The Perils of Cruising...

Cairns, QLD

16° 55' 6" S, 145° 46' 54" E

...are small when compared to life on land. In four years and close to 30,000nm of cruising in some remote places aboard Namani, sunburn has probably been our biggest health hazard. Give us a day ashore on a playground in civilized Cairns, and Markus manages to fall off one of the contraptions and manages to break his collar bone... Luckily it's the left hand side and not too painful so it'll hopefully be just an inconvenience for a few weeks.

It's a good lesson learned though: While sailing you regularly make very conscious risk assessments and decisions based on them: Weather for an off-shore passage, anchoring in unfamiliar places, commercial shipping crossing your path at night, and many more. In contrast, back in our shore based life, we have the illusion of safety and regularly take significant risks - like getting in a car - without even noticing. Of course accidents and illness also do happen on the water. But on average, we're convinced that we lived a safer life on Namani than we did (and will again) in our so called regular life ashore.

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