Full Circle
Our circumnavigation finished almost 2 months ago, and since then I’ve been telling myself that I’d write this when I was ready.
What does ‘ready’ mean, though? When I’ve fully processed what transpired, what we saw, what we learned and how we changed? That definition of ‘ready’ would have you receiving this final edition of the Sailing Pure Joy newsletter in another lifetime. And my need for some sort of closure cannot wait that long.
So here I am, only partially ready, and quietly hoping that writing this will somehow transform the sliver of my heart that feels a bit bruised because adventure is over, into Pure Joy because it happened in the first place. 💜
The Final Passage
Now, taking us back to mid-March, when we were getting ready to depart Brazil. Weeks earlier, I’d convinced myself that we had completed our last big passage when we sailed across the Atlantic from St. Helena to Brazil. That was a pleasant framing for while we were making that crossing, but…it was a lie. That passage was our last OCEAN CROSSING, not our last big passage. Our last big passage (2,000 nautical miles, in fact) would come when we departed Fernando de Noronha, Brazil and headed for the Caribbean. In case you are wondering, that’s 10ish days at sea - half our longest passage of the adventure, but not exactly a hop-skip-and-a-jump.
By the time we set off from Brazil, we were all a bit weary from the long passages and constant travel, and the boat was ready for some TLC as well. It was just David, Francesca, Elliot and myself on this crossing, and we filled the first seven days with all the tricks we’ve learned that make the days at sea special…and a little less ‘Groundhog Day’. I mustered the energy to organise games, crafts, pizza making, celebrating Mother’s Day (UK) an having movie nights. We also had a party when we crossed the equator, back into the northern hemisphere for the first time in over a year. All of this was our attempt to distract from some pretty uncomfortable wind and waves, and our other main activity of the passage: applying duct tape to some sails that would definitely need to be replaced at the end of this journey. While nothing occurred that we couldn’t overcome, each day seemed to have a moment (or 5) that had us putting our heads together to come up with a workaround.
A bit more than half-way to Grenada, we were feeling a bit beat up by all of this, so we decided to make an unplanned pit stop in French Guyana, to rest and regroup. It was so worth it. We stretched our legs and had an exploration and a meal with some sailing friends who’d made the same decision. There were a handful of boats in the bay and we helped each other to make temporary fixes so that we could all get safely to our destination. The name of the island was Île Royale, and we named ourselves the ‘Royale Refugees’. When we were rested and ready, we set off on our final push to Grenada.
We decided it was an especially good omen when a huge tuna jumped right out of the water and onto the nets on the bow! We weren’t exactly known for our fishing prowess on Pure Joy, and joked that this was Neptune throwing us a bone for the very last big passage of our circumnavigation. It was delicious.
Full Circle
On the 21st of March 2026, Pure Joy completed her circumnavigation of Planet Earth. When we docked in Port Louis Marina in Grenada, we crossed the wake that we had created in December 2024. While we still had a cruising period and many celebrations and memories to make over the next month, this was a very special milestone. And because we had spent so much time in Grenada over the past few years, it truly felt like coming home. We spent our days in Grenada giving Pure Joy some TLC and our evenings reconnecting with friends from the fleet.
The Victory Lap
The next weeks were spent slowly cruising from Grenada up to St. Lucia, stopping at all of our favourite spots along the way. Sandy Beach & Paradise Beach Club, Union Island, Tobago Cays, Canouan and Bequia were the highlights as usual. This period is a blur of beach BBQs, snorkeling, just a few cocktails 😜, starting to pack, hanging out with friends and generally just trying to soak up the insane lifestyle that was soon to be a memory.
Back to where it all began
As we approached Sugar Beach St. Lucia, which is nestled between the country’s two famous mountains, Gros Piton and Petit Piton, a rainbow appeared and welcomed us back to the country where the World ARC had begun. We rested and explored there for a couple of days before setting off for penultimate World ARC celebrations in Marigot Bay with the rest of the fleet.
On April 18th, the entire fleet proceeded together, in a dignified yet raucous single-file line, to Rodney Bay Marina, where the World ARC had begun 16 months prior. We played music over the radio, cheered each other on and blasted our horns until they barely worked.
As we approached the big yellow buoys marking the finish line, officials from the World ARC blasted the official Pure Joy song, ‘Don’t Stop me Now’ over the radio. And then announced to the entire fleet: ‘PURE JOY. PURE JOY. CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE FINISHED WORLD ARC 25-26. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR CIRCUMNAVIGATION.’
I’ll be honest, listening back to the recording of that sent me looking for some tissues. Deep breaths.
What followed:
A tricky but successful docking. (Boy how far we’ve come on that!)
Me bursting into tears when one of the dock staff said, ‘Welcome Back! How was it?’
A party in the marina, where we tread lightly with the Rum Punch in favour of being awake for the big party in the evening.
The Final Prizegiving where we received our certificates and reminisced with friends until physical and emotional exhaustion sent us back to our cabins.
Teary Goodbyes
The obvious reason that we will hold the friends we made on this trip so dear is that we’ve got a truly special shared experience to reminisce about for years to come. The tie that truly binds us though, runs much deeper than that. I believe that all the best friendships in life are built on shared values of one kind or another. The common core value amongst everyone in the World ARC fleet is adventure, and this value expresses itself in a fundamental willingness to say YES. Despite the uncertainty of exactly how we’d pull it off, or if we even could, we all said yes when the glimmer of an opportunity to do something big and different came along. The friends we made on this trip deeply value adventure and everything that comes with it, just as we do. The uncertainty, the living outside of your comfort zone, the growth. We might not have LIKED most of that while it was happening, but we value it. We understand and fully accept that discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. And we got to experience all of it because we said ‘yes’. We will deeply miss being surrounded and spurred on by this YES energy every single day.
The other hard goodbye was with Pure Joy herself. You know when you are moving out of a home and you look back into the space one last time before you close the door? There’s bittersweet feeling you get as you think about the chapter that transpired there. For me, saying goodbye to Pure Joy was that feeling x10. Because not only did she hold the memories of one of the most transformational experiences of our lives, she kept us safe while doing it. I feel such a deep sense of gratitude to her, which sounds funny as she is after all, an inanimate object. But it doesn’t make it any less true. She was a shelter in the storm, a vessel for so much fun, joy and meaning and honestly, one of the most important characters in our story. We will miss her SO MUCH.
Home again.
Elliot and I flew out on a Sunday, landed in London on Monday and he went back to school on Tuesday. This rip-off-the-bandaid strategy could have backfired…if Elliot wasn’t the most adaptable person we know. He’s gone from strength to strength since being back, reconnecting with old friends, going on sleep-away camp with his class, picking up where he left off back in Cape Town with skateboarding lessons. And, he’s still fully committed to his ‘boat kid’ identity, with currently no plans to cut his hair.
David spent a week sorting out loose ends with the boat before joining us in London. It’s a wonderful life that we have returned to in Notting Hill and we never forget that, even when warmer climes and so much freedom feel like a too-distant memory. It’s hard to capture in words the delight of reuniting with the family and friends who encouraged us to go do the crazy thing, and kept us in their thoughts and hearts while we were away. We’re still making the rounds of reconnecting with everyone. Meanwhile, David and I are counting the days until we can move back into our house (when our renters exit at the end of this month) while getting stuck back into work. In addition to resuming my coaching practice, I’m busy preparing for keynotes and writing my book. (What can I say - I’ve now got a lot to say about how to build self-trust in the face of uncertainty.)
Pure Joy is safely stowed away in Grenada for hurricane season while she waits for her next family to snap her up. If that matching process takes a while, we just might get to go keep her company for a week or two at some point.
Everyone asks what the next adventure is, so I’ll tell you: It’s to do the hardest thing of all - attempt to be present for the fleeting magic that this life gives us everyday. We trust that the next travel/sailing adventure will make itself known to us when the time is right. Just no more ocean crossings please. We’ve ticked that box.
