Planning a long breakout of the mainstream land-life can be exhausting and that there is a lot to consider.
What I have not yet told is how it all started… 🙂

If you do not know me and my husband personally then I need to tell you that we are very curious and always keen to learn something new.
Before we met, we traveled a lot and got to know foreign countries and cultures. Traveling together was an important issue. The greatest adventurous travel we did together up to now was India for sure…

Of course, after the children were born, we were somewhat restricted in traveling. Nevertheless, our children already have traveled many countries and experienced foreign cultures, too.

Starting from this thirst for knowledge and for new experiences, it was already obvious from the beginning that we “someday” would leave Germany for a while and experience a different lifestyle.

What gave us the opportunity of a break year:

As a teacher, different options came into consideration for me.
A few years ago, I almost became a teacher at a Germany school in Mexico. But this would have been to be done for at least three years in one place and working full-time. Those specifications were too narrow for me…
Somehow it just did not feel right.

Then, exactly three years ago, I applied for the sabbatical solution.
After thinking about everything for such a long time, I chose the shortest model: Three years work for 3/4th of salary and one year off with the same salary.
Fortunately, my then Headmistress immediately approved the application!

We did not realize what we wanted to do with the year off and we did not think about it for a long time because it was still tooooo far away. 😉

What are we going to do with the break year?

In 2017 we were on Corfu, Greece, for summer vacation.
It was wonderful. We explored the island with a rental car and also made a trip by boat. Again and again we discovered that there are beautiful places by the sea, but they are not accessible by land …
Sailboats were always near the beach in front of our hotel. One day a catamaran as well. It was a fascinating sight to see these boats moored there. The residents drove the dinghy ashore and went to have dinner at the restaurant on the beach.
Unfortunately, the boats were too far away for us to swim there and have a closer look …
A heat wave made us sweat pretty much towards the end of the vacation. I sat at the beach, like most evenings, looking at the coast of Albania. I hung on to my thoughts and suddenly the idea was born:
We spend the year on a sailboat!

Now you know how it all started!
… to be continued …

March 2019

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