Going Home?

Day 1: Ipswich to IJmuiden

Friday July 24 2026

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” – Mike Tyson, 1987

“Why don’t we stop in the UK for a little bit”, Jen said, back in 2015 when we were planning our circumnavigation route.

“What’s a little bit?”, I asked, already fearing the worst. 

It’s a rite of passage for Australians of a certain age to want to live and work in the UK for a bit.  Admittedly, that’s usually working in a bar in Earls Court or SoHo in your 20’s, but I knew Jen had never gotten it out of her system, and had a somewhat romanticised view of life in the motherland.  In her head it was all English country pubs, leafy autumnal lanes, endless concerts, Art Galleries and Museums in London, and amazing Fish & Chips on every corner.

And while all of these things do exist in abundance here, her mental image was mercifully free of crappy weather, horrendous traffic, a broken political system, and the pervasive pessimism that infects British culture, the inevitable result of living in a country whose relevance and importance on the world stage has been in rapid decline for more than half a century.

“It will be a great chance to spend time with your family”, said Jen, “and maybe we can pick up some contract work and keep our skills relevant so it’s easier to resume our careers when we get back to Australia”.

“What’s a little bit?”, I asked again, suspecting that I was being presented with a very thin end of a potentially quite large wedge.  “There’s a reason why I emigrated to Australia, you know.  And it wasn’t just because I suspected there was a hot Australian girl waiting for me to sweep her off her feet”.

“Maybe 6 or 12 months”, she replied, and in fairness that DID seem reasonable at the time.

I updated the month-by-month spreadsheet we were using to plan our route, and we moved on to discussing which countries in the Med would be our first stops after the UK.

That spreadsheet has since come to be known, at least in my small circle, as the greatest work of fiction since Donald Trump said he'd build a wall and Mexico would pay for it.

Which is why we find ourselves sailing away from the UK today, finally, some 4 years and 2 months after we arrived.

Now in fairness, there was the small matter of a global pandemic, which somewhat changed our plans.  As did the fact that we realised the original plan to spend 5 years or so circumnavigating was actually too fast for our preferred style anyway. 

This was something we could not really have known before we set off. Some people circumnavigate in 18-24 months, others in 10 years, still others in 20 years plus.  Until you set off, you just don’t really know what kind of pace feels right. 
By the time Covid arrived, we were 18 months in and were already feeling we were more like “10-year circumnavigators”.  So as we hunkered down in the Seychelles for 12 months and finally gave up on updating the planning spreadsheet, we also started to think about making a fundamental shift in our thinking.

Perhaps we could see the UK less as a 6-12 month stop to keep our skills current, more as the place where we resumed our careers, and we could work for a few years there until we were ready financially to retire.  That way, we didn’t need to rush on our onward journey from the Seychelles.  And once we’d finished working in the UK, we could then take our sweet time on the way back home to Australia.

A cunning plan was hatched, and before we knew it, we were living aboard in St Katherines Dock marina in central London, trying to find the right balance between galleries, concerts, shitty weather, traffic, fish and chips and dodgy politics, with the odd country pub and leafy lane thrown in for good measure.

As great luck would have it, we both found awesome jobs and discovered much to our surprise that we were able to reintegrate into the rat race without too much difficulty.  Although it did take several months to get used to wearing shoes again.

There was also the added bonus of reconnecting with lifelong friends whom I’d left behind when I emigrated to Australia, and of course, getting to spend large amounts of quality time with my parents and brother in Glasgow.

But throughout the period that we’ve been here, our social media feeds continued to be inundated with updates from our many cruising friends around the world, in a series of far flung exotic locations, reminding us of the life we’d left behind, and to which we were planning to one day return. 

“When you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life” – Dr Samuel Jonhson, 1777.

While there’s certainly enough in London to keep anyone excited and interested for a lifetime, for us the trade-off was always a hot topic of discussion.  We were missing our sailing (SKD was too far up the river to be able to go out for a weekend), we were missing our cruising riends, and we were missing the adventure.

Both of us were loving our jobs, but when the time arrived that our finances were in good enough shape to contemplate giving up work, the conversation about whether we should set a date and go for it, or defer for a while longer, was extremely short.

“Should we consider…” I began. 

“YES!, said Jen, not even needing to hear the end of the sentence to know where I was going.

The decision was made, just like that.  But then the conversations really started in earnest.  Where exactly were we going? 

“Home” I said.  “Albeit slowly”.

Jen knew exactly what I meant.  Of course the UK is home to me too, having been born and brought up here. But since emigrating to Australia in 2000, and becoming a citizen shortly thereafter, it had very much become home to me too.  In some ways more than the UK, since I had actually chosen to be there, rather than it being an accident of birth.

Perhaps for that reason, I’ve missed Australia even more than Jen has.  And so when I consider the second half of our circumnavigation, the many places we are both really excited to see, I hold onto one thought.  A true highlight will be sailing through the Sydney heads, and feeling like I’ve arrived home again.

Between now and then, though, is half a world of adventure and excitement, and it starts today!

After 11 months in the boatyard (more on that in a subsequent blog post), we finally left Ipswich, and the River Orwell today , bound for IJmuiden - the port at the mouth of the river IJ on which Amsterdam is based).

The original plan for this summer was a trip up to the high Arctic of Svalbard via the Norwegian coast, but boat work delays meant we put that off until next year. 

Then we were planning a summer in the Baltic instead, but yet more delays curtailed that idea too. 

In truth, we’re not even finished with the boat work - we will need to return to Ipswich in September to have our mizzen mast stepped- we’ve left it behind while the team at Fox’s work on repairing it just so we can get some summer sailing in. 

Exactly where is still to be decided – Netherlands initially so we can check Coco in to the EU, but then onwards to wherever the wind blows us. The smart money is on Sweden at this point looking at the forecast, but if anything changes it could just as easily be Belgium and France.

In the meantime, this initial passage is one of our shorter ones, at just 135 miles, but also potentially one of the trickiest.  The North Sea can be a fierce adversary at times, although we seem to have caught her on a good day.  It’s currently blowing just 9 knots and flat calm seas, with beautiful sunshine.

But the real challenge here is a lot more than just the weather.  It’s one of the busiest shipping areas in the world, and the shallow waters here also have many sandbanks, wind farms and gas platforms to be negotiated.   

I wouldn’t necessarily have picked this as our first passage after 4 years off the horse (so to speak), but on the other hand conditions are great, and we have some Gouda and Stropwaffles with our names on them just 24 hours away.

After we’ve refitted the Mizzen, we’ll be high tailing up to Scotland for the winter, where we will not only have some more family time, but can also do some extensive cruising in the waters I grew up sailing – something I’m really looking forward to, especially since we fitted diesel heating on the boat during our time in London.

After that, the plan gets a little looser, but is likely to involve another season or two here in Northern Europe (possibly Norway/Svalbard in 2027 and Baltic in 2028), then a season or two in the Med, before crossing the Atlantic, a year in the Caribbean, and then through the Panama Canal to spend a year or two in the South Pacific before heading for home some time around 2032 or 2033.

But if we’ve learned anything at all from these last few years, it’s not to trust our excel planning spreadsheets one little bit.

Day 1 Statistics:

Total Time on passage: 6 hours
Total Distance covered: 35 miles

Average Speed: 5.8

Distance since Sydney:  29,042 nm
Distance sailed in 4 years between Sydney and London:  27,953nm
Distance Sailed in 4 years between arrviving in London and setting sail today 29,042 - 35 - 27,953 = 1,049 nm