Year in Review

YEAR IN REVIEW. 2019—and what impossible dreams came true once, on 21 November, we decided to turn against every law of logic, every established sailing route, and all our terrible fears. Why is it customary to take stock of the year at the end of it? What is wrong with, say, 3 January? The country has already emerged from its festive coma and rediscovered its love of reading. And here we are too 🙂 2019 was the most incredible year of our lives There have been many important years, but never one like this. The tail end of 2018 also squeezed into this incredible adventure, starting on 21 November—the day the captain and I decided to turn towards the 37th parallel . We are certain that we are the only modern sailing vessel in the world to have followed in the wake of Captain Grant. So our 2018 year in review was quite something too! 2019 began in the most exotic way possible: we welcomed it farther from any land than anyone else in the world, at the oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility (Point Nemo), on day 31 of a non-stop passage during which, for 54 consecutive days, the only other people we saw were in films on a monitor. On 19 January, I cried. Because for the previous 34 years, I had thought that such a day would never come in my life. Meanwhile, Lady Mary was rounding the Everest of the seas—Cape Horn—for the first time. How many times had I read about it in my favourite books! How many times in the diaries of heroic sailors. Tears of piercing happiness ran down my cheeks, just as they had a month earlier—at the coordinates 37°11′S, 153°W , exactly as in Jules Verne... We fulfilled an impossible dream. Thank you for that, 2019! Antarctica under sail On 21 February, without telling anyone, we headed south across the Drake Passage—towards the Antarctic continent . And on 16 March, we returned from Antarctica—the first family with children in Russian history to do so. On 9 May, we met Fedor Konyukhov at Cape Horn. And then we drank tea together in our saloon—another “impossible” story :).... Six months in Patagonia and almost a month in Antarctica brought us a record number of encounters with fascinating, strong-spirited people. And here are the year’s climatic results: we honestly spent the Russian summer wintering by the world’s southernmost inhabited land—Tierra del Fuego, at 55 degrees south latitude. On 31 August, we navigated the exceptionally challenging Strait of Magellan and entered the South Atlantic Ocean . In early September, the crew came through with flying colours in the fiercest three-day storm we had ever experienced, with winds of up to 62 knots. Lesser storms battered Lady Mary for almost the entire passage from southern Patagonia to South Africa . We were unable to go ashore, but we did manage to anchor off the world’s most remote island, Tristan da Cunha, in an area uncharted on the maps. In 2019, we grew from a voyage into a unique expedition of global significance. Our young sailor became the youngest Russian sailor to round Cape Horn and sail to Antarctica. We completed two two-month non-stop passages through the Southern Ocean and came together as a formidable team. And on 21 October, we berthed in the Port of Cape Town , where for three months now we have been forming firm friendships with the wonderful Russian-speaking community. Here we met several such kindred spirits that it feels as though we have known them all our lives. In November and December, as the year drew to a close, we twice rounded the second Great Cape—the Cape of Good Hope. Cape of Good Hope Of course, it was not as challenging a passage as Cape Horn, but we did it all the same :). And we will do it again in two weeks. This time in “full-on” mode. Our year in the press 🙂 Once again, we were nominated and made it to the final of the National Yachtsman of the Year Award . Over the past year, we appeared three times on Channel One and once on RIA Novosti. Match TV featured us twice, and another dozen publications wrote about us. Our films are shown on Ocean TV . We—or rather, I :)—became a regular contributor to the country’s leading sailing magazine, Yacht Russia . Over the past year, we began filling our YouTube channel and released 30 films and videos. Two of our pieces—the video Cape Horn by Yacht with Children and the feature Tristan da Cunha: 500 Years of Solitude —reached the final of the My Planet National Award. In 2019, we stopped being afraid to go where no one else goes ( How to Round Cape Horn: A Philosophy of Growth ). And our daughter and crew member, @Travely_ana , not only came of age as the year drew to a close, but also earned her first skipper’s licence. It was the most incredible year on our record. And do you know what we realised? NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! You simply have to move towards your goal in small steps. And if you stop being afraid to do something unconventional, if you come to terms with your own fear and start calculating the risks, if you make a plan and take the first step, you will reach places you were once afraid even to dream of. And your own year in review will blow your mind :). But you have to make the journey yourself. It will be hard. But you will manage if you truly want to. Do you know why we managed to do all this? Because we had tremendous support from shore. Your support! . Thank you! Over the past year, we gained our first sponsors: The company MVS Telecom (Iridium), which is why you can see our track under the “Route” tab. The Geographical School Named After the All-Praised Apostle Andrew the First-Called. Thanks to them, she gets the magic kick she needs not to slack off and to keep studying. And our young sailor also has this project about beavers and Native Americans , which she did for the School. 2019 brought us several wonderful friends whom we still have not met in real life :). Sergey Yakubenko is handling matters with the Russian Book of Records . And we are aiming for the record as the southernmost circumnavigation completed under sail by a single family with children. That same year, 2019, also brought the first substantial contributions to the expedition budget from like-minded people we had never met in real life. And the first members of our shore team—a support group that sends us comments and letters while we are at sea, helps keep the website from collapsing under the load, liaises with the Russian Book of Records... A huge thank-you to all of you for contributing to the ship’s fund via paypal.me/TravelyFamily and Yasobe.ru/na/travelyfamily ! Our heartfelt thanks to Yulia N., Alexander Z., Stepan L., another Alexander Z., and Erwin Sc.! We are delighted that you too are now part of our round-the-world expedition via the Great Capes and Antarctica with children . Enormous thanks to Vasily Yuryevich Senatorov for his substantial contribution to the expedition, the motivation to take action, and a new 100-metre anchor chain! Friends, together we will achieve the impossible—that is certain! Cape Horn . Gifts from Father Frost “Where should we send gifts?” our viewers and readers ask us :). Thank you, friends! Because we will soon be setting out into the southern Indian Ocean, we can only accept your gifts via paypal.me/TravelyFamily and Yasobe.ru/na/travelyfamily . Friends, tell us in the comments what made 2019 memorable for you. Your year in review does not have to look anything like ours. What matters is that everyone sets their own goals. We wish you a great and genuine dream, and the strength to make it come true! Thank you for being with us! We value every one of you. Sending you a big hug from the Cape of Good Hope. Thank you for everything, 2019! Yours, Andrey, Marina, Nastya, Lada, and Lady Mary!