Hi! We are Karinate and Karl, sailors living and voyaging aboard our sailboat, Otaria, with our dog Desi. We met on a boat in 2017 when we were first learning to sail and quickly became friends, crewmates, and then partners working toward the dream of sailing the world on our own vessel. Our first date was a fire on the beach after working on a friend’s boat and our second date was five days crewing on a sailboat from Vancouver, BC back to Portland. Sailing brought us together and has been our shared passion ever since. That summer, we crewed on two ocean trips, and by the end of the summer, we bought our first boat, a 1976 Catalina 22.  

Over the next two years, we learned to sail on the Columbia River and worked in the boatyard doing a total refit of our Catalina. Throughout that time we were planning and working towards our bigger dream. We went to boat shows and seminars, walked docks, and went aboard every boat we could. We read books, watched YouTube videos, and picked the brains of all the sailors we met. In 2019, we went to look at a boat that had been at the top of our list: an Island Packet 40. We had no intentions of buying yet, but as soon as we stepped aboard, we knew she was the perfect boat for us. We decided to trade our separate mortgage and rent payments for a boat loan and marina fees, and we moved in together aboard our beautiful new vessel. We named her Otaria which means “love one another” in Nembe, my father’s native language. 

During our first year living aboard, we weathered the COVID-19 pandemic and learned early an important lesson for cruising: how to live together peacefully in a small space when there is nowhere else to go. We even made our space a little smaller (and a lot more fun) when we adopted our dog Desmond. We lived on our boat in Portland for three and a half years. During that time, we sailed up and down the Columbia and Willamette rivers, logged hundreds of nautical miles, and hosted many guests for sunset sails, overnight trips, and the Christmas Ships parade every winter.  In the summer of 2021, we took our boat on the ocean for the first time and cruised the San Juan Islands. It was an amazing trip and gave us a taste of the cruising life that left us excited for more.

Now, two years later, it is finally time for the next phase of our journey. We left our jobs and sold our little Catalina, cleared out our storage, and said goodbye to our loved ones. We don’t know yet how we will fund our journey, where it will take us, or when we will return. There are still many items left to do on our list, but we have taken to heart the advice of many other cruisers, that if you wait for every single thing to be ready, you’ll never go. The boat will never be perfectly ready - for every project completed, another two are added to the list. But we are ready, ready to start this life that we’ve been dreaming about for years. It is time to cast off our dock lines and go to sea!