tight budget and a predictable weather window.

What do you eat?

We are aiming to eat the same as we do on land, smart food with smart ingredients. Probably simpler and with less ethnic diversity as we did in the Bay (I will miss you Tom Kha soup), but still wholesome and nutritious. When we get to port we plan to eat like the locals do. We don’t rely on canned food at home, and we don’t intend to start now! We definitely have a stack of canned goods, but we are hoping to reserve these as a backup.  We are learning to be self-sufficient by teaching ourselves how to bake bread, preserve fresh nutritious produce and catch fish. Provisioning is a science and art form that we look forward to mastering. We did go a bit overboard with our last provisioning at Trader Joes. What can we say – we love Green Dragon sauce.

What about your jobs?

Neither company offered a leave of absence program, so we had to resign from our jobs to fulfill on our personal goals. It’s a bit scary to walk away from a stable job, but we are taking a leap of faith on ourselves and are confident we will walk away with new skills that will make us smarter and stronger humans.

What do you hope to get out of this?

This is a big question. Stay tuned for a future post :).