HOME
Going Places

Northern States



Southern States



The Bahamas

The plan is launched

The Hakuna Matata
On September 17, 1995 Lindsay McRory and a group of friends set sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, heading for Norfolk, Virginia. But it wasn't the usual beer-buddy excursion.

While his young family waited in Canada, Lindsay was sailing a shakedown cruise, making sure the Hakuna Matata was ready for the adventure of his--and his family's--lifetime.

On November 1, the McRorys were reunited with the 42-foot Whitby sailboat in Virginia. They've sold or stored most of their worldly possessions and packed just their daily essentials. Together they have set off on a sailing voyage with a fuzzy itinerary. They'll probably head south and west at first. From there, the details fade away.

There is one crystal-clear objective: experience the world from a deck-top perspective.

Lindsay and Denise McRory will provide their children--6-year-old daughter Kita and 4-year-old son Wesley--with a unique global classroom. The long passages and foreign ports will provide plenty of life experiences for the whole family. But these lessons will be supplemented with another global tool: the Internet and World Wide Web, serving up all known things on a laptop.

From this page, you will share their experiences through the frequent dispatches they'll file from the boat, via a satellite link.

The McRorys hope to head south through the intercoastal waterway as hurricane season subsides this fall, but well before the bitter winter storms of the north Atlantic.

Many things will change, as Lindsay noted in a recent letter: "For us, it's a seriously alternative lifestyle: no more traffic, offices, suits, or beers with the boys. :-( And we will be educating our kids on the boat using correspondence and Internet, so we will not worry much about lessons in things other than the three Rs."

Lindsay, an engineer and partner with a Canadian firm (GSA Consulting Group), will continue working aboard the Hakuna Matata. Like their hopes of teaching from the high seas, this plan to work from the boat has its unique twists, as he described in another note:

"Last summer I worked from our boat for two months. I did feel a little guilty at times. After one particularly great passage, we tossed the hook in a secluded cove at sunset, planted the computer firmly on my lap, performed a system audit on a computer 4,000 miles away, transmitted the results, and passed on some follow-up to my concrete-encased workmates in another city."





Copyright © 1996 Starwave Corporation.