Ease The MainWith Benevento and its crew

These are questions that we’ve been asked by friends and acquaintances when they learn of our trip:

Where are you going?  We will cruise south, stopping along the way in California and Mexico. Then, we will go to Panama, through the canal, island hop in the Caribbean until May, go up the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., cross the Atlantic, and then spend about one year in the Mediterranean.

How long will you be gone? Two years.

Is your son going with you? Um, yes. Yes he is.

What are you doing for your son’s schooling? I designed a curriculum with the help of Clonlara that closely matches his elementary school curriculum back home and is up-to-date with the new Common Core Standards for California.

Do you have to keep sailing at night?  If we are on our way from one destination to another and there is no shallow water in which to anchor, then yes, someone always has to be on watch.  On previous night passages we have found that 3 hours on, 3 hours off during the night works well for us.

How do you do laundry?  We will either pay someone to do our laundry (in countries where this is common) or we will wash clothes by hand.  Not my favorite thing to do, but hey.

What kind of sailboat do you have? We have a Pacific Seacraft 40.  Her name is Benevento, which means “good wind” in Italian, and it’s also the name of the town in Italy where Darold’s family is from.

How do you get groceries? We expect to get them from the same place the locals do.  We’ve stocked up on some favorite foods and things we know are hard to get outside the U.S.  Fortunately, we like trying new things.

How fast do you sail?  Not fast.  This is no America’s Cup catamaran on foils.  We weigh 13 tons.  We will average about 6 knots (7 mph).

What do you bring with you?  Everything we can think of that we might need and can be difficult/time consuming to get while on the trip.  This includes lots of spare parts (and not nearly as many clothes and shoes as I would like.)

Do you have a shower?  Yes, and it has hot water too.

Aren’t you afraid you’re going to want to kill each other?  I decline to answer on the grounds it might incriminate me.

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