This is us! Sailing with Six!

We are the Fothergill family from Gold Coast, Australia.
Kris (Dad) and Shona (Mum) and our children, Bella, Finn, Archie and Pippi… and we seldom sit still…

We love to adventure together as a family. That is when we are most happy (or at times nervous, frustrated or just plain exhausted). We have been blessed to be able to pursue some of our dreams like having children, living by the seaside and owning a yacht (or 4), but the dreams keep coming and we continue to pursue them…

We are currently exploring the Sea of Cortez, Mexico onboard our 2012 Leopard 46 ‘Happy Days’.

We have hopes of heading to Costa Rica and Panama over the next few months and then deciding if we visit the Caribbean or the Pacific and possibly further around the globe so come aboard for the ride!

A bit more about us…

Kris and I were high school sweet hearts, we were married young at 20 & 21 and started a family in 2009. We have always loved adventuring and have sought out opportunities over the years with different holidays, (road trips, ski/snowboarding, camping, motorhome missions in NZ) but sailing didn’t really come on our radar until later on.

We have owned various boats over the years. Our favourite would be our 4m tinnie that would get us all over the Gold Coast waterways as well as offshore for the odd spear. However, in 2014 we broadened our horizons to sailing. Pippi was just three weeks old when we brought our first yacht aptly named ‘Love Handles’, a 23ft Hunter. It was a great way to cut our teeth in the sailing game. Head first into ‘learning the ropes’ with four small kids onboard for all of it. With only the very basics it was like camping, but on the water.

Then came a little upgrade but with all the mod-cons. Our 26ft Searle ‘Wakalina’. She was lovely! So well maintained and everything worked well. This time we had luxuries like a furling head sail, a chart plotter and a metho stove. We had heaps of fun spending long weekends sailing all over Redland Bay and up to Manly and Moreton Bay but there was something urging us on… Maybe it’s because the kids were growing so fast and its was getting tight sleeping onboard or maybe it’s because we dreamed of sailing further and for longer …whatever the case we were somewhat destined for a larger boat.

In 2017 we sold the family home, to some I’m sure it looked like ‘sell home, buy yacht’. However, this wasn’t really the case…. We just had itchy feet and were keen to mix things up; and perhaps challenge a few social norms at the same time. We had been subscribed to minimalist thinking for a while, so we gave away a whole lot of stuff, sold some of it and for the most part, binned the rest. From there the six of us moved into an old-school two bedroom unit, with some seriously cool ocean views; and a point break for a front yard. Anyway, I digress, back to yachts…

We sadly said goodbye to ‘Wakalina’ - the first people to look at her bought her, she went to a good home. We were now on the hunt for a yacht we could live on and sail to far-off places. In July 2017 we happened upon that boat right on our own doorstep here on the Gold Coast. A 51ft Dufour Gibsea, ‘Torea VI’, became our new home. Well kind of. We still had work commitments on the Gold Coast so we got ourselves a two bedroom duplex near the beach and lived part time between the unit and the yacht.

We started sailing ‘Torea VI’ in and around the Gold Coast and in July 2018 we decided to stretch her legs and went North. We headed up the coast in some lovely trade wind conditions to the Keppel Islands and the Capricorn Coast. We chose to leave ‘Torea VI’ at Keppel Bay Marina for a few months and drive back to sail and explore the area more. The plan was to bring her back to the Gold Coast in October when the northerlies start to flick again.

After spending the summer preparing the yacht and our business and storing away our worldly possessions that couldn’t fit on the boat we were ready for our first ocean crossing. In April 2019, we joined the Downunder Rally - Go East Rally (https://www.downunderrally.com/go-east-rally-about), threw the grandparents onboard and headed offshore to New Caledonia.

More to come…