White Dog sails away…
So…. here we are… starting the blog is a bit like first writing on the clean toilet wall. It could be either shy, small: „I love Jullie” hidden behind a paper holder, or big, red, fat: „Adrian is a dick” in the middle of the wall. I think I’ll start small, as I am a newbie to social media publicity, and it all looks very intimidating to me 🙂 Anyways… back to the White Dog.
Last year, around February 2017, we were winter-frustrated, sitting in front of the world map and trying to decide where to go for a spring break. Everything that we wanted to see seemed too far for lousy 2 weeks of holidays. I said to Marcin that it would be amazing to leave this corpo-life and go sailing. We looked at each other, and at that instant, we knew that we would do it. It was crazy, but with a slight chance of success. Day after, we got a whiteboard (or rather the cheapest wardrobe door from IKEA – every penny counts) and started planning.
Date. We need a date…
Every traveler book says that you need to set a date and stick to it no matter what. The last time we quit civilization and went sailing was in October 2008, so the 10th anniversary seemed like a good follow-up. The only problem was that the date was just 18 months away, and whomever we asked or wherever we read (including the book ”how to Every traveler book says that you need to set a date and stick to it no matter what. The last time we quit civilization and went sailing was in October of 2008. The 10th anniversary seemed like a good follow-up. The only problem was that the date was only 18 months away. Whomever we asked, or wherever we read (books like ”How to quit the rat race and go sailing”), they mentioned at least 2-3 years of prep time (Americans books – min. 4 years!) Nah… Polish do stuff differently. We can make it 🙂
our way of doing things…
So we put the IKEA-whiteboard on the wall. We divided it into 18-month gaps and started planning. It included milestones like buying a boat, money check, boat outfitting, house rental, etc. Shortly after, we started the boat search. We listed all MUST-haves, Good-to-haves, try-to-avoids, F^*$*-NOs that we could think of. Then, with few brands in mind, we organized field trips, first around Holland and later southern England. We found our White Dog on the Isle of White and fell in love immediately. First of all… it was Moody (!), second – laminates…. poetry of the GRP. The history of the vessel was quite incredible. White Dog (ex-JANDARA) was owned by Hamish Haswell Smith, who had sailed on her for 25 years on Scottish waters, and is the author of so far the best pilot book of this area. Our yacht is even on the book cover!
White Dog
As much as we loved the name, we had to involve our dog, Kabo – a member of our family that was no longer with us and had been our travel buddy for years. Naming the boat after him was the only way to take him with us. Name Kabo somehow didn’t sit well with the boat. So after a debate, we decided to go for White Dog as that was his nickname.
So how did our planning worked? It was almost good, as Marcin left Holland only about 5 weeks later than planned… He will probably add the story about his cruise from Amsterdam to the Canary Islands, which he did without us. Vincent and I joined him finally in October 2018, and we have been sailing together since. I will leave unspoken the part of the story that covers renting the house, quitting the job, selling cars, and moving out. I would have to use a lot of f-, and s-words and, because we are now on a budget, I cannot afford the swear jar anymore!
