Finding Mohini

On my first date with Nico, he told me about his years of military combat service, around-the-world travels, and high-altitude ice climbing exploits. He also mentioned (at length) his sailboat. The one he'd planned to live on but had lost at sea after just a few months on board. He told me he'd been rescued by helicopter and returned to Winnipeg with nothing but the t-shirt on his back and a few important documents in a dry-bag. He was currently working to save up enough cash to purchase another sailboat.

Nico was transparent about his goals and it would be fair to say that I knew from the get-go that life with this man would be full of adventure...and that saving up for a sailboat might be a reality in our future. I was uncertain how I felt about the prospect of life on the water but was intrigued by his confidence and wanderlust (not to mention his charmingly crooked grin). I agreed to a second date, and a third, and was delighted to discover that raising a Jewish family was also an integral part of Nico's dreams--as it was of mine. We were engaged 9 months after meeting and married the following spring.

Though no stranger to adventures myself (I'd been a park ranger and outdoor educator and done my share of traveling before becoming a teacher), my ideas about uprooting our lives to circumnavigate the globe were limited, for the moment, to rather foggy future plans. I was teaching full-time on a permanent contract, Nico had a steady contracting job as a low voltage technician, and we got pregnant right away. I knew Nico felt somewhat trapped in a suburban, nine-to-five box, but I figured we'd settle into the next several years in our two-story Winnipeg home and maybe think about sailing and full-time adventure down the road. Perhaps a sabbatical year once the kids were older?

Then Covid hit. For us, it was a brutal awakening and an unexpected catalyst for change. In a whirlwind decision in January of 2021, we sold our house, quit our jobs, packed our Chevy Traverse with as many Rubbermaid bins as it could hold, and drove south with our two kids (4-year-old Aaron and 18-month old Yael), uncertain where we were going or how the journey would unfold along the way. It was the most devastating and the most rewarding decision we have ever made.

I could tell you about the 18 months we spent living in a small beach town in the Mexican state of Nayarit, but the real start of our search for a sailboat was triggered when we realized that we wanted to move forward once again. By this time we were located on the coast and, for many intersecting reasons, it seemed the universe was showing us that this was the perfect moment to finally realize Nico's (and now also my) dream of setting sail.

One of my non-negotiables about the prospect of boat life was that our family needed a catamaran. I was adamantly against the idea of trying to live full-time on a monohull, and so began the search for the right sailing vessel. After weeks of looking and some invaluable help from a broker in Florida, we fell in love with Mohini, a 2005. 40-foot Island Spirit. She had good bones, as they say--3 cabins, two heads, a walk-in shower, a full and functional kitchen, a generous cockpit, and room for the kids to lie on their stomachs on the floor in the main salon. She was well outfitted for off-grid cruising, had an excellent reputation for seaworthiness, even in rough conditions, and was within our price range. Some updates and work would be necessary, no doubt, but Nico and I felt up for the project.

Over the summer, Nico sailed Mohini from the Caribbean Island of Grenada, where we had remotely purchased her, to the Panama Canal. Then, for a variety of different logistical and personal reasons, we decided to hire a captain to bring her the rest of the way to Puerto Vallarta. Mohini was delivered to Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta in July of 2023, and in August our whole family finally met our new boat and home for the first time.

Here we are on our very first day on Mohini:

We were elated, but we also knew there was a lot of work to be done.

Learn more about Mohini's transformation in our blog post: Making Mohini Home.