We have since mainly been sailing in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Norway and have also chartered a boat in Greece on our honeymoon 1992. Since 1994, we have always been sailing with our children. When sailing with small children, it has been important to me not to sail in too rough conditions and we have been doing family cruising, e.g. in the archipelago on the Swedish west coast.
That was the reason why I joined a training course aboard Mahina. I wanted to stretch my limits and learn things that I wouldn't train with my family. It was a great learning experience, sailing from the northern part of Norway to Gothenburg in Sweden and I could totally concentrate on the boat and sailing. Norway was beautiful, but cold, of course. Also, a good experience for Leon, to concentrate on house and family for 17 days...
The first year with our new boat, we returned to Norway on our own keel (for full story, click here). I had been a bit nervous about handling such a big "vessel". I found our previous HR 31 such a nice boat and it was difficult for me to separate from her. But since we live 6-7 weeks every summer on the boat and the kids are growing fast, I must admit that it is nice with more living and storage space. The bigger size and weight also makes you feel safe in rougher seas. After one summer aboard, we all felt very much at home on Regina!
During the following winter, the topic of conversation at home became where to set sail to during the summer. Everything between France, Finland and Norway was being discussed. I happened to mention the possibility of making a longer leg over to the Shetland Islands and thereafter Leon was talking about nothing else but sailing to Scotland, going back via England, Denmark and Germany. All this in 5 weeks!!! Leon is the big dreamer in our family while I try to do some realistic (dull?) planning.
Norway has become one of our favorite sailing areas, mainly because of its unspoiled beauty, so 2004 we decided to return again. We did not quite make it to the Shetlands, but this time we sailed a bit further west and reached the wonderful island Utsira before returning back south again. For full story click here.
We all four enjoyed the wonderful weeks and even managed to pick the (only) four sunny weeks of the school holiday. We used the time to think of and discuss about our final decision to take a sabbatical year to sail off to warmer latitudes. Especially for me, it has been a very difficult decision to break up from our company, home and school, but now that we've taken the first big step it feels exciting to plan ahead to realize what we have been talking about for so many years.