August 2019: News About Our Adventure

What would we do if we had the time and opportunity to
do something we talked about doing if only we had the time to do it? Also known as: calling our bluff.

We sent the below email to friends/family in August 2019. It might provide useful background information for those of you who haven’t seen the email and are interested to learn the information. Here is the email:

Hi everyone,

I hope you are enjoying the summer.

I hate sending this via a large mass email but I haven’t seen/talked
to many of you over the summer and want you to know we haven’t just
disappeared, so here goes:  we bought a sailing catamaran in San Diego
in July and are moving aboard. Jason and I spent most of the past 3
weeks out there settling in, returned for 2 days to close up our house
for our renters, drove to my parents in CT, picked up Ryan and Owen in
camp in NH yesterday and are now driving back to San Diego via Jason’s
family in Chicago and Wisconsin.

We expect to be in San Diego vicinity through November (end of
hurricane season) and then sail south to Mexico and likely beyond
depending on timing and weather. It’s the first time in years that we
have no plans or agenda.  (The amount of time for this adventure
varies depending on which one of us is answering but figure a few
months to a year or so.) 🙂

Some quick answers to questions you may be wondering/others have
asked, and of course we are happy to talk more about any of them or
for you to ignore them if you’re not interested:
– What about the boys’ school?  Boat school, aka homeschool.  There
are a lot of online resources and we will focus on location-based work
as well. I know we have big shoes to fill relative to the Mamaroneck
school district.  Any ideas/tips on this always welcome!
– What about your jobs? Jason will return periodically to work
clinical shifts.  I may do some consulting.  My company was acquired a
few months ago (and I transitioned out as a result), and this
adventure is all about maximizing the benefit of this unexpected gift
of time and seizing an opportunity to simplify in a way we talked
about but never had an opportunity to do.  We were forced to answer
the question: what would we do if we had the time and opportunity to
do something we talked about doing if only we had the time to do it?
(I also have been referring to this as calling our bluff.)
– Will you have internet access?  Yes. There will be occasions when we
will be offshore and won’t have cell service so will rely on a
satellite device that can only receive plain text emails without
attachments (when that happens, we will have an automatic response
letting you know not to send attachments) but we expect to have
continued access to emails, and typically have access to internet –
though slower than fios at home.  This will take some adjustment. We
also plan to stay relatively closer to shore most of the time
regardless.
– How do Ryan and Owen feel about this?  Ryan and Owen are excited.
Maybe more excited than I am!  There are obvious trade offs but Owen
said it best when I asked him to really consider everything he would
miss in 5th grade if we set out on this adventure: “yes…. but think
of everything else I’ll gain.”
– Can we visit? Yes, we would LOVE visitors! We just don’t yet know
where we will be or when so visits require some flexibility, but
visitors are very welcome!
– What?! How long have you planned this and why haven’t I heard about
it?  While Jason has dreamed about doing this someday, perhaps in
retirement, we never expected this window of time. Once it came about,
we started methodically discussing and planning. This began with a lot
more of “no way are we doing such a random thing” from me and slowly
evolved to my telling Jason “I am all in.”
– Wait: Cross country road trip?? Yes. This kind of thing was actually
my initial preference for a sabbatical year. Instead we are cramming
it into about 10 days to get some stuff, the dog and the boys to the
boat. We are hightailing it to Wisconsin first and then will choose
the remainder of the route and see where we stop as we go.
– Will you name the boat? Of course! When this was in the “if we got a
boat, what would we name it?” stage, Owen used Google translate to
find the word “journey” in different languages. He found Yatra, which
is journey in Nepali, and Yatra it is. We selected it after a
months-long brainstorming process and then a family vote. Official
renaming ceremony and new signage to happen soon.
– What kind of boat?  It is a sailing catamaran whose prior owners
were a family of 5 from CA (2 parents, 3 kids plus dog) who purchased
it in Europe, spent some time fixing it up there, then sailed it
through the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean,
the Panama Canal and up the Pacific coast of Central America from
there to northern CA. They delivered it to us in San Diego. It will
require more maintenance than a house and is basically like a floating
island: it has a generator, enough solar panels so that we generally
won’t need to run the generator, a watermaker to convert saltwater to
freshwater, tiny bathrooms/showers and enough room for us and
occasional guests. Although this idea may sound amazing to some, we
also expect to spend a lot of time on proactive maintenance to
minimize unexpected surprises, though those are unavoidable too. We
have been told that cruising is also known as “fixing your boat in
exotic places.”
– Do you have sailing experience? Jason grew up sailing with friends
on Lake Michigan, we all went on a trip this year where we got various
certifications and stayed on a catamaran similar to the one we
purchased, and Jason and I were just with an instructor for 10 days
doing advanced trainings on the boat. Ryan did a 3 week sailing camp
this summer, and both boys got their “mates” at Camp Kabeyun this
month.  The main focus of this adventure is the travel and adventure
rather than the sailing; sailing is the vehicle for that travel and we
aren’t in a race to get anywhere.
– Will you be blogging?  (We have gotten this question a lot! Do
people really want to hear?!)  I have to figure this out. I’ve had a
few higher priority things going on. But I will log on to Facebook for
the first time in over a year and start with that. We will likely
start using Instagram too. More to come on a blog.

We have told some of you about this to various degrees, and sincere
apologies we couldn’t get to those of you personally who are surprised
and shouldn’t have been. Between transitioning from work; setting up
the house for rentals and showings; purging and moving stuff to our
attic, to a storage space, into a UHaul trailer hitched to our car now
(did I mention that above?!), and a few things to my parents’ house;
shaking down the boat, etc., it has been busy and we didn’t get to see
everyone we wanted to – in fact, we barely got to see anyone!
Although I am sending this to a very large group, I’m sure I also
inadvertently left people off this email, completely unintended. I
don’t want to disappear without explaining things. 🙂

While we are away we would love to get updates from all of you and
still feel connected.  The boys will check their emails (copied here)
and texts as well. Have your kids (or you!) write!

All our best!
Jenn Kronick and Jason Shapiro
Ryan and Owen Shapiro . . . and Flash!