The question is the most common question that arrives at the Naora inbox from the person who has found the programme and who is close to making the decision but who wants the honest answer from the people who have done it before committing. Is a sailing circumnavigation worth it?
Here are eleven honest answers from the people who have been through the offshore sailing passage in the Naora context on our previous yachts. The answers are composite accounts built from the real responses of the members and crew who have been asked this question. They are as honest as I can make them.
Eleven Honest Answers
| Person | What they expected | What they found | Would they do it again? |
|---|---|---|---|
| CEO, 32, Amsterdam | A beautiful sailing holiday | The most disorienting and the most clarifying three weeks of the last decade | Already booked the next leg |
| Founder post-exit, 48, London | The adventure that the exit reward justified | The question of what the next decade is for, answered | Yes, without hesitation |
| Partner, law firm, 55, Singapore | The sailing experience she had always deferred | The community she had been looking for without knowing where to look | Yes, and brought her partner on the next leg |
| Entrepreneur, 44, Dubai | The beautiful destination delivered by sailing | The twenty-two days of the Atlantic being the point, not the Barbados arrival | Yes, and now an Ocean Explorer member |
| CFO, 50, São Paulo | The premium offshore experience the membership described | Exactly that, plus the offshore reference that the description did not fully capture | Yes |
| First-time sailor, 37, Sydney | Uncertainty about whether she could manage it | She could manage it. Day three confirmed this. | Yes, the uncertainty was the point |
| Journalist, 41, New York | The story about the programme | The programme becoming the story he did not expect to be in | Yes, and the article wrote itself |
| Board member, 58, Zurich | The sailing holiday that the corporate life had been preventing for twenty years | The twenty years of the prevention was the preparation for the three weeks of the crossing | Yes, and the timing was exactly right |
| Medical professional, 40, Hong Kong | The physical challenge and the offshore adventure | The physical challenge and the mental quiet that the physical challenge made possible | Yes |
The honest answer to the question in the article title: yes, with the specific qualification that the worth is not the worth of the holiday that was worth the cost. It is the worth of the offshore reference that the circumnavigation produced in the person who made it and that the person who did not make it cannot fully understand from the description of it.
The conversation is the beginning of the understanding. The leg is the rest of it.
