Greetings from Dubai airport,

Wow, it really has been a long time since I wrote to you all – my last group email was as we set sail across the Atlantic ocean from Lanzarote back in December 2024 and to say a lot has happened since then would be an understatement… 

Needless to say, we made it – three generations crossed a vast deep ocean together and loved it – a very special one for the memory bank. What’s hard to put into words is all that followed – how we continued our journey through the Caribbean, to Panama and through the canal, to the Galapagos islands and across the mighty Pacific Ocean, through French Polynesia and Tonga and, just over a month ago, sailed into the Bay of Islands to complete our journey half way around the world. I had intended to create a blog (entitled ‘The Long Way Home’!) about our time on our boat, Mpola Mpola (meaning slowly slowly in Luganda), but, to be perfectly honest, when it came to it, I didn’t want to. So I didn’t. I just loved being entirely present on the boat each day, waking with the sunrise (often before the boys!), doing morning yoga up the bow, opening my eyes each day to an entirely new view, new lush tropical foliage, new beaches and new fellow cruisers anchored around us in various bays. I loved slow mornings and tropical fruit eaten in coconut bowls, glorious coffee brewed fresh each morning (thanks to my coffee machine – a wonderfully indulgent Christmas present from Nath which ensured daily delicious coffee no matter how remote our destination!), plunging over the side into the aquamarine water, snorkelling coral reefs, shipwrecks and the infamous ‘Wall of Sharks’ in the Tuamotus with the boys. Afternoons involved more swimming, reading, homemade baking, adventures ashore, beach walks and games, meeting up with other cruisers, the boys paddle boarding around the bay befriending everyone they met – and inviting them back to our boat for evening happy hour drinks! Every sunset brought with it a pause, a moment of gratitude for the day, our boat, our life, the people and our health. I went to bed each night with a smile and a bubbling sense of excitement for what the next day would hold – more blissful wanderings, refreshing plunges, seeing the world reflected in the boys’ eyes as they discovered life as it’s meant to be lived – slowly and with intention. So you see, there was no time for screens, for sitting on laptops, as little time on phones as possible – just to let our closest family and friends know we were still alive and thriving (and had, in fact made it beyond the Atlantic crossing!). 

But here I am now, at Dubai airport with a coffee and my laptop, taking a moment of stillness while the world rushes past. I am in my own world – quite literally between two worlds, having boarded my plane in Auckland, leaving behind my gorgeous boys in the loving hands of Nath and my parents, on a brief stopover before boarding my final flight to Entebbe where my Ugandan family will be waiting with open arms. And this, in this airport of eternal transience, feels, as it always has, like the perfect place to finally write again.  

It’s far beyond the scope of the time I have before my next flight to capture everything that has happened this past year and a half since we left NZ but I will try the nutshell version – the longer version, perhaps, will be a book for the future… The biggest thing that sticks with me about our year at sea was the simple joy of TIME. Time together as a family, time to do things slowly, time to reflect, time to think, time spent on watch at sea under a myriad of shooting stars contemplating the world and all its wonders, time to really truly listen to our children, time to answer their questions, to wonder together, to just be. And the best part of it all was that I never once wished time could speed up, that the pace of life could speed up. The gloriously languid slow passing of time when you are with the ones you love is the greatest gift you could ask for. The conscious act of breathing in clean, fresh, sea air, relishing the feeling of sun on salty skin and the incomparable joy of that first dive off the back of the boat each morning into the water’s sparkling embrace. Moment after moment of pure joy. 

Encompassed within the joy of having so much time was watching our boys blossom and thrive as they basked in the love of two fully present parents who had chosen to live a life less ordinary with them. Everyone always asked if we were home schooling them but we just smiled and replied ‘we are doing boat school’. Boat school consisted of basic reading and writing lessons on days when it felt right. But mostly it consisted of letting the boys paddle around the bay, exploring and discovering the world together and coming back to the boat bursting with excitement at the places, people and things they had discovered. It meant meeting people old and young from all corners of the world, forming fast, vibrant friendships and then learning to be OK with parting ways, knowing our paths may or may not cross again but being grateful for the time we shared together. Boat school was all about adventure, exploration, imagination, flow states, questioning, wondering and discovering. Meals were always a time to chat, to ask more questions, to be OK with not knowing the answers but pondering together – and always, always there was music. So many nights dinner would end with the music blaring and the four of us dancing in the cockpit under the stars, singing to the night, feeling my heart would burst with the joy of it. 

Of course, there were challenges. Jack and I struggled with seasickness at times, we experienced the brunt of ugly seas and angry winds, we dodged the relentless steam of container ships roaring out of the Panama Canal in the dark while navigating between lightning storms, Charlie’s first snorkelling expedition resulted in 26 sea urchin spikes being embedded in his little foot and us hobbling from clinic to clinic in the BVIs to try and fix him (note for future – the spikes just make their way out so don’t bother with the clinic!). Nath had several trips back to NZ to work for Team NZ, leaving the boys and I alone in various locations – including three weeks in a marina in Panama where the boys and I were literally in tears of despair at times due to the oppressive, relentless heat – Charlie aptly described it with sweat rolling down his cheeks: ‘Mama, I feel like my brain is going to explode.’ But these moments were far, far outweighed by the pinch-yourself ones – like going for a jungle walk next to that very same marina where we watched howler monkeys swinging through the trees overhead and followed trails of ‘caravan ants’ marching along old WWII railway sleepers into the dense foliage. There are so many spectacular memories embedded into our minds forever. 

And now, having settled back in to the warm embrace of our incredible community in Devonport, it’s time for me to go back to my Ugandan home. The rather mammoth task of attempting to visit 112 sponsor students lies before me but I feel if there’s one thing I have taken from boat life, it’s that rushing will not make things easier and that just doing what we can do in the time we have – whilst enjoying the journey – is the best way. So I sit with a smile, the faces of all those waiting for me rolling through my mind, as I look forward to bringing the peace of my sailing soul with me to the red earth of the village. I know it will be well received there – it’s how everyone in the village already lives, it just took me sailing across the world to be able to realise it for myself. 

Sending much love and light to you all,

Em xoxoxo