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Happy Holidays!
Thank you! Words can never express our gratitude for all of you reading and sharing "The WHY Matters.” I have been able to continue to share our life journey because of you. An extra special shout-out to our paid subscribers: gosh, thank you. I am humbled and feel so connected to you on many levels, even if we don’t get to meet up in person for coffee. Although I always fantasize about hanging out together one day in a Parisian cafe talking life. Life is pretty impressive. And we all get to do it repeatedly each morning when we wake up.
Looking back over 12 months
Up until June, we were living full-time on our sailboat named Friendship. We spent almost three years onboard, and in that time, we learned to sail, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, motored through the Panama Canal, and sailed 10,000 nautical miles. It was a wild ride, but all wild rides need a pause to recharge instead of quitting. Since then, we have taken that much-needed boat break, which is typical for full-timers. Living, working, schooling, and maintaining a boat while moving across oceans is not hard, but it is time-consuming and requires intense focus. If you are new here, I will be sure to catch you up to where we are now shortly. What a full 12 months, but I say this every year when I reflect.
2023, our year of tacking
Tacking is a sailing term. It is a maneuver used to change the direction of a sailboat when sailing upwind or at an angle to the wind. It is a fundamental technique for changing the side of the boat that faces the wind to make progress towards a desired destination.
2023 has been our year tacking but more figuratively in life than literally on the boat. We could have tacked literally (on our boat) on our 2800 nautical mile sail through the Panama Canal to Mexico in March, but what fun would that have been? Sailing (or, in our case, mostly motoring) directly into the wind and bashing for 22 days was way more fun. Not really, but it was way faster, and we were on a quest to get as far north as possible before hurricane season. Spoiler: we did make it, and I don’t think we could have gone any further north as we were knocking on the US’s door, but technically, we were still in Mexico.
We tacked our life several times this past year to reach our desired destination. Our desired destination was not a place but a way of life. A way of life that aligns with our WHY of choosing to live as WorldTowners. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way of survival, living on a boat, and learning to sail, we lost sight of that why and change was necessary.
Ready About!!!!
Another term in the sailing world is when the person steering the boat wants to tack, he or she will call out to their crew, “Ready About.” This signals the crew to ready the sheets (the lines controlling the mainsail and foresail).
There were three significant Ready Abouts in 2023.
The first came in early January while we enjoyed the remote and fabulous San Blas islands just off Panama, full of indigenous tribes, remote anchorages, and endless sunsets. READY ABOUT #1 FROM WILL! Some struggles led up to this San Blas bliss that could no longer be avoided, leading to Will scheduling a week at a mental wellness program in the UK called the Hoffman Process. Life shifted quite quickly once this decision was made because when you live on a boat and work full-time and school, you can’t just jet off in the name of mental health. We found a suitable marina, sailed to it, and nestled in while Will worked on him.
Then, when Will returned to his newfound authentic self and the family in Panama, we had to tack again, READY ABOUT #2 FROM JESSICA. A tack was made in about 24 hours; this is miraculously fast for life decisions, but compared to how we literally tack on a boat (takes under 5 minutes), we were slow with the 24 hours. The tack…we decided not to sail to French Polynesia.
We had always planned to keep sailing west on the boat until maybe one day we returned to our origination in the south of France, but we had lost sight of our WHY as mentioned above, and the boat was contributing to us staying out of sight of that WHY, so we decided to tack. This meant going way north instead of west, doing it in record time, and then putting Friendship on the hard (out of the water and on stilts in lamen terms) way up north in the Sea of Cortez.
All these months later, I can tell you it was a great decision to tack; we found our WHY again.
In March, we had to sail through the Panama Canal earlier than planned to get ourselves out of the hurricane zone in time. This was one of the highlights of the year. We were all looking forward to it, but frankly, none of us had any idea how much this experience would still be with us months later. We were lucky enough to enjoy three fantastic crew members. We laughed, learned, and ate excellent food during our 48-hour passage. Everyone should pass through the Panama Canal in their lifetime.
We spent the rest of March and April sailing or motoring, as most days we had little to no wind, directly north for 22 days. During that time, we caught fish (a new talent for us), dropped off two crew members and picked up a new one, ate our weight in Mexican food, and had some hairy moments. We hiked to a volcano in Guatemala and got altitude sickness, snuck into Costa Rica illegally with a broken engine under the cover of darkness, extracted a crab from a crew member’s ear, and ate a lot of fish. We finally entered the Sea of Cortez, where, to date, we have seen the most sea life, including our first whale sighting; it was magical. Largo and I even managed to go to CMU to see Avalon in a play and visit several universities he is interested in.
In rolls June, it was time to haul Friendship out of the water. This was our first time preparing a boat to be left for at least a year, if not more, and it was so time-consuming. I won’t bore you with all the details, but to give you a small idea of what is involved. Every line (aka rope) on the outside of the boat needs to come off and be stored inside the ship so it does not get sun damage. And that is only one of the 8,000 boat-prepping items that need to be done. After that bundle of work, we headed to Los Angeles to wrap up some other life stuff before jetting off to India to build our group trip there, which will happen at the end of this month (Yippie). Hosting a group trip in India is a dream come true and many years in the making. We are bonkers excited.
July and August were the most magical summer months and likely the last, with all of us adventuring for months at a time together. I will remember it forever and be grateful we tacked from the boat. This would never have happened had we not taken stalk and realized we were not in line with our WHY. These two months brought loads of excitement: Our first overnight train and overnight bus lying flat, three new countries, and a new tattoo to symbolize…our vow renewal in Cambodia in a remote fishing village preceded over by monks. We visited the ever-famous Angkor Wat. Ate tons of Asian foods we love. And we even enjoyed air conditioning for the first time in a long time. I could go on and on about all the adventures, but you get the idea.
September was back to school for Largo and a rush to get ahead of the bus with work and other projects before we left Thailand via Qatar (another new country) to host two back-to-back group trips in Spain—both new zones for WorldTowning Voyages, which was exciting for us. In Thailand, the big highlight was our time in the jungle, hiking with the elephants. This was training for our Camino group trip several weeks later and our Peru group trip in March. There's nothing like walking in the mountain heat to make you appreciate that a/c when you return to your Airbnb. Ha.
October was madness. We finished our Camino 100km hiking adventure group trip with new friends and a new body in time to take a two-day break with long time friends and jump back into a Barcelona, Spain, group trip. Unlike the Camino trip, which focused on hiking and its effects, Barcelona was all about art and food! It's a nice contrast if you ask me. Hot off the press, I decided to give the Hoffman Process a shot of my own after seeing the impact it had on Will. So I went to the UK for nine days off. I share in great detail here how it affected me and why I think everyone should go.
It is now mid-December, and we have been hunkered down in Paris since the end of October. We have an apartment, Sentry has joined us, the boys became members at a gym, friends come over for dinner, we have visited every Christmas market to be found in Paris, I swear, and our French is finally getting a little better—very little. Life is good, and this slowing down has given us time to align our goals for 2024 and decide on future group trips.
Phew, you are all caught up. And just when we thought we had our plans figured out for the next year: Hosting a group trip to India in 15 days, hosting another group hiking trip to Machu Picchu in March, and then spending the summer in the USA so Largo can get his Private Pilots License….
READY ABOUT #3 FROM JESSICA, WILL & LARGO
On December 4th, we made a significant change of plans for various reasons that we will likely eventually share. Still, for now, we are undertaking what many would consider our biggest adventure to date. I am unsure if I agree; crossing an ocean was huge with only one year of sailing experience, but I will let you weigh in when we share the big adventure next month. If you are a Patron and already know the plan, please keep it quiet for a bit more. We want to announce it here and on our podcast at the same time in January! January is going to be a big kick-off to 2024!
What will 2024 hold?
TACKING and READY ABOUTS, for sure, as that is what our WorldTowning life has been for over ten years now, and it has served us well in living our most authentic and WHY-driven life. Did we see these tacks coming? Absolutely not. Are we upset about them? Absolutely not. You don’t get to live like we do without being flexible and aware when change is necessary. Honoring our WHY has kept us out here for so long and helped us through our hardest and darkest travel lifestyle days.
Have you been TACKING in your life? Who is the READY ABOUT leader in your home, or do you switch it up like us? What are you currently struggling with in your tacking? Is it because of the holidays, a significant life change, your kids, your health, etc.? Let’s chat below in the comments.
xoxo,
Jess
The Podcast! January 17th, 2024!
It is coming! I can’t believe it. We have four episodes taped, and we will start releasing them early to our patrons, hopefully by next week if all goes well. The podcast's name is the same as the newsletter “The WHY Matters,” so it is easy to remember. More details are coming soon.
Next up…India!
We leave on Dec 27th from Paris to India! We will be hosting our first-ever India group trip and are excited. It is a dream come true. Be sure to follow us on Instagram for real-time updates.
To learn more about us, our mission, and our business, you can visit us at WorldTowning. To view our most recent group trip offerings, head over to WorldTowningvoyages.com. If you want to book a coaching session to realize your travel dream, schedule it here. If you're going to follow the travels of our WorldTowning family, you can find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok.
What an amazing life you have created...Stefan and I are following your footsteps...
Excited to hear the plans for 2024 Jessica!! Have a wonderful Christmas to you and all the family x