Wonderful wife = wonderful life!

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The last two years sailing have been a fantastic experience, we have seen so many cool places, met wonderful people and had a lot of fun. Doing it as a family means everything to me, having experiences that we will cherish as a family and hopefully setting up a strong bond with our children, while showing them there is a great big world outside of their home and classroom is super important to me. The changes I’ve seen in our kids is incredible, their confidence abounds.

But having done it for two seasons now, we know that cruising for extended periods of time, with a young family is a heap of hard work. It is definatley hardest on Heather. You see, Heather is a home bird, not really a traveller. She likes visiting places but probably (given the choice :-)) would not chose to sail on a small boat with her nearest and dearest for months at a time, she likes space and a chance to escape. On a boat there is little chance of escape! She would be equally happy at home, in a familiar environment, with her friends close by. I know this, she knows this, yet she has supported me in all my crazy schemes, some including boats….some without.  A few years ago we were living in the UK and I wanted to work overseas – I was given three options, Melbourne, Brisbane or Singapore. I asked Heather which she would prefer -the answer was clear, Melbourne, Sydney or bust. I said, oh, thats a shame, we move to Singapore in a month! Once the shock had died down, she fully committed to the move and loved it.

A few years later, when she was 36 weeks pregnant, I , unannounced, arrived home in the cab of a tow truck and loaded an un-road worthy 1973 VW kombi into the garage. She was not too pleased, but I chalked it up to the hormones 🙂 ! Heather and I spent three years restoring the VW, or Rosie as she was christened before setting off on numerous road trips.  I couldn’t have done it without her, I almost gave up many times but Heather kept us going, tackling one bit of this big project at a time.

When I suggested that I may do the Clipper around the world yacht race she was probably relieved that I would be out of her hair for a year. But it was going to cost a lot of money…almost the same as buying our own boat….so when I suggested that rather that me going sailing alone with a bunch of strangers, we buy a boat and set sail she rolled her eyes – but once again fully supported the project.

Now we are about to complete our second season and once again I could not have done it without Heather. There is no other woman I know who can spend a day mucking poo out of a bilge, then spend and hour holding a sick bucket, wash our clothes by hand and then get glammed up and hit the town in style!

Heather you are a rockstar.

Thank you