Tell me your favorite thing and your least favorite thing about your boat?
Annie; Our almost fully enclosed cockpit is my most favorite thing on our boat, it has plenty of room to entertain, it’s like have another room.
Cam; I love the way that Annecam sails in almost any direction that we point her, from a close reach at 30 degrees true to dead down wind. She is right in her happy place on a beam reach and we are very happy as she is very steady on this angle, she also makes good speed.
Annie; My least favorite thing is our manual pumps in our heads
Cam; I really can’t think of anything that is a major issue as far as a least favorite thing but unblocking a blocked head would be right up there. There is always some little thing, some little boat job that has to be done, it would be just called maintenance and it is never ending.

What are some of your favorite pieces of gear on your boat and why?
Annie; I love our Mantus anchor because it works every time.
Cam; I love the whole package, we do have a great anchor, we also have a great auto pilot but my most favorite piece of equipment would be our AIS transponder, we can see other ships a long way off and it gives us the information on how close they will be passing us by, it along with our radar keep us safe.

Your most favorite place to visit and why?
Annie; Fiji, because of the people were so lovely.
Cam; Croatia was a special place maybe because we spent almost a whole year there but Australia is still the best place to be.

What do you enjoy about cruising that you didn't expect to enjoy?
Annie; Night passages are better than I expected because being able to see the night sky without any artificial light pollution makes the stars seem very close, it’s not as scary at night as I can’t see very far, during the day it seems more intimidating as I can see just how vast and empty it is out there.
Cam; I love the challenge of navigating to a new harbour, a new anchorage, somewhere we have not been to before. I love meeting people, trying different food, the sites and the different customs, they vary so much.

How did you gain offshore experience prior to leaving?
Annie; I didn’t, it’s like anything in life you gain experience as you go.
Cam; I had absolutely zero experience for extended offshore sailing, the only experience that I had was from crewing on various fishing boats when I was younger. We did own a very nice offshore trailer fishing boat, a Barcrusher that we used to take well offshore chasing tuna and marlin but nothing like what we have now. I had only sailed on dinghies and very small catamarans when I was very young, I had never been sailing on a keel boat before. I read everything I could get my hands on and I also followed other sailors like Jessica Watson and others on various blogs, I remember making a comment of encouragement on Jessica’s blog late one night after I got home from work and to my surprise she came straight back with a reply, I thought at the time “wow how cool is that” here is a famous young lady out there in the big ocean and she is talking to me via her blog.

Share a piece of cruising etiquette
Annie; Always BYO refreshment and snacks when invited over for sundowners or a meal. Always take your empties and rubbish away as you leave. Never wear shoes on somebody’s boat.
Cam; When entering a new anchorage, I always ask any other cruisers how much chain they have out before we drop our own and I always make myself available to help others if they are in trouble.

In your own experience and your experience meeting other cruisers, what are the common reasons that people stop cruising?
 Annie; Some people just get sick of the hassle of getting ashore and hauling provisions, water, fuel and themselves in and out of the dinghy.
 Cam; Finance or the lack of it would be the biggest single issue that stops people from cruising.
 Annie; Missing the family.
 Cam; A lot of cruisers set a goal to sail from one location to another and once they have done that they are happy to achieve what they set out to do, so they stop.
 Annie; Cruising offers a great amount of freedom but at the same time it is very restrictive.
 Cam; I know of some cruisers who just loose the desire to go on and when the fun is not there anymore, it’s time to do something different.
How do you go about provisioning?
Annie; I look for things that are easily incorporated into a meal and will last a long time.
Cam; I try to purchase what we need and try to plan for the longer periods just in case we can’t get off the boat because of the weather or for the longer passages.

What mistakes did you make in your first year of cruising?
Annie; Not realising how much power was on the main sheet as I received rope burns from trying to hold on to it after taking it off the winch.
Cam; Leaving our boat in the wrong location and trying to clear back into Croatia, we almost got arrested. I managed to hook our keel onto another boats line’s while leaving the dock, that created a bit of excitement at the time. The worst mistake that I made was filling up with dirty fuel and I managed to completely block our entire fuel system from the pickup in the fuel tank to the final fuel filter, that was a very costly mistake and took a long time to get rid of it.

What question do you wish I would have asked you besides the ones I've asked you and how would you answer it?
Annie; You could have asked if I like long passages? My answer would have been a big “NO” they are dreadful.
Cam; You could have asked me what was the worst part of cruising? My answer would have been the over official officials we had to learn to deal with as we cleared in and out of some of the 52 countries that we stopped at, most were really good, polite and very professional but we did find a few that were not and they went out of their way to make life difficult for us.
The photo is us trying to do a selfie.
As sailors, if we don’t like where we are, we move we are not a tree.