Trust your guts, follow your vision

When we were living in the South of France, my husband was taking me to every harbour to have a look the sailing boats. He even suggested to buy a small sailing boat for us. “Are you dreaming? Before having a boat, we have to have a house!”, I said.

He tried to explain me that we could even live on a boat. What a crazy idea! Where were we supposed to put all our stuff (and we had no kids at that time!). That was not an option for me. We moved away from the South of France and the family grew in number.

July 2012: we were on vacations in Corsica when we had a vision. By that time, we were already a family of 5 and we were both working full time. So, we were on the beach one evening when a family came out from a sailing catamaran and landed their dinghy right next to us. We started discussing: they were from Spain and were starting a trip around the world with their boat. When I saw them, my guts took the control and sent a command to my mind “We want to do the same, we want to spend time all together, sailing around the world.” I shared the vision with Pierre and I made him the happiest man in the world.

We had no time to lose! How were we supposed to do it?

For most people, the strategy might look simple at first:

• Buy a boat
• Save money for the trip
• Enjoy the trip

Our strategy has been different from the start. After a couple of weeks, we built the list of what had to be done, ordered by priority: this is our project’s backlog.

During the past 5 years, we have been iterating on the backlog every summer: a bit of “trial and error” process on some items, tackling some other items little by little or taking big decisions from time to time. Progressively, we prepared our trip, trying and adjusting based on the feedback from each iteration/vacation.

As of today, we still do not have a 100% defined plan for the trip (How long? How far?), and we are not planning to get one. We want to live the trip in “an agile way”: we decided on start date (May 2017), we have a budget and the destination(s) remain(s) vague and will surely by adjusted (changed) along the way. Obviously, it will involve some serious passages, hairy conditions and so on… but we know it and we prepared for that!

We want to follow this vision we had, to travel, to promote positive thinking and build a self-organised family.