Sabbatical year or round the world: it's time to go!!!

We all dream about it...

Leaving for a year or for ten years! But is it really possible? What is it like? How do we do it? How do we finance it? And is it really worthwhile? How will the children live this adventure? These are among many questions asked by prospective ocean cruisers.

Changing your life: myth or reality?

In 30 years of this magazine, we have seen several generations of prospective cruisers pass through. There are those who ‘just wanted to take a break’, and those who wanted to change their lives completely. They left, they returned; some of them are still cruising around the world and still send us photos and reports. Often the magazine’s journalists have been these adventurers’ confidants, and our photo collection is full of their memories, immortalized in the most beautiful places in the world. From these thousands of experiences, lived differently, according to the people involved, we can draw one conclusion: leaving to live on a catamaran, alone, as a couple, or as a family, is really worthwhile... And that is certain!

Setting out to discover anchorages like this… Are you tempted?

How to go about it?

All our readers who have ‘taken the step’ are adamant: the hardest part is taking the decision to leave...the rest is just organization! Certain people have to prepare their boss, with tact and consideration, and take a sabbatical break. Others quite simply resign from their job. Finally, the luckiest sell their business, or take advantage of their retirement and leave free of all constraints, for a period which depends on the sum they have available...
Potential ocean cruisers are all different and have followed several paths. The only thing that is common to them all is their desire to leave as a family (or a couple, and even alone) to live differently. On the water, we find representatives of all the socio-professional classes. From a lawyer to a manager of a multinational company, via a dentist who has taken early retirement, as well as employees or even journalists from Multihulls World...
Next, to leave aboard a boat, you will need...a boat! If you are reading this magazine, the choice of a multihull is your solution... Stable, comfortable, faster than an equivalent monohull, offering good privacy for each member of the family, easy to maneuver: catamarans are THE ideal solution for long-term living aboard. The best proof is that we all know monohull fanatics who changed to several hulls, while the opposite is much, much rarer. Once you have tasted the joys of the catamaran, it is hard to go back to a narrow boat which heels, and whose draft excludes you from the best anchorages...
But in the multihull family, the choice is vast: the catamaran and trimaran markets offer a wide choice. New or second-hand, production cat or one-off, in plywood, sandwich, aluminum, fast or slow, able to carry a large or small load: there is something for all tastes and budgets (from 50,000 to more than 3 million ...