Suddenly it just happened: A decade of dreaming has slowly transformed into a state of planning, like when an early summer's fog lifts in the increasing strength of a rising sun, enabling a clear sight. Too many circumstances have lately repeatedly been whispering the same essential message: Our time on earth is limited! If you have a dream, go for it! If you have a chance, do it!

This transformation actually started already 13 years ago, with Karolina's fateful discovery of a book, when we attended a local boat show. The cover displayed an 18 year old girl together with her sailing boat. Little did I know at that time what would follow. Karolina innocently held this book in her hands browsing through the first pages. She got deeper and deeper involved into the book, while I impatiently tried to re-establish communication with her, repeatedly reminding her of the real reason for our visit to the exhibition: The honey moon was to be discussed with some charter companies from Greece, following Karolina's excellent idea of a bare-boat charter, in the event I'd propose one day, which inevitably speeded up my thoughts about marriage, resulting in our engagement some months earlier. And now, she was standing there, reading a book! The title, "Maiden Voyage", didn't reveal much to me at that moment. But I can assure you, it did shortly thereafter, when I started to read it myself.

But dreams still don't make a light house. Who doesn't dream about blue water and palm beaches? To run away from what some call "career", others "rat-race", while many chase comfort and wealth, yet others seem to entirely live by habit?

How often had I not muttered something in the line of: "if we had the money....", "if we had the boat....", "if we had a business instead of being employed...", while later, "if we had been employed instead of owning a business...", "if we were doctors...", "if we were handy and practical....", "if we had the skill and knowledge....", if we didn't have children in school....", and many more excuses. There was an obvious risk that in due course we would continue with: "if our parents were not so old....", and finally maybe "If we were not too old....."

Despite our success we experience with our marine PR agency, these books continued to add fuel to our fire of dreams. At times, my daily routine life began to frighten me: I am going to work each morning, looking into a computer screen all day long, writing e-mails, talking on the telephone, producing endless Excel spreadsheets or Access databases.

Somehow, our ongoing noble evolution seemed to go backwards, with stressful days, missing the essence and meaning of life.

How often do we nowadays hold up, take a bearing, look for a distant light house, which could help us finding new exciting ways in life? Are we too busy to think?

Karolina and I have been working hard during many years now, all while reading books about others, who had found a different way of life. We were hence increasingly living in two worlds at the same time, one sitting in front of our computers, always reachable by e-mail and (cell-)phone, and the other world found in the books building up a parallel world in our phantasies.

Once a year, during our summer vacation, these two worlds met. Each autumn, it became increasingly harder to buckle me up in my office chair, ready for yet another year ashore.

The Boye-family onboard ARIEL IV gave us the idea of a measurement tape: "Cut the measurement tape for the length of your life, one cm for each year. Then, remove one or two cm from the middle of the tape and compare the total length with the previous, uncut version. It's still long enough, isn't it?! So why not take these one or two years in the middle of your life and fill them with adventure, joy and experience, kept as a treasure throughout your entire life?!", they write in their book. How true!

For every week that passed, we went on cutting off one centimeter, soon becoming a family Sunday evening ceremony. One cm shorter every Sunday. This suddenly visualized something really frightening: Week by week, time was passing by very quickly! Literally, we could follow every week passing by while our measurement tape was shrinking at a worrying speed! Was life flying past us?

It became high time to carry out something! This was, of course, still just a game with figures to see how it would feel to have a set date to change our life-stile completely for a limited period of time. But if we were to fulfil our dreams to take a break, it sure became visual that time was running short!

But we couldn't just "give up" everything, could we? What would we do upon our return? The lack of job was just one side of the coin, but how about the kids' school? What would our parents think? Could we, at all, afford it? And, our main concern, was it really wise to give up our business that has given us our financial fundament in life?

For sure, taking the decision is not easy. Would we, at all, find our place back in "real" society again after a sabbatical break, getting back on track in ordinary life?

Another sailing friend said once he'd rather not try the cruising lifestyle at all. He was afraid to love it so much, that he wouldn't be able to return into a 9 to 5 day again. "Better not to know..." was his statement, continuing to move papers from one pile to the other in his office.

Of course, paradise is no geographic position with longitudes and latitudes, so we will not find any perfect place on earth. It sure would be crowded, if it existed, anyway.

No, - Paradise and happiness has to be found inside ourselves and has very little to do with turquoise sea and palm beaches with white sand (but it does sound wonderful, nevertheless, and a better climate than we have here, for sure!). The treasures buried deep inside us, in our subconsciousness, are best found through tranquility and harmony, unfortunately a rarity in today's hectic life. Maybe we can find a less stressful life by cruising?

How often have we not been questioned why we want to give up a successful business, which has given us so much? The reason is that it has leveled out, now running smoothly, where day-to-day tasks are regarded as obstacles rather than challenges. Possible problems are moved away like stones as I walk along on my levelled “plateau”. It is not complicated to remove these obstacles, it's just hard work, almost a routine-job. The more stones I remove, the more stones seem to remain, while we all move faster and faster in life. The wonderful "kick" of pride and happiness, so well-known from the past, is becoming less frequent as vertical speed decreases while levelling out horizontally.

For me, happiness is obtained by solving meaningful problems, touching new land, utilizing unproven methods, gaining increasing knowledge. Know-how and experience is like tidying up in my brain, getting things in order.

The more work and commitment there is involved to solve a complex problem, strangely enough, the happier one gets when the set goal finally is reached, provided that the goal itself is not set unreachably far away, which, in turns, would leave a feeling of lost power. An absolute altitude without any climbing, however, does, at its best, makes you feel content and satisfied, but really happy? Walking horizontally on a high plateau is eventually fading out happiness: things are increasingly being taken for granted, you start to have demands, and even thankfulness over wealth and health begins to be neglected. Until you loose them one day.

Fine, I earn money by doing my work, which is being spent just as quickly. Maybe I should be content with that, considering it as the meaning of my life, but I am not. Where is the climbing part?

Am I reaching too high? Am I challenging my destiny? Fear comes over me when I understand that there are no mountains without valleys. Suddenly sorrow, disaster, distress and trouble are understood as the condition for happiness. Can maybe one not exist without the other?

This must mean that if we experience a deep crisis in life, a sorrow of a lost job or a lost friend, financial problems, illness or even death, that this is the condition for happiness. We should thus accept the negative points as a natural ingredient of life, taking it as a chance to grow and climb, how hard it ever seems to be!

May we obtain the courage to amend things in life that we can change, the unconcern to accept what we cannot influence, and the wisdom to tell the difference between the two.

Falling is no shame, while to remain lying is. I would add that also the fear for falling is equally dangerous. My idol is the bamboo, flexible in the wind, yet unbreakable even in a hurricane, always rising again after nature’s influence.

But the question remains: from where shall we take the courage to undertake a change in life?

Our brain consists of two halves. One half, hosting our intelligence, is constantly blocking anything unknown by comparing new impression with pictures stored in our subconsciousness. If anything new occurs, it pulls the emergency break by using its efficient weapon: Fear! The other half of our brain hosts our feelings and intensions, encouraging us to undertake a change and test new ways, be it in art, science or life itself. There is always an ongoing battle inside our brain between the two, and it is important to find a balance. Possibly, in today’s intelligent information society, comprehension, with its horror-weapon Fear, wins too often, blocking us from thinking laterally, while its original kind-hearted task, of course, is to prevent us from hazards, since the unknown may be dangerous. However, without the courage to sometimes overcome comprehension, there would be no evolution in humanity.

Rather than going out searching for happiness, as if it came through pure luck, I understand that we have to earn happiness by regarding problems as challenges, turning them into possibilities and work hard to allow them to grow to success. Adventuring is all about finding happiness by setting a meaningful and reachable goal, working yourself through your project, allowing for unexpected ingredients, staying focused on your solution, reaching a yet higher altitude in life.

Having said all this, I can clearly confess that we are also afraid, when we think of a cruising year, since we are not totally without comprehension... Fear is nagging constantly, questioning our decision, just as many of our friends and family do not understand our willingness to give up a comfortable life for a wet, rolling, uncertain and cramped living on a 40 fot boat.

When working on a project like a sabbatical family adventure, we feel we have our lives in our own hands, being able to influence the outcome of our project, by observing nature and weather and taking the right decisions, leading us safely to our goal.

We are hence not fleeing or running away from something, searching for paradise on a South Pacific island, when we now go cruising for a while. Instead, we want to search for challenges, experiencing the alteration between ups and downs, storms and calms, sea and land, becoming a better seaman.

Besides, don't we owe our children to show as much as possible of our wonderful world? Showing them the fact that things are being made differently in other countries, encouraging them to think laterally and innovativelly?

Finally, if we won’t like the cruising life-style, returning after a couple of months, well, then, at least, we know that this was nothing for us. We can erase these dreams out of our mind with good conscience. Remember: falling is no shame, as long as don't keep lying. This is still better than a life long wondering what cruising would be like, regretting that we never tried.

Without any knowledge of what we will be doing professionally upon our return, we find that the chance to experience extended time together with Jessica and Jonathan exploring the world together, is too interesting to be suspended.

The light house has finally shown us the way to adventuring as a valuable asset.