So we have a dream, nothing too big. Just something we thought we would like to do. We want to take time out, take our family away for a year and sail the Mediterranean. We want to show the boys other cultures, ways of life and build memory’s and bonds that will last.

When we told people that we were going to take a year off life, buy a catamaran and sail around the Mediterranean, One of their first comments/questions is normally “You must have been planning that for a while.” The fact of the matter is Yes and No.

Why Yes and No? I hear you ask. Well, we first had the dream about 6 years ago however we had no set date or time. Don’t ask me where it came from or who’s idea it was because neither Zoe or I know. All we knew is that we wanted to do it at some stage in our life and it gave us a goal to think about while navigating the day to day of normal life.

I have to say, I am pretty sure that anyone that we mentioned our dream to, in those first four years thought “Good on Ya, you don’t even know how to Sail”. Even when they were saying encouraging things.

Fair enough! Up until 20 months ago, my sailing experience totalled a few terms of sailing dinghies and Lasers on the river and farm dams near Richmond for school sport, and the catamarans on the annual St David’s church camp on Port Hacking River about 25 years ago.

So, after 4 years of dreaming we thought it would probably be a good idea to find out if we actually liked sailing. Let’s face it, If one of us didn’t actually like sailing, it would be a big setback and a lot of wasted dreaming. What’s worse is that we would have to agree on another dream and most people that know Us, know that it’s not that easy finding something that we both agree on. So to make a long story short, 20 months ago we started down the path of learning to sail.

Now in the last few weeks we arrived at a cross roads of choice. Next year Cam starts year 4 and it is the last year before Max starts school. After 11 years of building up her business, Zoe has decided to step back and make time for herself.

It is the last window of opportunity to put the dream into action or wait another 12 years or so for the boys to finish school.

In late January we started the first leg of our dream and flew to Greece to buy ourselves a 40 foot catamaran.