Welcome to our travel blog site. We're writing this blog to capture some of our experiences and learnings during our Worldwide Adventure. We hope our friends and family will find it amusing. 

​

Our journey started at our home in California where we had been living and working in the deepest, darkest depths of Silicon Valley for years, .... No!!, Worse, Decades!!... inventing and designing new technology for the bits and bobs that are used to create computers and cell phones. It was a narrow lifestyle with travel limited to visiting other cubical dwellers working in other concrete box buildings, scattered around the world. We live for projects and while working away in our careers, we started a large project involving us driving each weekend to the Sierra Mountain foothills where we found a quiet piece of bare land to build a country home and a vineyard. We chose to build from scratch for the challenge of creating a completely energy neutral home. 

 

Building the house had been quite the learning experience for both of us and importantly, it led us to realize that we were a great husband and wife team, working together. 

​

After we gave up our semiconductor corporate work in 2012, we moved to this little piece of tranquility permanently, and this new house was to be our green energy project home. It was a paradise environment of trees, fruit and vegetable gardens, wild animals, peaceful solitude, and the house was perfectly modernized and suited our techie, outdoor lifestyle.

​

The house used zero net electrical energy and we even ran a car completely from its solar energy.

 

Dawn's most cherished moment was gardening one morning with a fox casually watching from a raised bed 10-feet away. The animal viewing was amazing and we have endless stories of interactions with raccoons, hummingbirds, butterflies, owls, deer, foxes, wild turkeys, hawks, and possums. For fun, and to contribute a little towards the solution to anthropologic climate change, we started to develop iPhone Apps. And, as a way to stimulate our brain cells. We enjoyed programming and decided we could carry it with us anywhere on our laptops. It would perhaps be an ideal vocation for geeky travellers. We were not driven to make money, we just wanted to continue to create and to contribute to the green technology field. Peter's TVMDC sailing training App was a simple App that well received by many sailing schools. Dawn wrote a more elaborate App with all the bells and whistles and became our 'Go To' App for finding Hotels with Electric Car charging for their guests. 

​

However, once our project was finished we realized that the timing was wrong, and once we finished, we wanted to move on. We were too young to live in this beautiful place that unfortunately lacked stimulation, travel, and any further Progressive challenge. We needed to make life dynamic again. We needed another project with more social and travel opportunities. We needed to alter our life. The decision was easy - life should be about the journey, change, learning and progress. The steeper the learning curve, the more rewarding it is.

 

We started by finding a home for all our material 'Stuff' that had accumulated. This was the most refreshing and liberating experience. We also sold our home, the farm, vehicles, and equipment. We downsized our personal possessions  to a pair of roller suitcases and a zero emissions electric car. We then head off on the road to travel across the USA. 

 

The critical thing for us was the fate of our 3 precious cats. We waited until we found home buyers that we felt would genuinely accept 2 of our 3 cats as the farm was their home. Peter's sister, Helen, graciously agreed to adopt our 3rd cat and so we shipped him to Scotland.

​

Touring across the USA was a temporary journey. Our larger plan was to define and build 'Chloe', our next sailing yacht, to continue the journey on water. This was the perfect challenge for us as, sailing a boat over long distances is just as much, if not more, about complex boat systems as it is about sails and rigging. We weren't really starting from scratch. We had been busy training to sail for many years. Peter had formally learned to sail as a teenager in Ardfern, on the Scottish west coast.

 

Over the years, we had chartered various boats in Europe, the Caribbean, Canada, and USA and had built up a list of various ASA certifications. Having built the house together and lived a few years as a retired couple, we knew that we were a great team and that we could live in close quarters. This was obviously a very key requirement for any form of sailing boat lifestyle.

 

In the end, we decided that Garcia Yachting in France made the world's best Aluminum Boat, and while we waited for the build to be completed, we would travel across Europe by land. Once on the boat, we would travel to where-ever the winds take us. ...