The Crew

We’re Viviane and Scott. We’re in our mid-forties and we left San Francisco and our jobs in November 2015 to go cruising aboard Juniper, a 1999 Pacific Seacraft 40 sailboat.

Scott’s from San Francisco and has been sailing since 2008. When he learned about cruising, he knew it was something he wanted to do. Scott shared his passion to go cruising with Viviane, who thought cruising was something you do on Royal Caribbean. After correcting that misconception, sharing some blogs and books, and more importantly, getting her on the water, cruising seemed like a worthwhile adventure. In 2013, we bought Juniper, and in 2015, Scott left the company he had founded to pursue his dream.

Viviane moved to San Francisco in 2012 from New York and her first time on a sailboat was in San Francisco Bay. She was pretty terrified at first, to be honest. Sailing classes, experience, and time made sailing fun. Prior to cruising, she spent sixteen years working on the web, eight of them focused on online communities. She’s happy that she can still contribute to building community via HAM on Amigo and Sonrisa Net.

When we began our sailing adventure in 2015, we brought along our cat, Sam, who bravely became a sailing kitty. Sam passed away in April of 2018 at 15 years old. Sam loved smelling the salty air, sleeping in a sunny spot, and being a sailing kitty.  Sam was a good kitty, an outstanding crew member, and he’ll be sorely missed.

We left San Francisco in 2015 and our only plan was to go to Mexico and “see how it goes.” We’ve been here ever since, enjoying exploring what Mexico has to offer, which is a lot. Our longer term plans likely involve going to French Polynesia and beyond but our ultimate goal is to sail until “it’s no longer fun”.

4 thoughts on “The Crew

  1. I am new to boating, but will be buying a motor yacht in March 2018 and moor full time in Ventura. You guys are awesome and your adventure I have read every wood and know your journey is and was amazing. I am older now and single, but selling my home and going for the life on the water with maybe a few local trips where I can Captain my own boat. How difficult is it to journey from Ventura up to Santa Barbara and back,,my daughter who lives there will learn and help me navigate, of course after numerous lessons and maybe even a hired captain on board. Your tale is inspiring, and your story is so well written. I do have some experience with a smaller boat, and flew airplanes many years ago, but my sense of survival is much higher as i have grown older. Would love your insight as to the difficulty in short voyages, but I have a lot of respect for mother nature,,she tried to kill me a few times when flying, so I never take even a short cruise for granted.
    again, you guys are sick( my 24 year old says that means super cool, haha) Claire

    1. Hi Claire,

      Once you’re comfortable sailing and navigating with your own boat the trip from Santa Barbara to Ventura (or back) is super easy. It’s just 24 miles each way. It was one of our more pleasant day passages and we mention a little bit about it in our Ventura blog post.

      Best of luck and have fun!

      -Scott

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