It had been almost 15 years since we returned from a year away sailing for other people and decided we wanted to sail the world on our terms.  We arrived back in Oz with scarily few dollars so the first thing was to set up the old company and earn a bit of money.  Eating is good.

Our plan was to try and fund the trip by creating an event that would have a direct benefit for sponsors - after all we're the classic Baby Boomer couple.  And the idea we presented seemed to be well accepted - albeit over 200 proposals zipped around the world - discussions were proceeding well - and then 9/11 happened.  Well, that put the kybosh on that idea.

Undaunted, we decided to buy the best yacht we could afford and to work her up.  We must have looked at over 50 boats before we found "Hinewai" - our big, lovely, slow, 25 year old Roberts Mauritius Ketch.

We knew we'd have to do a bit of work to get her to how we wanted things to be - and soon found we had no idea what was actually needed.

But we also needed a target date to leave.  Every four years, there's a grand race from here in Melbourne, Australia to Osaka in Japan.  We decided to aim for the 2007 race - which started on March 25th, and then head on to North America.

It's been five years of working every moment we can to raise the money, gutting the house back to bare frames and renovating and, of course, getting the big girl ready.  In January, we closed the company down to concentrate on getting all those last things done.

It was going to be tight, but we might have made it.  Then Jean's mum became ill over in Perth.

That was the end of the Osaka race for us, although we're not sure if we'd have been happy for us to go anyway.  Although we've spend heaps of time on Hinewai, we've done very little sailing over the last couple of years and it was a big ask to sail 5,500 nm two handed.

So we returned to Plan A - to head north and turn left.  It all became a bit of a rush but finally we headed off on 28th May 2007.

And got as far as Darwin where we sat for 10 months while Peter's 5 broken ribs mended.  Once hale and hearty again, we headed off, passing through Indonesia and up to Borneo where we saw orang-utans and race in Miri before moving onto Malaysia and Singapore.  Swinging north again, we headed up to Thailand and the Kings Cup before heading across the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal to Turkey.

After nearly a year there, we headed across the Med, through Gib and across the Bay of Biscay, arriving in the UK in August 2010.  The plan was to winter there before heading onto the Baltic, but circumstances have changed with Jean moving permanently back to Australia while Peter stayed with the boat. 

Four years later, the story continues.