Alan is originally from New Zealand and Annie is originally from Australia.  Together, they’re sailing aboard Kiwi Dream, a 35 foot sloop.  They departed New Zealand in 2015, and we caught up with them in the clubhouse at Marina Estancilla.

For a taste of the conversation, just click play:

Annie and Alan aboard Kiwi Dream
Marina Estancilla- Valdivia, Chile

Where are you from?

Alan: I lived inland on the south island in New Zealand, which isn’t far from the sea wherever you are, but I’ll never live anywhere else but on the coast now if we do put some roots down.

Annie: That’s my goal, to always have a sea view.  Having lived in Scotland with mountains, and how beautiful that is, but growing up in Sydney Harbor with a sea view it’s very special.  And there will always be boats in our lives.

Darwin, Australia
Photo courtesy of Kiwi Dream

What has your route been so far?

Alan: We started in the south island of NZ, up to the top and then straight to Vanuatu from there before heading to the Solomons.  We were planning to go over the top of Papua New Guinea into Indonesia but we ran into some engine troubles.  So we had to come back to Darwin in Australia and then to Indonesia from there.  We headed up towards Singapore, then through the Straits of Malacca to Langkawi in Malaysia.  Then up into Thailand, over to the top of Sumatra and Banda Aceh, pretty good cruising there.  We spent a couple of years in SE Asia; from Langkawi we did a lot of land travel in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

Annie: Then across the Indian Ocean.  We took a different route than all of our other friends – we went down to the middle of Sumatra, then across to Chagos which is a British archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean, then up to the Seychelles and Tanzania.  We had basically one big reach all the way across – we were so lucky.  Other friends went up to Sri Lanka and down through the Maldives, and their experience was not as good as ours.  We missed India, though; I would have loved to have gone up there.

Alan:  I’d do that route all over again.

Annie: And then down through Africa – those were beautiful places.  From Tanzania over to the island of Mayotte, then halfway down to Madagascar, over to Mozambique then down to South Africa and over to Namibia.

Tanzania and Namibia are two of the places we’ve gone after talking to people about it.  In Indonesia, we met a family from Namibia, and they recommended those places to us.  We’re so grateful that we took their advice.

Thailand
Photo courtesy of Kiwi Dream

How did you start sailing?

Annie: A fellow across the road taught me to sail; his kids were the same age as me.  I helped build a ferrocement boat with my first husband in Australia.  We sailed around the Pacific but broke up afterwards.  I met my second husband – he was a singlehander from Scotland who was sailing around the world.  I sailed back to Scotland with him, and lived there for 30 years.  But both Alan and I wanted to keep sailing, so that’s how we got together.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Photo courtesy of Kiwi Dream

What did you do for work before you went sailing?

Alan: I was a dental technician by trade in New Zealand.  I had the normal pressures of a mortgage and raising a family and what have you.  I sat in the same chair for twenty years and made teeth.  It was pretty highly specialized, lots of pressure.  I had forty dentists I was working for.  High pressure, so I’d had enough at the finish.  I’d always wanted to go sailing, and Annie and I met in Fiji in 2008 and got together in 2013 and off we went.

Tell us about your boat.

Alan: Kiwi Dream is a 35′ steel sloop.  She was designed by Denis Ganley, who is well-known in New Zealand, and built in 1988.  We bought her in 1995.

For all the time I’ve had Kiwi Dream, we’ve had some fantastic holidays.  My kids have seen a lot of the Pacific.  They’ve had three trips up to Tonga, Fiji, and Vanuatu over the years, and what kid gets to do that?  I’ve got these memories in my head of my young son kicking a coconut around with a young local Vanuatu kid on the beach, and you can’t put a price on that.  And with the girls it’s just the same.  There were trips where I had three months with just my son one time, and with my daughter another, so really special.   There was one passage, a little rough, where the crew I took got sick.  I’d been on the helm for almost 24 hours, so my 12-year-old daughter offered to take a watch to let me sleep.  She did great!  My son probably went into the navy as a result of us cruising and the exposure to the sea.

Stewart Island, New Zealand
Photo courtesy of Kiwi Dream

What do you enjoy about cruising life?

Annie: I think one of the most humbling things I’ve found from sailing is that you meet people who’ve been out in the water for 40 years continuously.  Some of them haven’t even made it around the world in that time, and the variety of experiences they’ve had is awesome.

Alan: You tend to forge friendships quickly, because you only have a limited time together.  So you have pretty intense relationships.  It’s a blessed life, for sure.

The other thing is the horizons that open.  Just having done a couple of ocean crossings, when you get there you think “That wasn’t so bad; where to now?”  You just think it wouldn’t be that hard to whip across to Australia or something.   It definitely takes some time, but it’s a good way of doing it.  You’ve got your house with you when you get there.

Ushuaia, Argentina
Photo courtesy of Kiwi Dream

What do you miss from life at home?

Annie: We miss family.  We’re pretty anxious to get back and have some shore time, because Kiwi Dream is a small boat.  We both like things like growing vegetables, so having a bit of land will be nice.  We’re still travelers, though, and I think we always will be – it’s hard to shake off.

Southern Chile
Photo courtesy of Kiwi Dream

What are some favorite places you’ve been so far?

Alan:  Hard to say.  There have been so many – Bali, and Indonesia was pretty cool.  Komodo dragons!

Annie:  Patagonia, and after that it’s too hard to choose!  The high latitudes for sure, actually New Zealand is one of my favorite places.  And Africa, the history and variety is just mind-blowingly wonderful.  The red sand desert in Namibia was fantastic.

Alan:  One of my highlights is the self-satisfaction you get from making a landfall, and having arrived there with your own effort.  You’re responsible for everything, and you just can’t put a price on that.  It’s fulfillment.

Annie: I think we’ve been a good team.  It’s Alan’s boat and he does 90% of the work on her.

Alan: I wouldn’t want to do it on my own.  And Annie does all the pictures.