#14yearsofmarriage

Three Years At Sea

On June 30th 2014, quite exactly three years ago, we started a journey that changed our life.  We moved from a large and steady apartment to a tiny and shaky sailing boat.  The first year is summarised in the blog post entitled “One Year of Family Sailing”.

Here are the highlights of the last tow years in the Pacific Ocean.

2015

Jul-Aug

New York, Vermont USA, visiting Herbert’s family. There, we also had the chance to meet the legendary solo sailor Tania Aebi and her inspiring father Ernst Aebi. We went to Montréal, Canada for a weekend trip to show the kids where we spent our exchange year at Ecole Polytechnique in 1999/2000. And of course visiting friends ;-).

Aug-Sept

Curaçao, pimping up Maya and following the traces of Herbert’s mother’s place of birth. (“Troubles in Paradise“, “The Passage from Curaçao to Colombia”)

Sept-Oct

Santa Marta, Colombia. Great country, great people! The funny thing is that we weren’t supposed to visit Colombia because of safety issues, but many friends and sailors we met along the way insisted that we MUST go there. THANK YOU GUYS! We loved it!

By the way, Asma flew shortly back to Tunisia to see her family. Herbert stayed with the boys and started homeschooling Adam. Starting of a new era.

Oct-Nov

San Blas Islands, getting in touch with Kuna Indians in their beautiful little paradise. Unfortunately, we had to shorten our stay there because of issues with the windlass...

Nov

Crossing the legendary Panama Canal and short stay in Islas Las Perlas (“The Panama Canal”). We did it! We are in the Pacific!

Dec

Golfito, Costa Rica. Herbert’s mother visited us for Christmas.

2016

Jan-Feb

Golfito, Costa Rica. Surfing and sightseeing this wonderful country with its amazing wild nature. Swimming in waterfalls, hiking in tropical forests with funny monkeys, beautiful tucans, lazy sloths, colorful parrots and dangerous crocodiles in their natural habitat, snorkeling with dolphins, etc. A living zoo. Wow. (“Should we stay or should we go?”)

Feb-Jun

Mountain View, California USA. Herbert was working there for Shortcut. We did several road trips in California and even one to Mexico. We met amazing people, old and new friends. We loved so much that we almost stopped our sailing trip to live there for a while… but the Pacific was calling ;-). Who knows, may be we will come back one day. (Blog)

Jun-Jul

Golfito, Costa Rica. Back to Maya. Preparing for the Pacific Crossing. We had to say goodbye to many new friends, amazing people. Muchas Gracias ticos! (“From Golfito to Galapagos”)

Jul-Aug

San Cristobal and Isabela islands in Galapagos. A heaven on earth. (“The Island of the Sea Lions”)

Aug-Sept

Pacific Crossing to the Pitcairn Islands: Henderson, Pitcairn and Oeno (“We just crossed the Pacific Ocean”, Whales Video).

Sept-Dec

Gambier, finding paradise. People who discussed with us before crossing the Pacific, thought we will cross to Marquesas (or may be Gambier, not sure), stay there a bit, and head directly to Hawaii (via Marquesas) to spend the hurricane season and then sail back to Tuamotus and Tahiti. Well, that was really the plan, until we felt in love with Gambier, and never left for Hawaii. (“Cast away in Gambier Islands”)

2017

Jan-Mar 

Gambier part II. Sailors came and left. And the Mayas were still there. Even the local people stopped asking when we would leave.  We were not leaving, yet, we were just living. We asked our friends Miriam & Stéphane from Lausanne, Switzerland to change their plans and meet us in Gambier (instead of Hawaii or Marquesas). And that was the best decision ever. Thank you Gambier. More details will follow one day (either as a blog post or in our future book if we ever manage to write it :-) ). (“The Maya Crew at the Gambier Festival (TE MATAPUKUREGA)“ )

Mar-Apr

Marquesas islands Fatu Hiva, Tahuata, Hiva Oa, Nuku Hiva. Here again, Marquesas or not Marquesas. When we finally decided to leave Gambier, we wanted to go directly to the Tuamotus, without visiting the Marquesas. When we told this plan to our friends from SY El Vadrouill’ they said: “No, you HAVE to visit the Marquesas! Even if you just stop one hour at Fatu Hiva and leave. It’s worth the detour!”. And they were fully right. (“From Gambier to Marquesas… Day by Day”).

Apr-June

Tuamotus islands: Makemo, Fakarava, Toau. A dream came true. Diving with tons of sharks. (“From Marquesas to Tuamotus… Day by Day.”)

June

Papeete, Tahiti. We were afraid of Tahiti, and all the things we had to do there. We left the Tuamotus with a heavy heart. But once docked at the Marina of Papeete, all those scary and negative thoughts flew away.  After one year in the wild, we are enjoying the city life. Papeete is very charming with its French colonial architecture and a local touch, with the down-town city life, the daily fresh market, the shops, the book stores, the bakeries, the hair dressers, the restaurants, the street food trucks (Les Roulottes), etc. We Love it! It even reminds Asma of the way Tunis was in the early 90s. Of course, the first two weeks were stressful. We had to organise many reparations and apply for Samy’s new passport etc. We were again supposed to leave as soon as possible to explore the next islands and come back to Papeete only when the passport is here. Well, we never left so far :-)

July

The month of the world-famous Heiva Festival, which means party time. There are several celebrations with traditional dance and music. We had the chance to attend the opening of the Heiva competition. We were impressed. So nice.

We took also some surf lessons with the world champion Julien Miremont… It was a first for us. We enjoyed it, but are still very far away from being world champions ;-)

Today, 11th of July

We celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary. We are so grateful for all the amazing things we experienced.

Today, Samy’s passport finally arrived. The Swiss consulate told us before that we weren’t able to travel to the USA with this provisory (non-biometric) passport. But, the letter that came with the new passport is saying that we actually can enter the USA together with a valid Visa. As we do have such a visa, sailing to the USA is possible. So, should we go to Hawaii or to New Zealand? Stay tuned…