KATE 

Kate is a Newport 41. Designed by C&C and built in Wilmington, California in 1973 she is, as the name implies, 41' (12.4M) long. At the time she was classified as a "racer/cruiser", meaning she's tough enough to sail the oceans of the world and fast enough to win an occasional Wednesday night race around the cans.

When we first came up with this crazy adventure back in 2008 Kate was the first boat we found online that piqued our interest. After looking at a few dozen other potential candidates up and down the California coast, including another Newport 41', Kate was the only boat that felt like she could be "home". In June 2008 we unloaded our rented Soccer-Mom van, heaping all of our worldly belongings onto the dock in San Pedro, and moved on-board. Kate's been looking after us full-time ever since.

STEVE & HEATHER

Steve is a fair dinkum' Aussie and Heather hails from Nova Scotia, Canada. We both have fond memories spending the carefree days of youth in and on the water. Neither of us can imagine life without the ocean.

One sunny afternoon in Martinique we made a pact to quit our jobs and buy a sailboat (Steve finally convinced Heather that it would be ok, in her words, "to sail a little boat like that across the big ocean").

We sealed the deal by clinking our beer bottles together and swallowing a big gulp of adventure. A few weeks later we announced the idea to the world so that we'd have to go through with it or risk looking like scared-y-cats.

The plan was to sail across the Pacific Ocean to Australia. We figured it would take about 18 months. Twelve years later we've made it as far as the Philippines and we have no plans to speed up anytime soon.

Since we've gotten this far we figure why not just keeping going... all the way around?