Family's Feat to Sail the Globe Comes Full Circle

AP ^ | May 22, 2004

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Family's Feat to Sail the Globe Comes Full Circle

By Dana Treen/Associated Press

May 22, 2004

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - There's a magical place Ellen Catlin has dreamed about for much of the past six years: a place so special she made it her computer screensaver. It's her bed - the one she crawled into last month after spending almost half her life at sea. At 13, she was ready to come home.

That's just what her family did, sailing in from the sea and into the Ortega River, closing the circle on a round-the-globe trip.

As the 52-foot sailboat Nighthawk slipped the last of what may be 40,000 miles beneath its hull, Ellen's mother, Janet Catlin, 49, has more of a sense of apprehension at the end of 10 years of planning and six more of sailing.

"It's scary coming back to the real world," she said as the boat moved beneath Jacksonville's bridges.

Buying a car, getting a job, selling the boat and resettling in Jacksonville are the closing acts of a plan that began with her husband, Randy Catlin, and carried into their marriage.

Even family planning had been a factor.

"We didn't fix a date until the kids were born and we knew we weren't going to have any more," he said. "You've got a very narrow window of opportunity to take kids." With children too young, there are worries about safety. Too old and they will outgrow the experience and become bored, he said.

While details of the future, beyond the need to work and Ellen and 16-year-old sister Katie's enrollment at Episcopal High School in the fall are vague, the past six years pour out of the Catlins.

There were pirates in the Indian Ocean, Bumblebee tuna in Singapore, cruise missiles crossing the horizon during a crossing of the Red Sea and the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, while the family was in Sydney, Australia.

"I cried for a week," Janet Catlin said. "It kind of strips away everything other than the fact that nothing is more important than your family and friends."

The Catlins tried to make sense of what was happening.

"We bought a holy Quran," Katie Catlin said. "We bought books just to try and understand."

After selling their house, cars and Randy Catlin's share in a family business, and after Janet quit her job as a medical business sales manager, the family left Jacksonville in November 1998. They traveled to the Bahamas and spent some time before crossing through the Panama Canal to the Galapagos Islands and on a 17-day passage to the Marquesas Islands, the longest single sail of the trip.

They passed Samoa, where Randy Catlin, now 53, had applied for a job when fresh out of law school. That and a job at a firm in the Virgin Islands were his only two stabs at entering the legal profession.

In New Zealand, the family stopped. They spent a year there in two six-month stints and spent another nine months in Australia. The girls went to school during that time and have been home-schooled otherwise.

Travel across the ocean is determined by seasonal weather, Randy Catlin said. In hurricane and cyclone season, boaters hole up, he said.

"There are always people who leave in the wrong season and encounter all kinds of problems," he said.

Pressing on even when the weather is right can also bring problems. In the Gulf of Aden, seasonal fishermen know when seasonal cruise boaters like the Catlins cross and are known to turn to piracy, hoping to victimize the unarmed.

The Catlins, traveling in a group of six boats to enhance safety, were almost attacked by two boats loaded with armed men. The attackers turned back, perhaps in part because of rough water, but later boarded and stripped two boats in the same area.

Below decks, Katie hid computers and other valuables. Usually, boaters leave a cheap laptop in sight and some small amount of money in the hope of satisfying thieves if they are boarded, he said.

"Everybody has a sacrificial laptop," he said.

Next, as the family traveled through the Red Sea, they watched cruise missiles brought in for retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"We really wanted to get through that area because of all the tension," Janet Catlin said.

In Singapore, there was a special store.

"It had nothing but American products," Catlin said. From Milano cookies to Jif Extra Crunchy peanut butter to her favorite Bumblebee tuna, she stocked up.

The family has been back in Jacksonville four times, twice for the deaths of Randy Catlin's parents. The last time was in September.

"It was a costly choice on a lot of levels," Janet Catlin said of the experience. "We were away from family and friends for a lot of years."