This was 2022
Until I started reflecting on it, I was under the impression that 2022 was a year we didn’t do much. Then it occurred to me that I simply never got the time to reflect on it because we were swamped dealing with some of our most chaotic years ever.
So with no further due, here comes (in a condensed form) a summary of the past 12 months.
January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
January 2022: Prepping for Ryan’s solo crossing (Lanzarote / Paris)
Marina Rubicon in Lanzarote
Ryan and I spent January between Lanzarote and Paris to prepare for the challenge he had set for himself: a solo crossing of the Atlantic between Lanzarote in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean.
We had just started working with Bright Trip and Michelle to write our “Sailing the World” course, I was busy with a consultancy mission that included several online workshops and we were generally busy with a lot of work, so this felt like the right timing. I was going to stay in Paris and work while Ryan would be taking the boat to the Caribbean, where I would join him in mid-February.
This is also when we took the pictures of the T-Shirts in the Polar Seal’s shop!
Spoilers: this is not what happened.
Ryan departed on January 25th, 2022, and already on January 26th, we were already dealing with a situation that nothing can prepare you for.
February 2022: Ryan’s solo crossing (Paris / Cape Verde)
There are events that mark you forever, and that’s how February started.
Two days after his departure from Lanzarote, Ryan was called by the Spanish Coast Guards to alter course and go assist with the rescue of a migrant raft that had drifted offshore, South of Lanzarote.
The event wrecked Ryan emotionally, and the rest of the month was spent questioning if he should continue or not. Eventually, after a 3 weeks breaks in Cape Verde, Ryan continued his route West.
I flew to Antigua at the end of February, where I spent some time onboard Into the Mystic, a beautiful Discovery 50 catamaran.
March 2022: Making landfall (Antigua)
In the aftermath of Ryan’s tumultuous crossing I learned that being shore support can be just as stressful (if not more) than being onboard the boat, and when he made landfall in Antigua, we were both ready for some serious R&R (like… A LOT of it).
We parked Polar Seal in Jolly Harbor, and enjoyed sailing OPB (Other People’s Boats) on our friend’s boat “Into the Mystic”.
We tried going to Barbuda together…. and did not make it. Though we had plenty of adventures including going to a cricket game, fabulous drinks on desert beaches, finding out that Ryan gets seasick on catamarans, tearing Into the Mystic’s mainsail, and saving our friend’s catamaran from wrecking on the reef after its anchor chain snapped.
March is also when after 9 months of waiting for a decision on my green card application, we decided to “sue the government” and started to file a mandamus action against USCIS. A couple of weeks later, we got a positive decision on my case and could move forward to the next steps (plural).
April 2022: Cruising again (Antigua/Barbuda)
Princess Diana Beach in Barbdua
Our friend on Inta the Mystic eventually made their way South again, and we were left alone in Jolly Harbor.
In April, we were got seriously tied to the dock because of work. Ryan was starting a new round of capital funding for Dakota Lithium, and I was hard at work on the script of our Bright trip course while holding a series of e-learning workshops for my consultancy client. Monday through Sunday, 7AM until late at night, we were in front of our laptops making sure to not miss deadlines.
We took our time at the dock to tackle some long-awaited upgrades to Polar Seal and had some teak installed on the cockpit table as well as brand-new upholstery made for our boat’s interior.
The sheer amount of work we had on our shoulders made it hard for us to leave the dock. But a couple of friends we made in Jolly Harbor convinced us to join them in Barbuda, and between weather windows and holes in the schedules, the stars aligned for us to go spend a couple of days on this beautiful island.
This trip to Barbuda was our only day sail/cruising/island hopping of the year, and I keep amazing memories of bonfires with friends, crystal clear blue waters and wild horses on the beach, and… losing all of my camera equipment in a dinghy accident because the waves crashing on the beach are MASSIVE ROLLERS.
Thanks to Ryan’s family background in insurance, we were well insured and could replace all of it.
May 2022: Shooting “Sailing the World” (Antigua)
Flying the drone with our course director David
If getting to the point where we could film our Bright Trip course was a project in itself, filming it was another one. We had one week to shoot the 400 pages of script that Michelle and I had written in the last 4 months, right before we were due to sail North to Bermuda because May is also the start of hurricane season!
We rushed to fine-tune the script and prep the boat to be filmed from all angles and spent the subsequent 8 days filming from dawn to dusk.
We were really excited to have David get a great experience of filming in an exotic location, but he ended up spending his time filming onboard in the worst of Caribbean heat and humidity (which isn’t fun when you cannot open the hatches because of the noise, and the camera overheats at least once per take) and staying at the Jolly Castle, which looks like a Caribbean version of the Disney “Tower of Terror”, only… you actually have to stay there.
We eventually managed to get him to the beach once, and it still was so that we could get some drone shots.
Thankfully, the result was worth all the efforts we put into it :)
A couple of days later, we were casting off the lines and heading on a 1000 nautical miles passage North, towards Bermuda.
June 2022: Tropical storm Alex (Bermuda)
40 knots on anchor for 24 hours will make for interesting hair do’s.
It took us 7 days to sail from Antigua to Bermuda, and somewhere in the middle, the forecast started showing signs of a hurricane passing through Bermuda.
Sometimes, forecasts change for the better, but this time, they changed for the worse. By the time we arrived in Bermuda, we had two days to prepare for sustaining a hurricane on anchor with our friends James from Sailing Zingaro and Jordan and Desiree from Sailing Atticus.
The day Alex hit Bermuda was not the most fun we’ve ever had, but all of us made it unscathed, though all with challenges.
When Alex had passed, we waved goodbye to both James, Jordan, and Desiree who headed to the Azores, before prepping our own passage North to Nova Scotia.
July 2022: It gets complicated… (Bermuda / Nova Scotia)
We headed towards Nova Scotia in early July, excited to finally take Polar Seal to Canada after 2 years of waiting for it, but fate had other plans for us. Unfortunately after 12 hours at sea, our crew tested positive for covid.
This was around the time that SV Escape, a 66-foot CNB yacht who had been on anchor next to us during tropical storm Alex, sustained a storm en route to Nova Scotia that claimed the lives of her owners.
We were ourselves expecting bad weather a few days later and decided that the passage wasn’t worth the risk. Within a few moments of our crew testing positive for covid, we decided to turn back to Bermuda.
We spent about a week in quarantine onboard, at the end of which we all started to lose our minds. By the time we could go check back into Bermuda and go to shore again, it was too late in the season for us to sail to Nova Scotia.
This threw a serious monkey wrench in our plans, as we were now in the middle of the hurricane belt with no proper insurance and nowhere to go. Besides, Ryan’s parents were waiting for us in Nova Scotia for a family vacation, and we had just received the news that my green card was about to get finalized.
We also needed to finish filming our Bright Trip course, which we initially intended on doing in Saint John, Nova Scotia.
So we made the decision to rush our course director David to Bermuda, then immediately leave the boat in Hamilton while we would fly to Nova Scotia to meet with Ryan’s family. Ryan would then come back to Polar Seal and sail her to the US, while I would fly to Europe until my green card would be approved.
I left the boat in mid-July, and we thought I would be back on board in early September. We were wrong. But we did eventually make it to Nova Scotia, and it was amazing!!!
When our family vacation was over, we headed towards Hamilton near Toronto, where we finally met our long-time internet friends Ben and Steve. Ben, Steve, and Ryan surprised me with a weekend trip to Niagara falls, where I made the Niagara falls go bright pink for a little while.
August 2022: The wait goes on (Canada / Bermuda / Paris / USA)
Le Sacré Coeur in Montmartre, Paris.
I was still crashing at Ben and Steve’s in Hamilton when we received the news that my green card interview, which was going to take place in Stockholm, wouldn’t happen until the end of September. This meant that I would need to stay in Europe for almost three months instead of one.
Now, staying in Paris is never “an effort”. I love to reconnect with the city and meet up with my family. But the prospect of having to wait until mid-October to get back to Polar Seal and live in my suitcases between a Parisian summer (hot) and a Swedish fall (cold) when I had already been living on and off the boat since the beginning of the year, felt daunting.
But on August 14th, while I was in Paris a woman in North Carolina messaged me that she was having a litter of puppies, one of whom I could adopt. We named that puppy Barnacle, and she became my silver lining through the final stages of my green card.
Meanwhile, Ryan and crew Steve and David had a hard passage between Bermuda and Annapolis, dodging thunderstorms while struggling to keep the sails up in this year’s most windless passage.
September 2022: Green card approval (Sweden)
Anyone who’s gone through a green card application process will tell you that the last month is the most intense, and September did not disappoint.
Between the medical exam that every applicant needs to undergo several weeks before the interview, gathering the documents that need to be brought to the interview, and preparing for all eventualities (including: what do we do if I get denied?)
Ryan joined me in Stockholm where we spent the full month finalizing our visa process, not without stress. As you probably already know, the outcome of my green card application was positive, albeit very expensive and emotionally taxing.
I published the video above on our Patreon page a few months ago, the day after my interview.
October 2022: Puppy parents! (Sweden / maryland)
My first sail in the United States ever!
As soon as my green card was approved, the burden of our immigration process and what it meant in terms of where we could be and when disappeared, and only then did I measure how incredibly overwhelming it had been since being denied a tourist visa in 2019.
We flew to the United States as soon as I got my passport back from the US Embassy in Sweden, moving our flight to arrive earlier than planned.
We were less than a week away from the Annapolis Boat Show, and had a few press meets in the days leading to the show (including a TV interview in Washington DC) while I had to re-settle onboard after over two months of absence.
October was a whirlwind, and on the night the Annapolis Boat Show was over, we drove 7 hours down to North Carolina to pick up Barnacle. When we returned back to the boat, we had a new furry crew member!
And while Barnacle is definitely the best thing that happened this year, she came with a lot of extra work. Puppies are time commitments!
November 2022: Winterizing Polar Seal (Annapolis)
Introducing Barnacle to everything boat life
We only had a few weeks onboard to get Barnacle used to life onboard and expose her to everything boat before it was time to move out of Polar Seal for the winter, winterize the boat and fly out to Iowa where we are currently spending the winter.
While it was starting to get freezing cold onboard, I loved the atmosphere in Herrington Harbor South, and we got the chance to make a lot of new friends in the Annapolis area.
In the meantime, we also started to wrap up all of our 2022 professional projects, including our “Sailing the World” course, whose post-production process brought more challenges than we saw coming. In order to ensure that the course would keep the highest production value possible, we decided to push the launch of the course to the month of December.
After spending a few days at the house of our good friends Jen and Chad, the three of us boarded a plane from Baltimore to Des Moines via Minneapolis, for what was Barnacle’s very first airplane ride.
Well in Des Moines, we had an amazing time reconnecting with our Iowa family, and enjoying our first Thanksgiving celebration together since 2018.
December 2022: I need a break (Iowa)
If you have read this whole thing, you may feel just as exhausted as I am at the moment :p
I don’t know where I got the impression that we didn’t do much in 2022. I think a part of me pushed the memories of my green card’s struggles at the very back of my mind in a drawer that I never want to open again, and that essentially removed the most part of the year, hahaha :D
Although we achieved a ton and reached some pretty big milestones, this past year came with some pretty low lows. I will not lie, I have been close to having a mental breakdown several times in 2022. Looking back, the only reason I am able to only feel “exhausted” right now is because we had the support of our friends, old and new, our family, and our community.
If you know me, you know that I am not one to ask for help. This year, I have been particularly touched by the kindness of strangers, who ended up becoming friends.
In particular, I think about Jodi and Simon on SV Into the Mystic, Hilde and David for giving me the consultancy job I love, Jodi and Jennifer for the fun times all over the Atlantic, Magnus, Beatrice, Ola, and the Swedish team we met in Barbuda for becoming some of our VERY FEW Swedish sailing friends (hahaha :D), Julia, Chris and family for a great celebration of Ryan’s 40st birthday, Beau and Gael for their support in Bermuda, Philippa and James (we think about you all the time), Tim and Nina (this chicken is still my favorite thing!!!), Ben and Steve for the incredible birthday celebration in Niagara falls, Captain Jayne (we will never forget that Tesla ride from National to Dulles), Greg and Kristin for introducing us to the best of Annapolis, Adriana for coming to Annapolis and soon Miami (I’m excited!), Sam and Sydney for FINALLY MEETING! :D, Kris and Justin for throwing us a puppy shower, Matt and Jessica who inspired us to get into sailing and are just as cool in person as they were in the article that changed our lives, Steve, who took the BEST care of Monique while I was stuck in Europe, Doug and Liz for the fantastic meatballs and great discussions, Jen and Chad for adopting us (we miss you!), John and Nancy for being the coolest people we now know (still John, still…), Jill from Marmara Imports for offering Barnacle her favorite blanket, and all the Steves and Davids who crewed or did not crew onboard Polar Seal this year. There are many of you, and you are all fantastic.
Also to all the wonderful people we work with, our editor Nathan and his wife Jess (who created this website!), Steffie who is behind Ryan’s T-shirts designs, Erin from Roam Generation (need PR? She’s the BEST), David, Katie, Brenna, Claire, and the entire Bright Trip team, Raymarine, BRNKL, Beneteau, Takacat, SeaWater Pro, Precision Sails, Dakota Lithium…. We can’t wait to do more together.
Biggest thank you to Nostalgia Chocolate who supplied us with the best chocolate in the whole world when we were at our lowest point (I am not joking you guys, it is THE BEST CHOCOLATE I have ever had in my life). Because when you are at your lowest, nothing replaces amazing chocolate.
Honestly, the list of people we are lucky to have in our lives is so big, I am already having anxiety about all the names I have not mentioned :)
We are really happy to be in Des Moines right now, even though we weathered a blizzard right before Christmas (very easy when you are in the safety of a house near the fireplace) and it is cold and somewhat gloomy in the Midwest.
In Iowa, we are reconnecting with what we love the most on land: working out at our favorite gym, Cratos, rock climbing, Escape rooms, spending LOTS of time with family (sometimes even a little too much), and our new favorite: training Barnacle to be the most awesome dog at the Zoom Room in West Des Moines (it is truly the best).
We finally launched part 1 of “Sailing the World” a couple of weeks ago, and the reception has been amazing. We are very excited to continue to produce part 2 and part 3 which will come out in 2023, and we hope you enjoy them too.
We already have a lot planned for 2023, and we can't wait to share those plans with you. But this blog post already took me an entire day to write, so I’ll keep them for another time ;)
In the meantime, Ryan and I would like to wish you the best year ever!!!
While I hope that 2023 will only bring you tons of fun, adventures, and happiness. But I also wish you resilience, the support of your community, and a safe space to bitch when you need it, if you face hardships this year.
Because at the end of the day, I think that having a community around us and the tools to face those hardships is really what ends up making us happy.
So thank you all for another great year, and cheers to new horizons in 2023!!!
