Dion and Rachael Watchorn, inset, quit their jobs and sailed to Fiji.
Dion and Rachael Watchorn, inset, quit their jobs and sailed to Fiji.
A few years ago, Dion and Rachael Watchorn did not even know how to sail. Now they are living in their yacht after quitting their jobs and sailing to Fiji. They spoke to Samantha Motion about their new life and how it came about, as well as their motivations for not waiting until they were older to take the plunge.
An adventure-loving Mount Maunganui couple has quit their office jobs and sailed to Fiji to live on their yacht.
Now a few months into their new island-hopping life, Dion and Rachael Watchorn have no plans to return any time soon - as long as their savings hold out.
When the couple first started taking an interest in life on cruising yachts they had "no boat, no sailing experience and no money," Dion said.
They joined the Tauranga Yacht and Powerboat Club to see what yachting was about.
Rachael said in spite of their inexperience, the club's members welcomed them warmly and showed them the ropes.
"You can join the yacht club and learn to sail, and it doesn't need to cost a lot. That was quite a surprise," Rachael said.
They joined keeler yacht crews, racing in separate divisions - Rachael as part of an all-women team, Yeah The Girls, and Dion as a jib trimmer in a higher division.
They bought a mooring in Pilot Bay. "Everyone thought we were mad because we didn't have a boat," Dion said.
Maya is the 1989-built 12.5m (41ft) Bavaria Lagoon with two cabins and a galley.
In 2017, they married and in 2018 they "got lucky" and found Maya - the 1989-built 12.5m (41ft) Bavaria Lagoon they now call home.
It has two cabins with low headroom, a central galley and table with a small fridge. It has no freezer, washing machine, dishwater, generator, heater or air conditioner. They rarely have hot water.
"It's small and simple and that's how we want it," Rachael said.
"We had actually done some research and found out that the previous owners had sailed this boat from France to New Zealand over four years with two young children, so we thought well if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us," Dion said.
They had never sailed together, or even helmed a boat until they bought Maya home and set out on their first trip - Rachael nervous to even touch the wheel.
By late summer in 2021, however, they were circumnavigating the North Island.
Rachael and Dion Watchorn decided to chase the full-time "pirate life" after the second Covid lockdown.
"It was one year on from the first Covid lockdown, where we couldn't use the boat at all," Rachael said. "I thought that was quite symbolic - we said 'bugger that, we're going to go and do it while we can because we're not locked down."
It was the second Covid-19 lockdown (August 2021) that provided the jolt they needed to decide to chase the "pirate life", full-time.
The uncertainties of border closures made planning an overseas passage difficult, but in December Fiji announced it was reopening.
Rachael and Dion Watchorn spent years learning to sail.
He quit his job as a sales representative for a plumbing merchant to work full-time on readying the boat for the voyage.
This included upgrading the navigation and autopilot electronics - made stressful by global shipping issues - and a lot of work to ensure the motor would be reliable enough for long "blue water" passages.
Rachael finished up at her job at insurance mutual FMG at the end of March.
They took a "shakedown" trip offshore from Tauranga in April to test their equipment and systems, and in mid-May set off on the real deal with friends and family waving from the wharf.
Cruising in Fiji.
They had sailed the passage to Fiji once before as part of a bigger crew on someone else's yacht. But with just the pair of them on board, they had to do shifts overnight, swapping every three hours.
The passage took eight and a half days and they arrived in Fiji unscathed, their weather forecasting homework having paid off.
The journey will be the subject of their next video on a YouTube channel they have started for friends, family and anyone else interested in cruising.
Rachael said they had saved hard and sacrificed luxuries to have enough money set aside to be able to quit their jobs and take a long-term trip.
They have set themselves a tight budget of $20,000 a year to live off while cruising, in the hope they can stretch the tropical adventure out as long as possible.
"We're not going to bars all the time and drinking with all the other cruisers because we can't afford to," Dion said.
Dion and Rachael have been sailing from anchorage to anchorage in Fiji, spending their days reading, exploring, and out on the water as much as possible - wind-foiling, kitesurfing, free diving.
Rachael and Dion Watchorn love diving and spend as much time as they can on the water in Fiji.
In between, there are less glamourous tasks of life on a yacht: maintenance, cleaning, buying provisions (food, water, gas) and planning.
Their decision to take the trip mid-career, rather than later in life, boiled down to a simple principle: You never know what's around the corner, so why wait to follow your passions?
"We meet so many people, who we talk to about what we're doing, particularly back home and people say 'oh I wish I'd done something like that'," Rachael said.
"But life gets away from you and you maybe don't."
Rachael Watchorn's reading spot on board.
Good health, for example, could not be guaranteed.
"With kite surfing and free diving and all our sports that we love to do, I can't imagine doing it when I'm 65 and retired. My body is not getting any younger," Dion said.
Global trends also played a role: "Just with the world the way it is at the moment, with the wars and the Covid lockdowns.
"And you don't know what the weather systems are going to be like down the track. It's ever-changing at the moment."
The couple were still making plans for the next part of their journey but hoped to cruise to other Pacific countries including Vanuatu and New Caledonia - weather and pandemic allowing.
