Wind in Their Sails

A Family, A Boat, the Adventure of A Lifetime

Pondering life can take a lot of energy. No wonder on that fateful day in 2003, as he sat in his Aurora home office fretting about the future, Sean Myers needed a snack.

He walked into the kitchen and tore open a Clif bar. That’s when he glanced down and saw the words on the crumpled cellophane: “This bar is named after my father Clifford, my childhood hero and my companion…”

“Wow,” thought Sean. “I don’t know anybody who calls his dad his hero.” That snack wrapper began to haunt him.

On the cusp of turning 40, he was feeling vulnerable. Lately he also had been feeling vaguely restless. He knew that someday his kids would stop thinking he was cool and grow away from him. Already it seemed most of their family time took place in the car as they were shuttling to and from sports and lessons. What could he do to create something magical? What if he gave them a really big adventure that would live forever in
their memories?

He became a man obsessed. He thought about the mountains. Too easy. He thought about a road trip. Too predictable. Then it hit him: He loved the sea. He and his wife, Jennifer, had sailed throughout the Caribbean when they lived aboard a boat for a year, back before kids. What if they dropped out of their upscale suburban life, pulled their children out of school and sailed off into the sunset?

“I think we should sail around the world,” he announced to Jennifer one day.

Dead silence.

Jennifer’s mind was reeling. She knew her husband: When he suggested something, it was already a done deal. “How long does that take?” she asked quietly.

“I’ll get back to you.” For the next few weeks Sean moved into research mode. He bought books and scoured the Internet for boat deals, weather patterns and sailing routes. Because they ran a highly successful business from their home, distributing and marketing Juice Plus, they could work from anywhere. They could rent their house to cover the mortgage payment. They could home school if necessary. They could do this thing.

“It takes three years,” Sean announced to
his wife.

Again, silence.

Finally Jennifer spoke. “I’ll give you a year.”

********

On Dec. 6, 2006, Sean, Jennifer and their two children, Mikaela, 10, and Jake, 8, pushed away from the dock in the British Virgin Islands. They had scaled back Sean’s original vision, but their itinerary was nothing short of spectacular. They would cross the Caribbean, pass through the Panama Canal, hop-scotch the South Seas and end in Australia. It would take 15 months to travel 18,000 miles, stopping in 20 countries.

They would endure rough waters and a pirate chase, do battle against a freak wasp attack, dodge jellyfish and tamp down seasickness. Yet in the end the bad parts faded into just another story to tell. The rest was stuff straight out of a Disney movie:

Like when they swam with a humpback whale and her calf in Tonga, or met a 300-year-old sea turtle in the Galapagos Islands named Lonesome George. There was the time they taught Australian children the fine art of trick-or-treating, raced in a regatta in Fiji and celebrated a floating Christmas, complete with a tiny decorated tree and presents of fishing poles.

Bobbing across the ocean, “traveling at half the speed of bike,” as Sean put it, something extraordinary happened. They rediscovered themselves as a family.

Such close quarters might drive some people apart. For them it had the opposite effect.

Sean and Jennifer had met at the University of Kansas in 1985. He had grown up in Salina, Kansas, she in suburban Kansas City. The first time Jennifer laid eyes on Sean she thought he was cute. By the second time she was pretty sure he was the man she would marry. “He was always creating fun,” she said. “Sean’s the adventurer. And I’m game.”

In 1988 the couple traveled for a year after college, backpacking through New Zealand, Australia, China,
India and Europe. It was on that trip that they learned to sail. Back in the United States they moved to Miami, started their business, and bought a boat to live on. In 1992 they moved to Colorado. Four years later, Mikaela was born. Two years after that, Jake arrived. Soon they had settled into a pleasant but rather traditional suburban life with its overflowing calendar of obligations
and activities.

“I knew I had to separate us from our lives,” Sean said.

Vowing to create “the coolest year possible,” Sean and Jen’s Excellent Adventure was three years in the making. Sean, already an accomplished sailor, took classes in weather forecasting and engine repair. They plastered an upstairs wall in their house with a dry erase map of the world to contemplate their route and scribble wish lists. The kids learned to snorkel in the hot tub and cast fishing lines in the backyard.

The Myerses wanted to wait until their children were strong swimmers. The kids had never sailed before, and their parents wanted to keep it that way until they boarded the boat they would live on. The thinking was that if the children were on a smaller boat that tipped over or felt shaky, they would develop a fear of all boats.

Jennifer was adamant that they would sail a catamaran, a two-hulled vessel that is steadier on the water. “My babies were going to be aboard so I wanted the best, the safest boat we could find,” she said. When they couldn’t find the perfect boat for sale, Sean had one custom built in France.

It was no ordinary boat. Costing a cool million (there is such a thing as a boat mortgage), the Soul’s Calling was 50 feet long and weighed 45,000 pounds. There were three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a dinner table that could seat 10, a washer-dryer, two dishwashers and a wine cellar. (When a boat is built in the Bordeaux region of France, such things are a given.) Sean made sure the boat was stocked with 14 cases of Bordeaux’s finest.

He sailed the boat from France to the Caribbean, and Jennifer and the kids flew down to meet him. Outfitting the boat took a month. The kids were allowed a small suitcase, mostly filled with swimsuits, shorts, flip-flops and, of course, favorite stuffed animals. They each had a laptop. School would come in a box, FedExed once a month back to teachers at a home-schooling organization in the United States who would grade their assignments and send out new ones.

Mikaela was excited, but the fifth grader also worried that her friends wouldn’t still like her when she returned. A year seemed liked forever.

There were plenty who said they were nuts. Some even accused them of being irresponsible parents for putting their children at risk. Sean and Jennifer saw it differently. Certainly it was not a trip for everyone, but they were highly skilled at sea. They would be extraordinarily careful. They had planned well.

As land slowly faded from view, they were ready.

*********

It was 2:30 a.m. The Soul’s Calling was two days out of Curacao, heading for Panama. Jennifer was at the helm and everyone else was asleep. Suddenly she saw the blip of another boat on the radar.

They had planned their trip to avoid extended sea passages. Those days-long stretches of nothing but water were especially hard on the kids. They tried to chart a course of short hops, crawling along coastlines as they moved from port to port, where they would stay anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. But this was one of those times when they had no choice but to cross hundreds of miles of ocean alone.

The other boat was on an intercept course and closing fast. It had come off the coast of Colombia. There was no moon, only fog and darkness. Jennifer woke up Sean. He radioed the other boat to identify itself. The crew did not respond. Sean took over the helm and changed course; the other boat followed. Jennifer’s heart began to pound.

They turned off all their lights. The other boat trained searchlights on the water, cutting through the fog to find them. They were so close Jennifer could hear their voices. At best they were a few hundred feet apart.

“What’s the drill?” Jennifer asked, struggling for calm.

“Nobody’s boarding this boat,” Sean replied coolly. He grabbed the flare guns. He knew they could do a lot of damage if necessary.

Before they left, people had asked if they would arm themselves. Crime at sea is a fact of life. But the Myerses wanted no guns on board. Guns were a hassle because they had to be registered and confiscated every time they put into a new country.

Sean asked for identification again.

Finally a voice answered in heavily accented English: “Have a good evening.” And with that the other boat retreated. They will never know who it was or what they wanted. They are certain it was not a friendly visit.

As the weeks turned into months, their world widened.

One day off the coast of Panama, near the San Blas Islands, a Kuna Indian mother and daughter paddled out to the Soul’s Calling in a dugout canoe. They spoke no English, but through sign language it became apparent what they wanted: a play date. The next day Mikaela and Jake spent hours with the children of the islands, a place of grass huts rewound 20 centuries with no electricity or running water. Cultures blended instantly as the children kicked soccer balls and played
hide-and-seek.

“A smile is a smile everywhere,” Jennifer said.

In Samoa, the Myerses came up with the idea to do a community project. They approached local Peace Corps volunteers and then the village elders with their plan to refurbish a school. But finding paint is not the easiest task in the remote interior of the island. “It’s not like you can run down to Home Depot,” Jennifer said.

Still, they pulled it off. Working side by side with Peace Corps volunteers and villagers, in one afternoon they repainted the school inside and out, cleared trash and laid a new floor.

“We got so much from the people we met,” Jennifer said. “We just wanted to give something back.”

********

On Jan. 24, 2008, as the Virgin Blue airliner began to climb into the sky above Mackay, Australia, Jennifer peeked out the window. Below, getting smaller by the second, was the Soul’s Calling, docked at the marina.

It really was over. She would never see her beloved boat again. Quietly she began to cry.

The plan was to leave the Soul’s Calling in Australia, where it would be sold. In the end they couldn’t go through with it. They still own the boat and rent it for vacation charters in the Caribbean and sometimes fly down for short trips themselves.

But probably never again will they take the same kind of trip. Mikaela is now an accomplished athlete and about to start high school; Jake has his own activities. Jennifer and Sean are busy as ever with their business.

“We found the perfect window,” Jennifer said wistfully, looking back at a time when the kids were old enough to remember but not so old they had moved into their own worlds.

Re-entry was initially a shock. It was like going from 15 miles per hour to 95. The excess of life in America seemed so startling. Jennifer could not get over the big box stores on every corner. Had they really lived so happily with so little closet space?

In short order, though, they stepped back into their old life. They tell tales from the sea but are careful to keep stories short. They don’t want to appear boastful. They also realize that even if they’re curious, for most people their experiences are understandably hard to relate to.

Still, some friends have found inspiration. One family took a year off and moved to Spain; another took a cross-country RV trip.

“If we can help people think bigger and dream bigger, we’re all for that,” said Jennifer. Then she grew philosophical: “Fifteen months goes by no matter what you’re doing. It’s gone and then what do you have to show for it? You have to create your own dream in this life and then go for it.”