A NEVER ENDING CIRCUMNAVIGATION ON A 25FT DJANGO

Most people that do a circumnavigation do it on a schedule. Some do it even without stopping, just to prove themselves they can do it. Some do it in a rally with the support of an organization, like the ones that choose to do it on the ARC World, that circumnavigates in 15 months.

Most do it alone on a period that ranges between 2 and 4 years, some sell the boat or navigate much less extensively, others after some years, start a new circumnavigation and some have done it 3 or more times. 

Christophe Mora, a French who found an Estonian mate, Carina Juhhova, in Chile, seems to do it as a way of life and contrary to most seems not to have any schedule regarding their circumnavigation, that seems to be a lifetime exploration.

Christophe sailed from France 7 years ago and is now circumnavigating Australia after having done the same in New Zealand, all South American East coast and a good part of the West, before exploring Polinesia. 

There are several unusual things regarding this never-ending voyage, one of them is that they enjoy as much exploring the wilderness and the mountains as they love exploring by sea, the other is the choice of the boat, which was new when he bought it.

He chose a kind of slightly bigger mini 6.50-racer, built by a shipyard that started by doing racing minis and that today makes cruising boats that have many similarities to Pogos.

For several years  Marée Haute specialized itself in making seaworthy and fast small cruising boats derived from the mini racers, exploring a market that was also the one of the first cruising Pogos, a small market abandoned by Pogo today (the smallest cruising Pogo is a 30ft boat). Marée Haute makes now also a 9.80 and a 12.70 but its success was due to the cruisers that were derived from the Mini 6.50 racers, the Django 6.70 and the Django 7.70.

And the chosen boat was a Django 7.70, the smallest boat I know that manages to pass the requirements to be certified as Class A and a boat that I would say is a radical choice for a circumnavigation, even more now that is not made solo, but by a couple.

But Christophe is not the type of traditional cruiser, being its previous profession mountain guide, he was used to living in tents, was used to a very spartan comfort and he wanted the smallest, less expensive possible boat that would offer ocean seaworthiness.

One that would be reliable, well built, with inexpensive maintenance, that sailed well and that had minimum accommodations and comfort. The logical choice was  Django 7.70.

Later, in the Magalhães strait, he met a girl that had the same approach to life.  Carina had been backpacking for most of the 12 years she had traveled around the world (57 countries) and had settled at Port Williams as a Tourist guide, but could not resist Christophe neither the call to continue the nomadic life, this time on the water.

She has to be a very special woman because the boat does not have a head, a shower, warm water neither a refrigerator and sometimes almost all interior saloon floor is full of jerrycans with gasoline for the outboard.  

The Django 7.70 can have a diesel inboard engine but that is expensive so Christophe opted for two 9.8 Hp two-stroke outboards.

The engines have not alternator so he has inboard a small Honda generator (1kw) for the heating and for recharging the battery a two 100 Ah battery set-up. For electricity production they have a solar panel with 140W and a Watt&Sea  hydro generator.

As tankage, they use for gasoline many jerrycans, that you can see on the photo and for water a tank with 56L plus a container with 30L and a 5.5L/H small hand-operated water maker. 

For communications, they use a VHF radio with AIS and for weather information they have an Iridium with ZyGrib. For safety a light liferaft, waterproof TPS survival suits and they don't mention an EPIRB.

Almost all would say that it would be impossible to live like that while circumnavigating but they have been doing it for several years and even myself, being used to hear about people with much more spartan tastes than mine, am amazed.

That's true that when I was their age I sailed for two months with my wife, living aboard a boat that would make theirs luxurious, but they were 2 months out of twelve, not several years in a row!   If you look at the map of their voyage (bottom) you will see that in almost all places where they stop they make big exploration trips of several days on land and I bet it feels good after being cramped for so long on a boat with so little space.

Of course, this probably is the only way they have to do it since they say they spend about 500€ a month and that includes boat maintenance. That is only possible because they have a small boat with very little things that can break or malfunction. The bigger and more complex the boat is, the more expensive the maintenance becomes.

Their blog is full of interesting stories but unfortunately, a big part is only in French, others handwritten,  it is not very well organized, with nice small pictures. The movies are not many and are not easy to find, without a direct link.

A pity that from so many incredible places so little has been put on photos and videos, but even the blog is well worth exploring. 

I believe that if they took the care to share more quality photos and movies, making all of us dream more about their amazing voyage and the incredible places they visited, they could support themselves easily and who knows, start to save for a bigger boat. 

They would not be the first that would succeed in doing that and they are among the ones that deserve it more.
All the pictures posted here are taken by them and posted on their blogs.

You can read about their adventures and voyages as well as see many photos clicking on the links below, but if you click on "English" you will only have access to a small part and no photos but nice drawings by Carina. For photos and more information you have to read it or translate it from the French. Below, one of Carina's drawings.

https://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2014/03/transat-vers-le-bresil-home-sweet-home.html
http://www.intothewind.fr/
http://followcarina.blogspot.com/
https://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2015/02/django-770-versus-first-337.html