Kate got her start in the yachting industry working as crew. She spent five years cruising the Bahamas, Caribbean, New England, and Central America, then segued that experience into a career in marine journalism, including stints as editor of Dockwalk and ShowBoats International.
JP Baudains and Charlotte Drummond-Chew swapped their life as crew for a global sailing adventure of their own. Now, they’re sharing their highs and lows on social media as they chase their dream around the world aboard S/Y Jacqeau.
The words “bucket list” may conjure up white-haired retirees, but why must fulfilling your dreams be reserved for a late stage in life? Crew members on 180ft sailing yacht Marie, Jean Paul (JP) Baudains and Charlotte Drummond-Chew discovered that they shared the same aspiration: to sail around the world. One day they were discussing how it would happen when they were much older with kids… “Within the same conversation, we’re like, ‘Hold on a second, what if we actually can make this work right now?’” Charlotte says. “From that point on there was no going back. The decision was made, the WhatsApp group boat search started and the rest is history.”
Dockwalk caught up with the couple in May as they were delivering an Oyster 72 to New England after running the yacht for the winter season. Jacqeau, the boat they purchased and refit together, was waiting for them in Antigua, and they were looking forward to returning to her in June and starting the second leg in their circumnavigation: through the Panama Canal to French Polynesia.
It wasn’t plain sailing to get to this point though. They endured a grueling, sleepless refit, took three attempts to successfully float their boat and then very nearly sunk it. Yet they look back at all this now and proclaim they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Talking to them, you would think they have been together for a decade, but they met close to three years ago on board Marie, both working on the same deck team and both passionate lifelong sailors with a few years’ experience in the industry. Friends first, they became a couple in their second season on board in the Caribbean and bought the boat soon after, just eight months after meeting.
“From the moment we met, we basically spent almost every waking moment with each other. So we kind of worked out that [compared to] a normal relationship where you’d see each other a couple of times a week, that after one year we were about three years into our relationship,” JP laughs.
They found their boat in Bristol, up the Narragansett Bay from Newport. While most cruisers consider comfort first, and then sail-ability, for Charlotte and JP it was the other way around. “We wanted the boat to be built to sail well and sail fast,” Charlotte says. “And we haven’t been disappointed.”
“The yachting industry is something that you can very easily pause and come back to”
The 1989 50ft Fast 500 caught their eye for its classic and racy shape, sugar scoop stern and pedigreed design by famed naval architect Germán Frers. Unfortunately, she had sat on the hard for two years, tucked away in the corner of the yard, “unloved.” They knew she would involve a lot of work.
“I think any refit is always a bigger job than you anticipate,” says Charlotte.
“We basically had to strip the whole thing out, pull it all apart, start from the bare minimum and then put it all back together,” JP says. “For the first three weeks the process was very daunting because we were starting to realize how long this journey might actually be to get the boat sailing.”
For the weeks the boat was unlivable, they trekked back and forth from Newport daily. “Once we got to the stage where we could live on the boat, our days consisted from about eight in the morning until about four in the morning. And then we would have a quick shower on the dock, jump back onto the boat, go to sleep, wake up and do it again,” says JP.
The post-refit plan was to head across the Atlantic to their home waters of the UK and Guernsey and start their circumnavigation from there. Jacqeau, however, had other ideas.
“We were finally ready to launch the boat and we had this deadline to cross the Atlantic and we were just about hitting it, so we were quite excited. And as she was in the sling going to be dropped, we started to notice some water coming out of the keel where it joined the boat,” says Charlotte.
“All the fairing around the keel was cracked,” JP continues. “Basically when they picked the boat up, the keel had slightly moved, the hull had flexed slightly.” The boat wouldn’t touch water that day, and, in fact, it took three tries to splash her, with the same thing happening on the second attempt too. What they ended up doing was locating and rebedding every single keel bolt, “tightening them down as hard as they go.” But in the end, this gave them peace of mind when they finally did launch her. And it was the same story with everything on board.
“There’s not one part on the boat that we haven’t gone through a process of having something go wrong and improved it, and then feel good about it,” JP says.
“As new boat owners, now when things go wrong, we know exactly where everything is, what everything is. We can pretty much identify the problem from a sound because we turned the entire boat over; we reinvented all the systems. Even though it was a huge amount of work, it has probably saved us,” Charlotte says.
Their innate positivity was put to the test just three days after Jacqeau launched: a failure caused the shaft log to crack and they began to take on water as they entered Cape Cod Canal. Forced to turn off the engine and with no wind to sail by, they were at the mercy of the fast-flowing river (whose current can reach 4.5 knots), and the boat started doing slow 360s precariously close to the stone jetty on the canal’s edge.
After they were rescued by the canal patrol and had dropped anchor outside, “I’m downstairs with my hand on the shaft trying to stop the water coming in. And Charlotte comes in, she lightly puts her hand on my shoulder and says, ‘It’s going to cost 20 grand,’” JP laughs.
Another haul-out and another big bill... “It was either that happening there or in the middle of the Atlantic and we would have lost the boat, so over a mudslide (cocktail) we decided it was a good thing it happened,” JP says.
It did mean they missed their window to cross the North Atlantic and instead took Jacqeau down to the Caribbean, where they picked up work to help pay for all of this. That’s the beauty of working on superyachts, and also why yacht crew are ideal candidates to tackle an adventure like theirs. “The yachting industry is something that you can very easily pause and come back to,” JP says.
“It may sound like it could be detrimental,” he continues. “That you have to be on this mission to keep going and get your tickets, but you’re still at sea, you’re still on a boat. Your knowledge is going to increase so much that when you go back, the respect that you have from other people for doing it on your own, and also gaining that knowledge and what you will bring back to that boat is second to none.”
He also advocates for job-hopping at the beginning of one’s career instead of worrying about longevity to become a more well-rounded sailor. “You gain knowledge every single time you go to sea and from every single person you meet along the way,” he says.
After the 22/23 Caribbean season, the couple finally set sail across the Atlantic, enjoyed British and Guernsey waters and officially began their westward circumnavigation this past December in a 23-day sail to Antigua. Following this summer’s cruise to French Polynesia, they’ll store Jacqeau in Tahiti and return to work on the same Oyster 72 as they did last winter. “Hopefully we’ll make it round the rest of the world with that cash,” Charlotte says.
Their planned route from next June takes them to Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, then perhaps through the Suez Canal, depending on the political situation at the time, finishing in Spain. Along the way they will surf, JP will spearfish and they just bought a wing foil. “That will be our new sport,” Charlotte says. “We also love to explore. As soon as we get somewhere, we love getting off the boat and kind of immersing ourselves in wherever we’ve rocked up.”
In addition to taking on seasonal jobs, they both earn income from property investments and, as Project World Sail with 87,000 Instagram followers, they work with brands that align with their values — for instance, Ocean Bottle is a sponsor. “For every water bottle that you buy, they essentially stop the equivalent of 1,000 single-use plastic bottles that would have gone into the ocean,” Charlotte says.
Their platform is also intended to inspire others. “Our biggest advice [to others interested] is to go and actually do it. We’ve met a few people who have almost [circumnavigated]. And all of them have said to us, ‘it’s our biggest regret that we didn’t complete it,’” Charlotte says.
For JP and Charlotte, it represents more than something to tick off their bucket list though.
“Moving from being yachties to owning our own boat, one of the biggest things that we wanted was to challenge ourselves. And although obviously working on sailing yachts you do get that — you are put in tough situations — we hadn’t felt like we had pushed ourselves to the limit, and we wanted to see how we’d react to those situations,” Charlotte says. “And we’ve now had that in abundance. We’ve had some very difficult double-handed passages. We have been truly humbled as humans.”
And they’re just getting started. Follow the pair at @projectworldsail.