By Kevin

We’ve read many how-to-sail-around-the-world handbooks and manuals in the past 6 monnths as we’ve been getting ready to move aboard Real Life. One of the to-do items on our master checklist was “Pack personal items.”

Ok, then. So, what exactly does one pack when planning to be away from home for a year? The sailing manuals had lots to say on the topic, beside telling hopeful cruisers which spare parts to carry to the Bahamas (surely a future blog post here) or how to preserve your fresh eggs for months (slather them in petroleum jelly!).

Here is what I’ve packed. (Each of us had slight variations of this list.)

• sturdy flip-flops (they’ve been across the Atlantic with me)
• Sperry boat shoes
• foul weather boots
• boat-friendly sneakers
• foul weather full-hand sailing gloves
• 4 pair of athletic socks
• 1 belt
• 7 pair of underwear
• 3 undershirts
• 5 t-shirts
• 3 button-down, short-sleeve shirts (dinner shirts!)
• 1 pair of cotton trousers
• 1 pair of jeans
• 5 pair of shorts
• 2 pair of swim trunks (I may buy 1 more pair, as this will be a daily item)
• 2 swim shirts/rash guards
• 1 pair of long pajama pants
• 1 pair of pajama shorts
• 1 track suit
• 1 light wind breaker
• 1 light fleece jacket
• 1 rain jacket
• 1 pair of rain over-pants
• 1 set of foulies (lined jacket and trousers)
• 1 baseball cap
• 1 broad-rimmed hat
• 1 fleece cap
• 2 pair of prescription glasses
• 1 pair of prescription sunglasses
• 1 pair of non-prescription, wraparound sunglasses (polarized)
• 90 pairs of disposable contacts (enough for a year)
• toiletries for a few months (we’ll really stock up before leaving Fort Lauderdale)
• 15+ books (no technology or startup books allowed on this trip)
• Chess board and clock (you never know where you’ll find an opponent)
• Digital gear, including cameras, iPod, laptop, chargers, cables, etc.
• Automatic inflation PFD (Personal Inflation Device)

By Jennifer

The day we left was crazy. We had a very long list to get through that revolved around closing up the house. We completed most everything. Mixed in was a call to the Wheaton Police Department to report a neighbor girl’s brand new bike stolen from our driveway by a suspected wayward teenager. We filed the police report, wiped tears and, unbelieveably, the bike was found ditched in a Wheaton subdivision several hours later by the girl’s mom. Thank God! We were on the road by 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 20. Enjoy this photo gallery from Departure Day.

By Jennifer

What a hard, heart-warming week it has been. I can’t begin to say how touched we are by the people in our lives. Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. We’ll be thinking of you always. (Now, only if my camera’s battery didn’t die, I’d have a few more pics.)

By Kevin

In the fall of 2011, Jennifer and I read A Real Life by prolific author, winemaker, home and ship builder, and renowned sailor Ferenc Máté. The book is a potpourri of topics that revolve around how to reduce the clutter, noise, and distractions in your life and focus on what is really important. It is long-winded advice on how to get a life.

Over the following winter months, we extensively researched the idea of a family sabbatical. Who, what, when, where, why (and, how). We finally made the decision to proceed on March 1st, 2012. We decided to move out of our comfortable 3800 square foot home in the suburbs, move our family onto a sailing yacht and travel the Caribbean islands, all while homeschooling our children. Within five months. Ok…decision made.

So, now what do we do?

We created a spreadsheet, of course. Technically, we created this sacred spreadsheet well before making our final go/no-go decision. In fact, the go/no-go decision was just one of many early checklist items it contained.

The spreadsheet became the central planning tool for what needed to be done vs what we wanted to have done, by when, by whom and any notes on the particular to-do items. We named it our “Cruising Dashboard” because that truly is what it has become to us. (We used a Google Docs spreadsheet because it is one of the best collaboration tools on the planet, but you could use any spreadsheet software.)

We set up the following tabs:

• Checklist – Our master to-do list with columns for Completed?, Due Date, Priority, Task, Owner, Notes.
• Purchase List – What do we need to purchase, where we’ve found it, what prices.
• Projects – What boat projects are outstanding. It has the same columns as Checklist with the addition of Vendor, Estimate and Actual for tracking costs.
• Home School – Information from our research on different curriculum options.
• Medical Insurance – Ditto for medical insurance options.
• Boats – The short list of boat models and how they measure against our criteria for a good sailing yacht for our trip. Columns include: Make, Model, Length, Year, Priority, Price, Rig, Displacement, Ballast, LWL, LOA, Beam, B/D Ratio, D/L Ratio, S/D Ratio, MCD, Capsize Ratio, URL, Location, City/Marina, Appointment, Phone, Email, Notes. Each row on this tab represented a specific boat that is for sale.

From early March, when the Cruising Dashboard was created, to today, we’ve been using it successfully to manage all our tasks and links to the important research we’ve compiled.

By Jennifer

Kevin and I were taking our ritual walk around our neighborhood last night when we crossed paths with neighbors also walking. They stopped, said hello and asked, ‘How in the world are you planning for this trip?’

The trip, which is being documented on this blog, which I expect I will not be the sole writer of, is our maiden voyage on Sailing Vessel Real Life down the coast of Florida, through the Keys and on to the Bahamas beginning this August.

When Carol, one of the very first people I met in our neighborhood 11 years ago, posed this question to me, I, in turn, asked myself, “Geez, how are we planning for this??”

How do you pack for a year? Well, we began with a spreadsheet and just kept adding to it and adding to it until we couldn’t think of anything more to list. So the spreadsheet has been quite functional. We’ve read books and experiences of other families who have gone cruising for an extended time and that has helped shaped our checklist.

The checklist, as you can imagine, has found away to keep growing as the days and weeks go by. Included on the list are things such as lining up the kids’ homeschool for the year ahead, repair work on the boat, brushing up on our sailing skills and things to be done around our house.

Mid-June I skippered a daysail with the family on a J22 on Lake Michigan. That served as a nice refresher for my sailing skills that have been mostly dormant since last summer.

Jennifer skippering a refresher sail on a J22 on Lake Michigan along the Chicago skyline eight weeks before leaving for our trip. Click on the image to see the pics from that day.

But, the other way I’ve planned for this trip is by just going with it.

I’ve surrendered to the idea that it’s not all going to come together perfectly. We will forget things. And then we will figure it out. I read not long ago about another sailing family who had a mantra when difficulties arised. Of course, I forgot their mantra, but have adopted one of my own — “We will get there when we get there.”

Also, included on the checklist have been visits to check on Real Life. At the end of June we stopped in Ft. Lauderdale, where Real Life is currently docked, to check on the work being done on the boat. We finally got it out of the shipyard after more than a month and have since moved it to a residential canal. As the mechanical work winds up, we took the cushions from the aft and forward cabins out and are having new ones made. 

Here, Real Life is tied up to a residential dock in Ft. Lauderdale. It’s a nonliveaboard and a more afforable option than keeping it in a marina until we arrive in August.

The next big item on the list is to find a liveaboard slip in Ft. Lauderdale for the weeks we will be there before setting sail Nov. 1.