Explore Now

Allez, on y va!

As you may have noticed from our broken recently fixed website and lack of updates until now, it has taken Conor and I some months to regroup. To refresh everyone’s memory, including our own, we last left you all in November, where we were considering crossing to Hawaii given that our boat could not go to Mexico as we had planned due to administrative issues. The Alaskan storm season that affects the Pacific waves and wind started early with a vengeance, and a Hawaii crossing proved to not be the right choice for us then.

So instead we bought cheap plane tickets to Kuala Lumpur, and spent two and a half months learning how to be instead of do. We slowed way down, visiting Malaysia, Vietnam, Malaysia again, a little bit of Thailand, Malaysia for a last curry noodle, and then onto Taiwan. We had no itinerary when we left, and let the proverbial winds take us where they might.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where our boat Horizon was built in the early 1990s — perhaps she wants to go back?

Our Asia adventure proved to be a much-needed reset after months of boat work and frustration with the Mexico situation. In the beautiful countries we visited, we ate our way through wherever we went, with every meal somehow being the BEST meal we’ve ever eaten. It is so wildly easy to be a vegetarian there, and we could not believe our stomachs with how well we ate — with an “expensive” meal at $5 a person. We had fun and we rested after we realized how burned out we were — no more taking our rampant and TIRED overachieving selves into this boat adventure! The food and kindness of all of the people we met in each country and new experiences also helped reorient us towards a different adventure than the one we had planned.

Which is why we came back to the US at the end of January — to prepare for a crossing to French Polynesia! It is roughly 2800 miles and two to three-ish weeks of sailing to get to the Marquesas Islands from SoCal, since our boat still cannot go to Mexico. It has taken a *lot* of both inner and outer work to get to this place, and we are feeling as ready as we can be to undertake this exciting and daunting passage. The kind of boat Horizon is, called a Tayana, was made at the Ta Yang yacht builders in Kaohsiung, Taiwan — Ta Yang means “big ocean” in Mandarin. It’s clear that Horizon wants to go sail big ocean after her namesake, so here we’ll go.

Our weather window from Newport Beach is looking good for mid-this week, so we’ll celebrate our birthday week by untying the lines. Now that we have our long-stay visas and we’ve done plenty of boat work, we are only waiting on a few key items that should arrive tomorrow — a new sail and a new gearbox for our windlass (an important part that gets the anchor up and down).

We hope you’ll join us and cheer us on as we undertake this new endeavor! You can follow along our track which is always available on the homepage of sailzozo.com or the same link is available here on No Foreign Land if you want to bookmark it. We will welcome texts, emails, comments on the blog — any kind of encouragement is greatly appreciated for this big passage! We’ll be turning on internet for about an hour every day to check weather so we’ll see and appreciate your messages of love and support even if we don’t respond right away.

Onward to big ocean.

Only 2800 miles that direction
No complicated routefinding — it’s straight!
This is the route

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29 Comments

  3. Yay! Celebrating your slow-down/reset period and your imminent launch – wishing you good winds and a joyful trip!

  6. Yay!! So excited for you!! Go get ‘em. Can’t wait to follow the journey and hopefully meet you some place tropical sooner rather than later!

  8. Bon Voyage Stephanie and Conner! I wish you happy and smooth sailing and can’t wait to read along with your adventures!!

  9. Wishing you all the best on your journeys, and if I may steal some Irish wishes for you on this St. Patrick’s day:
    May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again,
    May there always be work for your hands to do. May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine upon your window pane. May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near to you.

    With boatloads of love,

    Mom

  10. Got out of town on a boat goin’ to Southern islands
    Sailing a reach before a followin’ sea
    She was makin’ for the trades on the outside
    And the downhill run to Papeete

    Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas
    We got eighty feet of the waterline nicely making way

    –“Southern Cross,” CS&N

    May the winds and the waves be your friends at all times. Safe travels, looking forward to the many tales yet to come! Much love to you both from Michigan!

  11. Bon courage to you both!!!!!!! We’re so happy for you; we can’t wait to watch your journey. Good luck and have fun. Calla + Elise

  12. Jim and I are so excited for you both on this amazing adventure! We wish you safe sailing! Hopefully, we will be able to see you in the French Polynesia islands. We love you both so much 🥰❤️

  14. Woo hoo!!! Bon voyage and best wishes for your epic adventure. We’re so excited for you up in the mildly chilly PNW! Watching you prepare and get pumped for this adventure has been so cool, I can’t wait to hear about everything you see and do in French Polynesia!

  15. Bon voyage! Wishing you blue skies and smooth sailing. So excited to follow along on your adventure – thanks for sharing with us. 🙂

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