Home › Blog › Heading Back Out for Another Sailing Sabbatical

I am headed back out to Italy for our fall sailing sabbatical. My last trip was in the late spring, and this one will be early this fall. Let’s dig in.

Slowing Down on Long-Form Blogs

I’ve been reducing my long-form blogs in favor of daily morning LinkedIn posts. Here are the last few of those:

I’ll be posting every morning on LinkedIn while on my sailing trip. That said, when some crazy stem cell Wild West issue comes up, or some great new study in orthobiologics comes to light, I will still blog.

My Sabatticals

As I have written before, my father got very sick with Diffuse Ley Body before he and my mom ever had a chance to travel after raising seven kids and giving all of them a chance to go to college. That’s me on the left above and my dad on the right (after he had already entered the throes of that nasty neurodegenerative disease). We are at the Vatican getting ready to see Pope John Paul. That was one of his final wishes, as he was a devout Spanish Catholic.

I grew up a firmly middle-class kid, so whatever was going to happen in my life needed to be up to me to make happen. Those two experiences, plus being a physician and caring for sick people, taught me that you never know what’s around the corner in your health journey. You can try everything you want and control what you can, and that certainly improves your odds of staying active and healthy as you age, but it’s best to get out and live a little while you’re still able. So, I cooked up this epic European journey many years ago during the pandemic to push myself to get out there before I officially retired.

Our Upcoming Journey

We will start this time on the island of Elba, where Napoleon was placed the first time he was captured. We will then head for the Italian coast and then head south to Rome, Naples, and the Amalfi coast. We will end up near Palermo in Sicily. We will leave the boat there in a marina for the winter.

DIY vs. Chartering

When some people think sailing in the Tyrrhenian Sea, they think of experiences they see on shows like “Below Decks,” where super-rich people charter mega-yachts and have a large crew at their disposal to satisfy every whim. That is NOT what we do. We have a crew of two people- my wife and I. I’m also the Captain/boat maintenance guy, and there’s always something to fix, maintain, or otherwise deal with. For example, our main radio and chart system was acting up this past trip, so I had to rely on backups for both while trying to diagnose the problem. This trip, I have a pretty long list of things to catch up on.

Having said that, we love the sense of freedom the sea provides. We spend a couple of hours sailing, head into a marina at the next spot, have a nice exploration, then dinner, and then decide if we want to head down the road or stay put.

Following Our Trip

I don’t use social media to document our lives other than while sailing twice a year. This began as a way to inform our kids where we were and allow them to see we were safe. Then I invited a few friends, and finally, my patients asked, so I invited them as well. That feed is here on Instagram. I have to warn you: the only time I check Instagram is when we are sailing.

The upshot? I look forward to returning to the water and exploring the rest of the Italian west coast and Sicily! I will be posting daily on LinkedIn and may write a blog or two while I’m gone!