There are things we can guarantee and things we cannot, and the honest description of the difference is the most useful thing the Naora programme can give the member who is deciding whether to commit. Most offshore sailing operations avoid this conversation because the things they cannot guarantee include the weather and the sea state and the specific wildlife encounter and the other elements that the offshore experience is most associated with in the popular imagination.
We do not avoid this conversation. We have it directly.
What we cannot guarantee: the weather on any specific day of any specific leg. The sea state of any specific passage. The presence of the whale shark or the manta ray or the humpback whale or any specific marine species at the location the route visits at the time the leg is there.
The specific anchorage the boat uses on any given night, because the anchorage is the captain’s judgment applied to the conditions the day produced rather than a fixed itinerary that the day is required to deliver. The sunrise on the morning you most want to see it. The ocean does not take bookings.
What We Do Guarantee
The safety standards of the professionally operated offshore vessel, maintained to the highest applicable standard for the full duration of the five-year circumnavigation. The quality of the crew: Sven’s offshore experience, Ludo’s seamanship, Richard’s cooking. This is the constant that the variable of the ocean’s behaviour operates against. The crew does not change with the conditions. The standards do not drop when the conditions are difficult.
The quality of the experience in the conditions the ocean provides is the quality that the crew can produce from those conditions, which is consistently higher than the quality the same conditions would produce without the specific expertise of the people who are managing them.
The food: Richard guarantees the meal. We guarantee this for every leg the Naora programme runs.
The community: we guarantee that the selection process produces the group of people that the offshore experience works best with, the curious, the willing, the people who are present in the experience rather than performing it. The personal guidance from the first conversation to the last anchorage.
The Circle membership and everything it provides. The specific quality of the offshore sailing life in the locations the route reaches, in the conditions the ocean provides, with the crew and the members and the boat and the route that the Naora programme has assembled for this purpose.
This is what we guarantee. The ocean guarantees the rest.
