Sure, to be a successful world cruiser you need to be comfortable living with factors that are uncertain and unknown. You have to be flexible dealing with adverse situations and prepared to change plans, routes and destinations. For example, you may have dropped your anchor in a comfortable, protected bay but when wind unexpectedly changes, that safe place becomes dangerous or untenable (yes, even on a multihull!). We need to consider how risky our position could become and whether to haul anchor and leave, or dig in, keeping a vigilant watch throughout a stormy night.
So yeah, we have a high threshold for dealing with risk. Still, it felt good to have considered some worst-case scenarios. After all, we didn’t expect any of them to be probable. Duh Duh!
Alright then, let’s get on to the prickly topic of risk….
Main considerations we planned for, before setting off
- Serious health issues:
Whilst I wouldn’t recommend surgery as a preventative measure, you do need to take care of underlying health issues. After years of debilitating pain and physical limitations due to multiple knee injuries, Lorenzo had both knees replaced a year before we left. Those knees should be good for another fifteen years! We both had full health check ups, dealt with dental work and got global private health insurance before leaving.
- Financial market meltdown:
One of the biggest questions is quantifying the true cost of a full-time sailing life. Ultimately, budgets vary enormously and you’ll spend as much as you can afford. Before leaving our jobs, we saved for years to buy our boat and ensure we had funds to live modestly. Since this is our first boat, it’s really hard to know what the cost of living and maintenance of our a boat would be. We went through every category, putting together expected costs. Our financial advisor dug into the numbers to -here comes that word again – assess any risk. Keeping enough assets in cash for a few years of modest living, the rest of our hard-earned funds are invested for the longterm.
- War or a piracy attack:
Though this seemed to be the unlikeliest scenario a year ago, it wasn’t hard to imagine. After all, both our families have had to abandon homes along with all belongings and leave flourishing livelihoods due to war. We’re lucky to be Europeans, we thought, free to travel almost anywhere we want. There’s plenty of time to reach other parts of the world to live a simpler and carefree life. To start off, we decided to travel in the Mediterranean for the first two years. It felt safer to be in Europe and closer to the boatyard.
So we really thought of everything! Haha. We just didn’t imagine all three scenarios could happen simultaneously! And, then there was one thing we never thought of. Something really important if the premise of your dream is to sail around the world….
What that is and how we’re coping ? That’s in our next post!
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