This is the first installment in a four-part pen pal exchange between Linda aboard Duende at Shellphone Chronicles and Janice Anne aboard Steadfast at Sparring with Mother Nature.
Writing from different oceans on opposite sides of the globe, two women sailors exchange letters about how we came to build our lives at sea, each aboard a very different sailing vessel. Opposite Latitudes, Parallel Attitudes explores what it takes to go all in on this life—and where those choices have carried us.
Part 1: Letter from Linda to Janice Anne - I can’t believe we connected
Dear J - Greetings from SV Duende, currently anchored in Lata, on Nendo Island in the Solomon Islands. It’s so exciting to kick off our Pen Pal Series, and I’m really looking forward to our letter exchanges over the coming weeks.
Opposite Latitudes, Parallel Attitudes really does describe us - you in the northern hemisphere, me in the south, but both of us living aboard large sailing yachts and exploring the world’s oceans and waterways from a place that few people ever get to experience. It takes a certain attitude to even consider this as a full time lifestyle, let alone to make it happen. Parallel indeed.
We both understand the commitment and energy required to go all in on this choice, but we also know the great reward. At this moment, I can’t imagine doing anything else. This life on the ocean both humbles and empowers me.
When I am sailing at night, and the vast expanse of stars extends as far as the horizon in every direction, I feel so small - a most insignificant speck in the middle of the ocean.
But when I am faced with a challenge, hundreds of miles from anyone or anything that can help me, and I solve it and come out the other side - that’s the most powerful feeling I will ever have.
At those moments, I feel superhuman, like I can do anything. I would hazard a guess that it is very similar for you. It is so interesting that we have both chosen this lifestyle, going all in on the boats of our dreams - which frankly, would likely be a nightmare for most of the people I know.
When people think of sailing, they typically imagine a shiny hull (often more than one, but let’s not get started on catamarans), sunny days, skimming along over calm water, and being safely ensconced in a marina by sundown, sipping an umbrella drink. When something breaks, you “call your guy”. If the idea of living on a boat ever comes to mind, it might be that they think of a short term accomplishment - “sailed to Tahiti, check” - and then it’s back to the homestead and the grandkids. Both you and I have chosen the more uncharted course, the less predictable one, the DIY one. But the one that is potentially, at least to me, far more rewarding. I guess it’s just how we both are wired. I wonder how you got started down this unusual path - you were a mountain girl were you not?
I grew up on the northwest coast of British Columbia and have always had the ocean in my soul, but never in a million years imagined that I would end up owning a beautiful yacht like this, sailing to remote corners of the world, and living a full time life on the ocean. The Captain and I started our sailing life together on a 34-foot performance cruiser in Vancouver, sailing the Gulf Islands and Georgia Strait. But being the crazy people we are, we decided to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. It was our first big time “open ocean” adventure, and crossing the Nahwitti Bar at the northern tip of Vancouver Island and rounding Cape Scott led me to my first “WTF am I doing here?” moment. Suddenly, our little boat was scooting down 30-foot swells, and we had no choice but to weather on to the first safe harbor down the wild west coast of Vancouver Island, appropriately called “the graveyard of the Pacific”. That first day was a 12-hour hand-steering adventure. I remember looking up from down below at The Captain who was braced at the wheel, and seeing nothing but a wall of water behind the boat. But we powered through and it was our first blue water accomplishment, one that definitely fed our desire to do more.
I’m not a brave person by nature but I have become more courageous by circumstance. Each time I face down the challenges that Mother Nature throws at me, it makes me stronger.
I’m sure you have had more than your share of similar adventures leading up to your current place in time on STEADFAST, much as I have had leading to this place on Duende. That first blue water experience preceded our move to California, years of sailing on San Francisco Bay, and our first one-year sabbatical to Mexico on that same 34-foot boat. That was the trip that reinforced our belief that we could live on a boat full time, and the next 10 years were spent planning and engineering that move.
Eventually, we decided that the only way for us to have waterfront property was to make it a floating one, and we found our first “big” boat. It was a 50-foot C&C Landfall, and we sold everything and made the move aboard in 2012. We sailed out the Golden Gate one final time, and haven’t looked back since. The last thing to go was my beloved BMW 328i convertible, which I sold to a friend in San Diego. There is a cool story on that one too - the color of the car was “Moorea Green” - and when I bought it I didn’t even know where Moorea was, let alone think that one day I’d sail into its lagoon in the shadow of those towering volcanic peaks on my own yacht! The color of that lagoon? It was completely right - Moorea Green is a real thing.
And now, here we are on Duende, a beautiful John Alden designed 80-foot cutter rig, aluminum hull, custom built in Walsteds Shipyard in Denmark. We found her in Florida, sold our 50-footer in Tahiti in 2020, and spent the next 5 years on the first stage of our refit. The details are all in my origin story, and the story continues now from the western South Pacific.
We’re on track to end our season in Malaysia this year, and find a place for our next stage of refit and beautification. Like I said, never in a million years did I imagine owning this kind of vessel and we are still very much all in. As are you, on STEADFAST.
It is pure serendipity that I found your SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE on Substack, but you had me from the first article I read. I don’t remember the title, but you told an amazing story about bashing to windward on your way back to Chesapeake Bay from the Bahamas. I was right there with you, and knew at that moment that we shared Parallel Attitudes.
I can’t wait to see where this letter exchange takes us J - it’s going to be a fun ride!
I look forward to hearing back from you soon,
Your sailing friend, LJ
Latitude: 010° 44.477’ S
Longitude: 165° 49.624’ E
Part 1: Letter from Janice Anne to Linda - How I went all in
Dear Linda - I was honored by your request to participate in this creative connection series! You looked toward blue water challenges half a lifetime ago; this course, for me, was completely uncharted, yet the parallels abound. Neither of us imagined that final all in, never pictured that, for the balance of our days we would have to be very careful stepping into our homes because everything we carried was (sometimes precariously) over water. No easy lesson, and I always try to remember to laugh. More than once I dove right in, fully clothed, after whatever it was that I dropped...can I imagine that has happened to you?!
You have sailed and seen more of the world than I, including that BMW Moorea Green you describe (I’d love a quick rundown of your travels thus far!). I am amazed to share that the last thing I sold before moving aboard was a black and silver BMW Z3 convertible. In 2015 that awesome ride transported me from twenty-five years of mountain and desert dwelling in Colorado to the Florida Keys, as far away as I could get both figuratively and geographically; the trunk held the basics and my dive gear. I left the rest of my life behind.
In 2019 I fell in love with a life-long Sailor and here I am, rocking gently aboard STEADFAST, docked in Cambridge, Maryland, US, a small harbor on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay not far from STEADFAST’s hailing port of Annapolis. (The four years between are substantial stories; I share those in my first two books.)
After a rather whirlwind romance with said Sailor, I (somewhat predictably?) found myself living aboard a sailboat. My sailboat, as it turned out. I had moments of extreme joy, vast humility and undeniable trepidation. I wasn’t a boat girl. Not even close. I moved permanently west because of a summer job in Montana, deeply smitten with the wide open spaces. (If you haven’t seen that story, I think it’s worth a read).
I reiterate. I was not a sailor. Not even close. Let’s summarize my boating experience, for your amusement. Four decades ago, I was perched on what I now know is the starboard side of a sailing vessel traversing Cayuga Lake, a deep, land-locked, glacial-valley body of water in Central New York State. I recall that having to lie flat on the deck every so often in order to keep my head attached seemed like an odd form of entertainment. The next summer there was a boy with a powerboat who invited me to watch an eclipse and since I cannot eat my pizza without parmesan cheese and the lake was a little rough, he spent the balance of the next day vacuuming the dark gray carpet; it was the only date we ever had. In my third life, Western Colorado, I spent joyous weeks each year fishing from the back of my bass boat on Lake Powell, right next to the Mercury 250 motor. Oh, and my grandfather had a rowboat... Amazing how different our lives can become, isn’t it?
I know you’ve been following my work, but here’s a quick rundown on STEADFAST; she is far different from your floating home, but also a big boat! Built in Brooklyn, New York’s Wheeler Shipyard (I love that part!) right next to Ernest Hemingway’s PILAR, Classic Wooden Sailing Yacht STEADFAST is a 1934 William Hand Jr-designed Motorsailer Ketch. Her two Sitka Spruce masts give her a complicated rig (side note: those masts came from your home territory in the Pacific Northwest, which I have not explored. I’m sure it’s fantastic but that water is too cold for me!). My regal old girl is 22 meters high, almost 20 meters long and weighs 42 tons, much of which required an extensive, expensive, labor intensive (we did the vast majority ourselves) two-year rebuild that concluded just last month. Actually, that’s not true; our maintenance and repair work will never be concluded; that’s the choice we made when we went all in!
This November 2024 photo shows her new stem and knee carved and constructed from South American Purpleheart. After this unexpected, unwanted hiatus we are incredibly anxious to return to a liveaboard life plying the seas; we’ll head south in October!
After typing that exclamation point, I want to step back to my first Gulf Stream crossing, a sail initiation of sorts; it’s parallel to yours and I’ve never really told the tale. Of course I had heard of the Gulf Stream, perhaps in geography class, perhaps in correlation with the Bermuda Triangle. We were prepared to cross it, and pulled up anchor in West Palm, Florida on a late January evening, the forecast seemed benign, and headed east. Frankly I don’t remember all the details but I do recall lying in the cockpit, tethered to the rig(!) in full foul weather gear, wet to the bone, cold, seasick to end all seasick, brain screaming WTF had I done with my life?! Every few minutes volatile equilibrium tried to purge my already-empty stomach. During those long hours, it all seemed like a very, very bad idea. And hard to reverse.
Like you, we were all in; the Sailor had sold his house and business (which I did prior to leaving Colorado), I had stowed everything I owned and for the first time since sixteen didn’t even own a car. The balance of my meager belongings were getting tossed around down below decks, and it was DARK DARK. (Check out that story.), actually the second-darkest night I had ever experienced, in more ways than one. Out on blue water you feel those right down to your soul, humbling indeed.
However, it did not end badly and the next evening I got to experience the most AMAZING sunset I had ever laid eyes on. We’ve both seen stunners, reflecting on the water. Can you choose a favorite? This is mine:
I fell immediately, irreversibly in love with the islands, people and creatures of the Bahamas. All the negatives became worthwhile and here I am, six years later, 12,000 miles at sea under my belt, 2,000 boat maintenance/repair hours logged, Captain’s license in hand.
When I began creating Sparring With Mother Nature in March 2024, it was a sailing travel blog, but the last 100 or so editions talk about the myriad challenges experienced and lessons learned while bringing our piece of maritime history back to life in a four-season climate. I also shared an occasional travel adventure elsewhere (most recently Galápagos) and flashbacks to our time on the water, which almost maintained my sanity. The first story you read was called OVER AND OVER AND OVER, about a raucous passage outside of North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras, the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Now that I share your lifestyle, I understand completely your very accurate, beautiful and heartfelt descriptions of how powerful you feel to have embraced, overcome the challenges, and grown to love life on the water. I’ve gotten so used to the gentle motion of the ocean that now it’s much harder to sleep on land. Do you find that, too? I look forward to hearing more about the islands you are exploring.
Thanks again, LJ! It’s a pleasure to get to know you. ~J
Latitude: 038°56.64 N
Longitude: 076°07.69 W
About this connection
These pen pal letters are a throwback to the time before messaging and email, when letters sent by post were the only way to communicate 1:1. In those days, once letters left the writer, the words disappeared from the author and belonged to the recipient. In this electronic age, not only does the sender retain a copy, but it can be instantly shared with a host of others. It’s a phenomenal connection.
I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of Different Latitudes, Parallel Attitudes. Part 2 of this series will continue in two weeks, when we will share more about what it takes to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and safe.
If this unfiltered glimpse into our shared but different worlds provides you with a laugh, a new perspective — or a moment where you felt a little more alive, then we’ve accomplished much. We would love to hear what you think!
What a fantastic exchange the two of you have found! I love the premise, and it is interesting to hear how you both arrived in similar situations through different routes. — The color of the water in the Cook’s Bay photo is stunning.
What an awesome experience - to find a like-minded soul to share your stories with! I had 3 penpals back in the day (Sweden, England, South Korea) and from time to time I try to find them. I kept all their letters. It's perfect, of course, that you as a writer are drawn to a penpal. How wonderful! Both of your sets of stories are incredible beyond belief!