Hi, we’re Fran and Jack, a British couple who decided to leave our corporate jobs and move aboard our 41-foot sailing boat, Calidris Alba.
As we embark on the start of our journey, we cannot wait to discover new places, go on new adventures and experience the joys of sailing our home around the world. Our journey will be filled with excitement and a whole host of challenges, and we can’t wait to share things along the way.
Here’s a short intro to our story. How we got here and where we’re headed. This blog is a way for us to capture our journey, share our experiences and be able to look back and reflect on our time living aboard. To help do that, we thought it was worth introducing ourselves, from the beginning…
The very start
After meeting at university, then working in different graduate roles, we were both living together in a rented flat in London. Jack, a Chartered Engineer working as a Systems Engineering consultant and Fran working in corporate finance. It was a few years ago when we both started developing our dream of owning a sailing boat and moving aboard to explore the world. At first this was a bit of a pipe dream, but after years of talking about it and lots of thinking about it, the time came where it felt like now or never. Without the ties (adult responsibilities…) of a mortgage or children, it felt like now was the time to take the leap.
The boat dream begins
After months of saving, dreaming, and hours upon hours online window shopping, our boat search properly began in February 2025, when we headed down to Southampton for viewings of our first few boats for sale. We’d spent hours searching yachtworld, apolloduck and all the second hand Facebook groups we could find, hoping something would come up that met our budget, timescales and (fairly) strict criteria fit what we were looking for in a second hand boat. We’ll share the full details on how we found the boat buying process for another blog, but to cut a long story short, after nearly 5 months of searching we went to view Calidris Alba a 1986 Rival 41 in Chichester Marina.
As soon as we set eyes on her, we knew she was the boat for us. Beautiful lines, strong seaworthy construction with many systems already installed to make her the perfect liveaboard. From hearing some of her history on previous adventures, we were feeling extremely excited to have found a boat like her (close!) to our price range.
It took plenty of back and forth with the owner, not helped by Fran and I going on a two-week trip to Thailand for a friend’s wedding in the weeks after our first viewing. But before long we arranged the lift out, survey and paperwork to make Calidris Alba ours.
Once the boat sale was finalised, it hugely focused our minds on the enormity of the decisions we were making. We now had our own boat in Northney Marina boatyard to care for and bring back to life. We also still had our rented flat in London, and full time jobs, so juggling everything at this stage became a huge challenge. The excitement and anticipation for moving onto the boat full time got us through, and after lots of sad goodbyes to our friends in London, we moved onto the boat full time in July 2025. Still with lots of work to do…
Reality sets in
2 months in the boatyard went like a flash, particularly with the hot and dry summer, making jobs both easier (painting) and much much harder (sanding the hull in full body suits). Looking back on this time in our journey brings such fond memories, particularly because of all the kind help and advice we received along the way from fellow boat owners and local businesses in the yard. They were always so willing to lend a hand and offer us invaluable advice – perhaps it looked like we needed it!
The end of our time in the boatyard marked the beginning of our time in the water. After a successful relaunch, then a couple of nights in the marina we headed off to the mooring buoy in Itchenor, where we would spend the rest of the summer getting Calidris Alba ready for another big adventure.
Adjusting to life on board a 41-foot sailboat
Moving from our small one bedroom rented flat in London to an even smaller 41 foot sailing boat was always going to be a challenge. But being on a mooring buoy in the River Itchen, with no connection to land, actually turned into the perfect way to adjust to living a simpler life.
No stable internet connection, a dinghy ride to shore then a 30 minute walk to get to the nearest shop (which was just a petrol station Waitrose) and only a finite supply of water and electricity. Everything about living this lifestyle became instantly real life. Where we’d got used to the convenience of living in central London, with Tesco Express at the end of the street and everything we could ever need, our daily routine turned on its head.
Finding our sea legs
Being fairly novice sailors, the time we spent in Chichester Harbour also turned into the perfect time to get used to what it takes to sail a 41 foot sailboat as a couple. We’d done a reasonable amount of sailing around the solent before, crewing on friend’s boats and joining a mile builder across the channel to Cherbourg. As well as completing our RYA Competent Crew and Day Skipper courses in Gibraltar, but we’d never been in charge of a sailboat just as a two before.
At the time we said it was like the first time you drive on your own after passing your driving test. The teacher has gone, and although you know what you’re doing, there’s no safety net anymore.
Learning how to handle our boat with no other crew was a steep learning curve. On top of the fact that most of our sailing had been on training boats, which tend to be much lighter and easier to handle in small spaces than our 3/4 keel, 15 tonne liveaboard. We were very quickly learning that this was going to be a different type of sailing than we’d done before.
The Chichester Harbour area turned out to be the perfect playground for us to get used to sailing, anchoring and manoeuvring. We commandeered a free floating pontoon for hours at a time, practicing coming alongside in all configurations – tide with and against, wind with and against, port and starboard side to. Building our confidence for when it came to do it for real in a tiny marina in strong winds, surrounded by expensive boats!
Building our experience
Being so close to the Solent and the fantastic sailing it offers also meant we were able to head off on lots of trips to Cowes, Osborne Bay and Newtown River as a way to build our experience. Then taking it a step at a time to head off further afield across the channel to Alderney and Sark. By living on board we had the luxury of sailing every day and built our miles far quicker than we could have done just sailing at weekends. Building this basic experience was something that we knew we’d be grateful for own the line and felt like time well spent, despite being so excited to head out into the open seas.
Heading off on our adventure
We loved spending time on the South coast and being able to welcome on board so many of our friends and family. Yet we hadn’t bought Calidris Alba to cruise the South Coast… So with the months passing by, we were chomping at the bit to head off and explore more of the UK and then beyond. This is just the start of our story, stay tuned as we point our bow South, heading for warmer climates and unfamiliar waters.
