Everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask...

We started our worldtrip sailing on the 1st of May from Holland. We first want to go to the Nordics (Danmark, Norway), then we stay wintertime of 2021 in the UK in a harbour. Then we will restart sailing in March 2022 to go along the French and Portuguese coast, maybe up to the Algarve and stay the winter of 2022 there. In 2023 we hope to spend time in the Mediterranean, maybe also 2024, because there is a lot to visit there (Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc).

And then in 2025 cross the Atlantic Ocean, spend time sailing in the Caribbean. In 2026 we want to go through the Panama channel and then…we’ll see! So we have a global plan to sail around the world, we have ideas up to South America and then we’ll see again how we continue (Asia, Australia, Africa, etc). We let also the weather conditions and the sailors or locals we meet with their recommendations decide how we will sail and what places we will visit!

We don’t have an end date. We have worked hard our lives, worked with planning and deadlines and on our worldtrip we decided not to have a deadline. We want to count up, not count down 😊. We want to collect as many beautiful memories as possible and deadlines make you wanna hurry. So if you can be in the moment and have a global plan, then is enough for us. Maybe it will take us 5 years, maybe 10, maybe more….

More on why we started a world trip and our personal goals for doing so: https://catamaranhorizon.com/who-are-we/

We learned it after we bought our sailboat 😉. We had a motorboat of 6 meters for 6 years and because we wanted to go on a worldtrip we decided to buy a bigger boat and to be energy sufficient, a sailboat. When we bought our Lagoon 42ft ‘Horizon’ is was delivered out of the factory in Sable d’Olonne (France) at the 20th of June 2019. We asked a couple, Brigitte and Rob, to help sail the Lagoon to Stavoren in 2 weeks time, where the berth was for the next 2 years (till 1 May 2021). Brigitte and Rob have owned a Lagoon 39ft and sailed the world, so they were very experienced and we learned a lot from them about the ship and sailing a multihull in those 2 weeks! We learned also a lot when we sailed to the East Sea in the summer of 2020, we spend 8 weeks sailing along the coast of Germany and Denmark. That also made us confident about sailing our catamaran.

It took us 3 year from the first idea of doing a worldtrip to actually starting our worldtrip on the 1st of May 2021. More about our preparations on: https://catamaranhorizon.com/preparing-the-great-voyage/ and https://catamaranhorizon.com/were-ready/

We were not brought up sailing since our childhood. We had to learn it ourselves in the last 2 years. So we are not hard core sailors who love to trim all the lines and sails every minute. We also want a comfortable way of travelling. And a catamaran is very stable and very safe, so for long trips (during a worldtrip, you will cross oceans), a catamaran is a great solutions. Also many people underestitmate that 80% of the time, you are not sailing on a sailboat, but you live, sleep, eat on it, and the 2 hulls of a catamaran give you much living space and less rocking than the monohull sailboats.

More on our catamaran (interior and exterior) and why we choose this brand: https://catamaranhorizon.com/our-catamaran/

We have 5 sources of income since we started our world trip:

1. Savings
2. Renting out our house
3. Chartering guests on the boat
4. Online training
5. E-books and e-learning

So we don’t rely on 1 source of income, you have to spread risk. And part of our income is passive, which means money comes in without much time spend to earn it (nr 1,2,5). And partly we still work while travelling (nr 3 en 4) because we enjoy making contributions to society and keep in touch with what’s going on in the world, rather than just consume life.

The key of working while travelling is organizing to be a digital nomad. This means you have to switch your work to online: can you do your work remote? In our case, yes, because Laura gives online training and writes e-books and e-learning. If you want to see our Online Academy, visit: https://experttrainers.nl/online-academy/. We have a router on board, which can receive wifi up to 18 kilometers from the coast line. Of course, when you give live online training, you want to have a stable office, so we do our online training in a harbour.

It’s important to select times blocks during a week to work. Otherwise you will spend the entire week still working or thinking about work and our goal was to travel and do a world trip! So the online training days are selected days during a month and only on those days we give online training. And to prepare for those online trainings (think about making slides, writing e-mails, administration, invoices), we select a time block during a day or week when it is convenient. So for instance, when we are in a nice big city, that we like to explore 3 days, we work 1 of those 3 days in the morning from 9.00-12.00u, have lunch and then do sight seeing.

While living on a boat, how do you deal with energy like electricity, water, fuel, to also stay economically and ecologically sufficient?

When you are sailing, dealing with energy is key! Because you don’t want to end up in the middle of the ocean without drinking water or power. We also want to be responsible and try to become self-sufficient. So we installed solar panels, a water maker and more systems to become energy neutral, see: https://catamaranhorizon.com/self-sufficient-with-solar-panels/

We share our stories through writing blogs and sharing photos and videos on: catamaranhorizon.com. There is also a guestbook in which people comment on what we do, which is very nice to read! Of course Social Media are a great way to stay in touch, so we use WhatsApp and LinkedIn. And of course, making a phone call is still the best and most personal way to stay in touch, so we also do that, and now that we are in Europe, that’s also easy to do.

Yes, you can, real time, so you can check every minute of the day where our sailboat is, via: https://catamaranhorizon.com/where-are-we/

This is because we installed AIS on our sailboat (Automatic Identification System), so everyone can track us on the square meter in the world 😊