Episode 3 - Jenny: Part 2

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hello, and welcome to the Quiet Women Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie Sumner. On this episode, we welcome back Jenny Lang. Jenny talked with us previously about the steps and sacrifices she and her family made over a 10-year period to achieve the dream of living aboard a sailboat and cruising wherever they chose to go. This time, she shares what it was like to actually live that dream. And it turns out it wasn't all pina coladas and dolphins as one might think. But it was one that left an indelible mark on her, as well as on her children. Yes. I think last time we talked about the commitment and focus that it took to make this dream of yours come true. And as a reminder for anyone who hasn't listened to the first episode, this dream started when you were given the experience as a child aboard a sailboat named Cotton Jenny. Was that after you, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

No, it wasn't. It was just a song, it was a Gordon Lightfoot song that our whole family loved. And yes, my name is in it, so maybe that's why we liked it.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

And it became a shared goal once your husband got a taste for it, when you two were at sea for was it nine months?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah, I think it's about nine months. Yeah, we cruised um a little closer to home the first time, but still, yeah, as far as uh Belize and the Gulf of Mexico, he definitely got the taste for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

And that boat was called Utter Delight, yes. Yes. And where did that name come from?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Well, the boat was fat, it was just a wide boat. Um, so we said it was fat like a cow, so hence that um utter cow, but also that she would milk us dry of our money. And so that's kind of how we came up with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Now let's talk about living the dream that you spent over a decade to make come true. Yes. You were very calculated in those years leading up to setting sail. Right. So, what was your plan once you left the dock?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

So the plan was like, because the first time when Will and I went, our first goal was to go around the world, like completely go around the globe. But we learned on that trip that things change, things happen, and you just sort of have to go with the flow. And we ended up coming home earlier with our new goal in mind. So this time, instead of striving for such a big goal of around the world, we decided to hone it in a little bit to New Zealand. So the goal was to sail from North Carolina um through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to New Zealand, and that was our ultimate goal. And then once we got there, then we would figure out where what to do next.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

The boat was named the Full Monty. What is the story behind that?

SPEAKER_01 3:30

We knew we wanted something that meant something. It has it's the whole dream and nothing less, and we were gonna do it no matter what anybody thought.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Your goal was you saved enough money for four years, right? And you were gone for six six years. Yep. So did your money hold out?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

No. Um, in the beginning, we were off to a great start. Yeah, I mean, like we had budgeted around $10,000 a year, which is actually pretty low for some. I mean, there are people out there cruising on $35,000 a year and they only go for a year. Basically, in the beginning, we were literally living off about $500 a month. It's amazing how little money is spent once you're out there. We were doing great, right on budget until we lost a rudder, and that put us over budget. I'd say the first year and a half to two years, we were right on target. Then it just, you know, French Polynesia is expensive, New Zealand is expensive. So that's when we decided to stop and work along the way. Will would work on boats, other boats in New Zealand. So we worked for about six months there. And then that's when we picked Hawaii to go and work in Hawaii for 18 months so that that way we could fill the cruising kitty again. We were trying to be as frugal as possible. In fact, other cruisers referred to us as we were sailing on a shoestring budget.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

In New Zealand and then in Hawaii, what kind of work did you do?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

So Will would do the majority of work. He ended up just taking odd jobs in the boatyard, and I was sewing curtains and doing canvas repair work.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

And was that your plan leaving that that's how you guys would make money if need be? Or did it just kind of come about?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

It just came about. Yeah, it just happened. We had no idea how it was gonna work, but somehow, somehow, things always tend to work out one way or another.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

It's funny to me. Funny probably isn't the right word, but but just knowing how calculated and how planned out everything was prior to you setting sail.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

To being at sea for six years without anything close to that plan.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Right. Yeah, actually, I hadn't thought about it that way. In a sense, I guess as far as our direction, we had to go with the flow. We would literally sail where the wind took us. We started learning that just getting yourself out there, opportunities come up and we would just have to take them. I mean, definitely sailing from point A to point B always had to be pretty calculated with respect to weather and stuff. But yeah, overall, I guess living our life and yeah, trying to figure it all out as we went. Not very calculated at all. Can you describe your home on the sea? Yep. It's a 48-foot catamaran, very ocean capable, fully equipped uh with respect to ocean safety and as well as having everything that we needed to live on her for full time. We have a full galley with stove, oven, refrigeration, a freezer. We could carry, I think it was 200 gallons of fresh water, um, which we could either fill up before leaving the dock or we catch rainwater or we make our own with the desalinator. We had everything we needed and definitely enough storage to be able to put all the food provisions and spare parts and everything we needed, or school books. And then as far as sleeping quarters, there are four cabins with full-size bunks. And so the kids each had their own cabin, and the kids were on one side of the boat, and we were on the other side of the boat. So at least there was a little bit of distance, a full you know, salon, kind of like you know, what would be comparable to a living room, and it's a floating home basically. We could watch movies. I mean, so we had our computers, we had a TV, but although, yeah, we don't get a TV signal by any means. We had downloaded a bunch of movies and books ahead of time, you know, had our devices that we could either read, you know, say on an iPad, read books or watch a movie or stream it to the TV. As far as internet, it's whenever we would be in an Anchorage or Marina with Wi-Fi and usually very, very, very slow Wi-Fi. Like even just to open a news app, I could read the news, but I could never see the pictures because the Wi-Fi was so slow it wouldn't download pictures. Slow Wi-Fi. Ugh exactly. Misery. I know, and that was one thing. It was really hard. When the kids would stay in touch with friends that they've met throughout our travels or play online video games, even with the boat kids, it was always funny because they knew it's like, oh, somebody's lagging behind. You know, it's like, oh, slow, slow Wi-Fi. So they had somewhat of a normal life with that respect compared to kids who have stayed ashore all their lives, but only the boat kids seem to understand the slow Wi-Fi thing. Yeah. What about bathing? Multiple ways. I mean, yes, there are showers on board, and we could take showers on board, but of course, you had to use water very sparingly. At anchor, where everybody would be swimming, we'd usually then climb out on the transom of the boat, and there was a little freshwater hose that we could use. So we would basically do our showering right there, you know, soap up, jump in the water, rinse off, and then get out and do a final rinse in fresh water. And then sometimes at sea, what we would do, like say, you know, if it was a three-week passage, you know, across the Pacific or something, we would on the back of the boat tie a line across, you know, because of course we're underway and uh we don't want to lose anybody. We would take turns going down the back steps with a bucket that's tied to a line and have a line that has you tied in and scoop up water with a bucket, pour it over yourself while you're sitting there, and soap up and bathe back there. Like one time I was down on the back trance bathing while we were underway, and all of a sudden there's a fish on, and they had to pull the fish in over top of me.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Now, were you wearing a bathing suit?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

No. Yeah, we're out in the middle of nowhere. There's nobody, it's just the open ocean. Forward cabins had um like a full shower and toilet kind of a bathroom suite, and then the aft cabins had just the toilet and a sink. A closet that Will and I shared was maybe three feet. So we each get one drawer and each get one side of a cabinet. Now Justine had the most space because she had a cabin the exact same size as Will and I, and she had it all to herself. So we said she was uh the lucky one. But yeah, it is you know very small. You know, you don't take much, but then again, living that lifestyle, you don't need as much either. You know, on a three-week crossing, you barely use any clothes. And so for the four of us, I think we had to do laundry once, and of course, then it's by hand.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

What about exercise? How do you get exercise living in such a small space?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Well, actually, it's very easy. When you're at anchor, of course, you can be swimming, but you're also um doing a lot of hikes, um, whether it's a sightseeing hike or a provisioning walk to go to the store and then haul back a bunch of groceries. We are always on the move. Also, when you're underway, so even on a three-week crossing, the boat's in constant motion and you know, we're always on watch. We have our watch schedule. So you take turns sleeping or being on watch, but the boat's always moving. So even though you may not be actively doing something, you're still your body's working hard to keep your balance or move with the boat. I don't know. It's amazing how much weight you can actually lose on a passage just because you're always in motion. There's always things, whether it's muscle building or cardio, you're always getting it.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah, I guess it really is an active lifestyle. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Probably more like a survival type of one. Even something simple as like, oh, we want hamburgers tonight. Well, okay, I need to make hamburger buns.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

So then that's like Wait, you made your own hamburger buns?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yes. I mean, you that's like a whole day affair, right? Yes, you have to plan ahead.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

And school, obviously, it was a homeschooling. Right. Did they get credit for all of the exploring that you did?

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Technically, no. When we were in the Galapagos, and Justine did not want to go ashore because she needed to do her schoolwork. Of course, we made her go ashore. Well, then I don't know how many years later it was, and she was reading in her science book, and she said to me, She's like, Mom, I know more than what the book is telling us. Oh, that's awesome. Yep. At one point at an anchorage, Colin had a sleepover with a bunch of boys. Well, we always had a um world map on our wall. So they were naming countries and shooting the darts at the specific country for fun. And they knew where they were. And they knew where they were. And if anybody could hit Sawaro, they were really good. See, I have never even heard of that. Yeah, the teeny tiny little island. We went to Sawaro before Tonga, so it kind of it's part actually part of the Cook Islands. Suvarov is the other name of it, but it's part of the Northern Cook Islands. You're just showing off now, Jenny. Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

It was a large sailboat, a 48-foot catamaran. I don't even know that what that would equate to in terms of how many square feet are in a house. I think we had figured out 400 feet one time. Or you could say it was a four-bedroom, four-bath plugging home with a full kitchen and living area with an extraordinary vast outdoor patio. Exactly. There you go. Yep. Here's your real estate description. Yep. Even though everyone had their own room and there were places to go, there had to be a lack of privacy. As parents, you need time to get away and decompress, especially on a three-week passage. There is nowhere to go.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Right. Even though we were in close quarters, I mean, we never felt a lack of privacy on those long passages. Everybody gets in a bad mood at some point, definitely. Whoever's in the bad mood just goes to their cabin and shuts the door. Because we actually did four three-week crossings. After the first one, we discovered you go through the same psychological ups and downs each time you've done it. By the second, third, and fourth time, it's like even like Justine would just say, Oh, okay, I need to go to my room now. And she just go to her room and close her door, and we wouldn't see her for a day. In um anchorages and stuff, that's actually when the kids, you know, they'd be off the boat. They'd do school in the morning and be off the boat and go swimming with the other kid boats or go to shore and go exploring. Or there was always some way somehow that you know, Will and I could get time together and you just take the random moments. Where did you go on this journey? So, of course, starting in North Carolina, and in the beginning, we sailed from North Carolina up to Maine, hopping down the east coast back to North Carolina. That was considered our shakedown cruise in order to work out all the bugs in the boat and figure out what kinds of things we needed. Then we then headed south through the Bahamas to Panama, through the Panama Canal, across to the Galapagos, and then Galapagos to French Polynesia. The Galapagos to French Polynesia was the three-week passage, our first, it was 22 days at sea, landing in the Marquesas side of French Polynesia and working our way through the different island chains for about, I guess it was about four months going through there. From French Polynesia to Sawaro to Tonga and then Tonga to New Zealand. From New Zealand after six months there, went back to French Polynesia and taking four months to hop back through on our way to Hawaii and then Hawaii to Alaska and then down the west coast. So Alaska, BC, California, Mexico, and back to Panama, where we stayed for a year before returning to North Carolina via the Bahamas. Oh yeah, and there was a stop in Jamaica both directions from that one as well. French Polynesia was actually a total of eight months, but broken up between the two different times. And then 18 months Hawaii and a year in Panama on our return.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Over the course of six years visiting these amazing places that you went, what are some of the most wonderful, memorable experiences? That is a tough one because there are so many.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

There are so many. One of the most incredible to me, emotional, just that first landfall experience after sailing three weeks across the ocean, and you see land for the first time. First time I saw landfall, I mean, actually, Will had seen it, and he called me up to say, land ho, you just you've you've worked so hard, it's exhausting. And you see land, and I just started crying. It the overwhelming emotion that I felt, and it was tears of joy, relief, just everything just flooded me, and I couldn't even stand up. I was crying so hard.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

So you met a lot of different kinds of people and cultures and food and lifestyles. Right. Did you feel like you were different? Was everyone different? Or like what were the differences that you found within these people? Or did you not find any differences?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Well, see, that was so amazing, actually. You start realizing how much alike people are everywhere you go. A good example of that when we started doing eyeglass clinics with another boat, and we were in this very small village, um San Evaristo on the Silla Cortez down on the Baja side. It's a village of about 100 people. It's all for free to give these glasses away to the people who need them. So, as a thank you, they wanted to have us over to their restaurant. Well, they didn't have us in the restaurant, they took us around the back side where they had the grill and they had set up tables and it was like a backyard barbecue. They asked what everybody liked, and Colin, of course, said a hamburger, hamburgesa. I guess somebody had a brother in La Paz who actually brought back hamburger meat so Colin could have a hamburger. Yeah. Of course, this was right after Trump had just been elected president. It was interesting because we were talking politics with them at one point. There was the whole thing about the wall between the United States and Mexico, but we're all sitting there in Mexico and talking with these people, and we're all just like, but we're all friends. We all, I don't know, it was it was so interesting that they were just like us. And I guess they felt that we were just like them. By the end, like we were actually all, you know, tears in the eyes, emotional, and hugging each other. And we had only just met them that day.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

I love that. I mean, that's what I want to hear that people are people, exactly and we all we all want the same things. Exactly. So it was really special. What are some frightening experiences that you encountered?

SPEAKER_01 20:29

I was terrified the first time going to Panama that here we were with um, I guess Justine was 12 at the time, so Colin was 10. You know, so young family going to Panama, and there's um a safety net that you can, you know, check the reports for where piracy was. And I remember reading about this one anchorage in Panama where the captain had been found under his anchor, and you'd hear about people being boarded with men with machetes and stuff, and so those kind of things terrified me. We brought the big cans of bear spray, and we had, you know, thought we could use our flare gun if we had to. We were in French Polynesia. Uh it was really windy and around eight o'clock at night, so it was dark, and all of a sudden we got slammed into at the bow of our boat. We turned on the spotlight, and Will went forward, and it was a small local fishing boat with a bunch of guys in it, and they were drunk and they were asking for more alcohol. Of course, it's all in French, and Will's trying to, he gets the gist that they're they want more alcohol. So I went up and started talking to the guys and said, you know, we're a family, we don't have alcohol on board. And then they apologized and tried to give us their meal.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

You as part of your preparation because you didn't have health insurance and you have some some medical training yourself, yes, and were prepared to to tackle anything that you could on your own. So, did you need to use it?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Yes. Will always kitted around with why do we need that big? We don't need that much of a medical kit. And like, you just wait. Well, it turns out he was the first one to have to use it. We were in the Las Perlas Islands. He saw a good little surf break over near where we were anchored. So immediately he was in the water and off to go surfing. He fell and cut his heel wide open on a rock. He knew he needed stitches. I had this wonderful medical kit, and I did not have anything like lidocaine or xylocaine for numbing. I got on the radio and I was talking to some friends on another boat on the VHF radio and said, I'm gonna have to uh give him a bunch of whiskey and put a broomstick in his mouth in order to suture him. A man from another boat got on the radio and he's like, please don't do that. He's like, I'm a surgeon and I'm actually on my way to your uh anchorage. We'll be there in about three hours, and I have xylocaine on board. I'm like, perfect. So he ended up being an orthopedic surgeon. Oh, that's awesome. So he did the suturing, and I went into my my surgical tech role and fixed Will up.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

I know that you didn't repair this with your medical kit, but talk about your shoulder.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

So sailing from Hawaii to Alaska, they were big C's and just having to hold on. And like where I sat at the nav table, the navigation table, I was bracing myself with my one arm. So the waves are coming from one direction. I was just bracing myself with the opposite arm. And I think over the repetitive movement of bracing myself, it ended up tearing the rotator cuff. So that was day three out of Hawaii, and it was 20 days to Alaska. By the end of the passage, I couldn't even lift my arm, but I still pulled my shifts. I pulled every shift I had to do, did everything I had to do, but I was one-handed. You go, girl. I was proud of that. So basically, through exercises, I was able to keep my mobility. I couldn't use my arm, but I kept my shoulder from freezing up. So in Canada and the US, I didn't want to go to a doctor because I knew we wouldn't be able to afford it. By the time we got to Panama, I knew I needed surgery. But yeah, it was nine months between injury and going to surgery. The entire process from every doctor appointment, all the physical therapy, the surgery, everything was about $10,000. And that is extremely cheap compared to the US. Yeah. And this hospital is associated with Johns Hopkins. So I love the doctor, he was great, and all the team was wonderful. I'm glad I waited. It was a tough nine months, but I'm glad I waited.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

One of the most traumatic experiences I know had to do with a navigation decision that you made. Yes. Is that something you're comfortable sharing?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yes. Because that to me is also a teaching moment for anybody else who's out there doing it. Like patience is a virtue. This one was traumatic in the fact that it actually caused about four years of PTSD for me. Will had been gone. He had flown out for a death in the family. And so for two weeks, the kids and I had just sailed around, I know this sounds luxurious, around Tahiti and Morea. But then we needed to get back to Tahiti in order to get some paperwork done with the travel agent. Or not necessarily travel agent. She kind of helps all the foreign cruisers to make sure that they have all their proper paperwork and are following the rules and stuff. But anyway, so back to Tahiti to do the paperwork. And she needed me in the office that afternoon. I chose to go in this entrance where the waves were too big. I thought it might be doable by looking in through the channel. It looked rough, but it didn't look like anything I hadn't handled before. But once we entered the channel, I realized it was the wrong decision. This is a channel where they train for the big wave surfing in Chopu. It's a very thick wave that breaks on the reef, and you have reef on both sides of you. It had to have been at least a 15 to 20 foot breaking wave on either side of us. And so the draw of the current was really trying to pull the boat toward the reef. I know like our boat can do nine knots in flat calm. And I had both engines full forward and I was barely doing a knot. And because of the roughness of the water, it was pulling the helm out of my hand. I was having a hard time steering and I was actually having to use my whole body against it. And I had this image that our whole boat would be crashing on the reef. And if it did, it would crack to pieces and we would all be done for. And I had the two kids on board and myself, and I'm like, and this is our home. If this were to happen, not only would we lose our home, but possibly our lives. I in the moment made up my mind, this is not going to happen. I will not let this happen. I just gave it everything I had. And we managed to get in. And by the time I got out of the swirly water, again, I like took my hands off the helm and I was shaking and just again burst into tears. The water was very wavy inside the anchorage as well. So it was really difficult to anchor. When I dinghy to shore, even the dinghy dock, all the dinghies are like swinging, like banging each other in the waves. And even the dinghy dock is moving up and down. It was hard to walk on it. But when I got to the agent and she looked at me and she said, Are you okay? And I'm like, No, I just like came in this past. And she couldn't believe I'd come in the past. And she's like, Nobody's going in the past that day. She's like, Whatever yacht master certificate they give you, you deserve it because nobody can do that. I mean, I even saw Polynesians wearing life jackets, and you never see that. That should have been your sign right there. I know, that's it. So after that, anytime I heard waves breaking, I just would tense. And you know, we'd be coming into another channel. And it'd take me some time to get the nerve up to make, you know, bring the boat in, or I didn't want to get near waves at all. And then when we were in Hawaii with friends visiting us, and we went to the beach and I went to go run into the water to go swim, and I stopped dead in front of the waves. I could not bring myself to even run into the water because, you know, past knee deep because it was, you know, breaking waves. Almost four years later, when we were in the Bahamas on our return, and it was actually Colin who noticed a boat on the reef, and we had to go rescue these people. So I was the one ending up driving the dinghy. I had to hold the dinghy in position against all these big breaking waves on the reef. And I had to keep us just right while Will helped bring four guys on board that boat. And um we pulled them into the dinghy. Facing all those breaking waves and having to help these people, all of a sudden my my fear was gone. So it was pretty amazing. And they thanked us, but I thank them because even though we saved their lives, but they saved mine, and it feels so good to be normal again.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

That's awesome. Did you recognize that it was gone like right in that moment?

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Pretty much, yeah, because there's no way I could have been sitting in that dinghy while we were doing the rescue. If my fear had taken over, I would have gone the other way.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Even though you were living a dream, you've mentioned that it was a tough life. Yes. So how tough was it?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Well, for example, so the whole time you're trying to keep your boat afloat, you want to make sure you keep the water out. And there's it's never a matter of if the water will come in, it's always a matter of when. A through hole in the engine room eroded away due to um electrolysis. So we were taking on water hundreds of miles from anywhere, and of course, you got to stop it. There were other times when water was coming in, also in the Caribbean Sea, we lost an escape hatch, and we actually had to spend a day and a half trying to keep water out. So, you know, you're sailing along, life is beautiful, the sun is out, the waves are gorgeous, and then suddenly something goes wrong, and you just have to, you're on call every moment of the day. So that kind of stuff is hard. The constant motion of the boat that's exhausting. Sometimes when the seas were a little rougher, yeah. Suddenly your dinner that you've been working so hard to make on that little bit of time that you have before you have to go on watch, and then suddenly your whole pot flies off the stove and onto the floor and splatters up every cabinet and wall between the galley and the other two cabins. And suddenly you're having to clean it up and scrape up whatever you can try to eat. You can't just throw it away. You gotta eat what you can. In port, you know, you've got to acquire your provisions, which means you dinghy ashore, you have to figure out where the nearest food store is, and then you have to hike however far to get there, get what you can, but you can only get what you can carry. And you load yourself down as much as possible, and you know, it's heavy, it's hot because you're in the tropics, so it's really hot and humid, and you have to traipse sometimes a mile or two back when you've already walked the mile or two there, and then put everything in the dinghy and haul it back to the boat, and then you put it up on the boat. So it's everything's a big process. And you were talking about exercise. There's our exercise. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

While you had that year of cruising as a young girl, you primarily grew up living in the house. Your kids, however, spent their formative years on the boat with your oldest moving straight from the boat into her college dorm. And how did living aboard and abroad for so many years shape them?

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Right. Yeah, I'm sure the uh cruising life definitely influenced their majors. Justine, she wanted to go into marine biology actually in the beginning, but I was afraid for her that that might be too narrow of a topic. Well, she loves shock sharks and stingrays. At the same time, she's very much an environmentalist. So she's she's in environmental science, but she is focusing with the some kind of marine side of it as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

What did she see or experience while you guys were sailing that you think led her to be an environmentalist?

SPEAKER_01 33:00

I guess much of the time. You see the beauty, you see the clean water, you see all the wildlife, and then there would be certain areas where all of a sudden you get to where it's more populated from Panama, Jamaica, Bahamas, and back to the US, the amount of pollution in the water, it's horrible. Yeah, you're snorkeling and you're trying to look at the fish, but yet bottles and plastic go floating by. Also, well, yeah, being out in a complete remote island out in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific where there's no people on it. And you know, we anchor on the lagoon side and walk over to the ocean side, and then there's like tons of trash on it that you know had only floated up. Nobody put it there. There was a TV, there are tires, there's tons of netting. Oh my gosh. They're just out there on that beach, and there's nobody there. We were sailing north near Cuba and Haiti. There's one current that flows just north of that that we were sailing across. And it was like somebody had taken a bunch of styrofoam takeout platters and put them in a shredder. There was shredded styrofoam and then plastic forks and knives, and there were shoes floating. It could have been a hundred miles that we were sailing across, of all this stuff just floating on top of the water. So, yeah, there's lots of stuff out there that it just makes us so sad to see.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

So do you think that's part of the reason why Justine is so passionate about the environment?

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yes, definitely. And then Colin as well, he's just as passionate about the environment, but he is going into the marine biology, or at least that's what he's declared so far.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

So this podcast is called Quiet Women. And in our first conversation, you mentioned that you were a quiet sufferer, and you would often refrain from asking for help and let others take the lead if they were so inclined. Right. So, how did that play out while you were on this journey? Did you discover a different version of yourself while you were on the full Monty? Have you been changed as a result of this experience?

SPEAKER_01 35:12

That is a good question. And I hadn't thought about this before, but on the boat with the family, it's hard to be a quiet sufferer because most, for the most part, we depend on each other for our survival as a whole. Plus, when you're living in such close quarters, we usually can tell when something's bothering someone. Maybe that I was a different version because I was with my family in total trust. And we've always said communication is the key. We're a team. So yeah, on the boat with my family, uh, not so much. But yeah, I think coming back, I know what I'm capable of, I know who I am, but yeah, I guess I gotta find my way being back on shore again, I think.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

You went cruising with Will for a period of time before this and came back and adjusted to life on land. So this isn't the first time that you've done that. Right. Do you feel like this experience has changed you even more?

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yes. I do remember it being difficult coming back the first time, but it I was also amazed at how quickly we got back into our quote regular or normal life, which I almost hated about ourselves. We so quickly forgot some of the things that we had learned while we were out there as far as how we wanted to live our lives. And so part of this one I knew before we went that I wanted to make it a lifestyle change. Being out there actually, you know, like I said, teaches us to go with the flow and you always adapting, and you have to keep searching and find the direction you want to go. And that is the phase we're in. We're we're searching for our next goal. There's a few little other obstacles that we have to deal with first.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

But dealing and overcoming obstacles is is what you've done for the past six years.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

That's true. So yeah, we'll just have to find find my niche and but not forget what we've done. And yes, I need to stay strong and remember what my capabilities are, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:26

Absolutely. I mean, you have accomplished so incredibly much and should never forget that.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Right. And I don't want to forget. In fact, that's why I got a tattoo on this trip because I wanted to make sure I never forget. And a tattoo is it's a Tahitian tattoo that I actually got in Hawaii. It has uh symbols that represent four years of the travel depending on each other as a family. The birds like representing the trip out, one representing the trip back, and one representing like the guardian angel. There's a lot of symbolism in it. I wanted to make sure I didn't forget, and which I I don't think I can.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

It's imprinted on your brain forever, just like it's imprinted on your foot. Yes, and whenever you need to summon up your courage, you can just look right there. That's reminded of just how incredibly strong and smart and experienced you are. Yes, you make it sound so but yes, you're right. You are like you said, it's an incredibly tough life, and it does sound glamorous, and usually when you have a dream, it's for something easy, and your dream was for something incredibly difficult, very rewarding, but also extremely challenging, and it's a badge of honor. I mean, that tattoo right there. Yes, wear it proudly.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yes, a very incredible um experience, that is for sure. And now I'm gonna take joy in watching and see where the kids head with it.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, they have you to thank for that. We are all products of of our parents. Yes, that's right. And reflections of how we were raised. And yours are pretty great.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

I I think so. Yep. I'm just sitting here with a smile on my face picturing it all.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Since settling back down in Wilmington, North Carolina, Jenny has applied her 40,000 nautical mile sailing experience and now has her U.S. Coast Guard 50-ton master license. In addition to being a captain for hire, she is also available for boat deliveries, weather routing, cruise planning, and all kinds of yacht repairs. Check her out at CaptainGen.net. Thank you for listening to this episode of Quiet Women. I invite you to join our Facebook community. Search for Quiet Women Podcasts. And if you are a Quian with a story to share, or would like to nominate someone to be a guest on this podcast, please reach out to me at QuietwomenPodcast at gmail.com. Until next time, remember your silence doesn't define you. Your unique and complex life is what has made you into the amazing person you are today. I see you. We all see you and we are here for you, and we cheer for you.