Provenance: Toronto
Boat: Afrikii, a Wauquiez Amphitrite 43′
Date: November 2020 onwards
Ian spent several years in his twenties backpacking off the beaten path – highlights include capsizing a dugout canoe in the Congo River, building a balsa wood raft that he floated down the Amazon River, and hitchhiking across the Atlantic Ocean twice. He took up spearfishing and taught scuba diving in Venezuela, Malta, and Thailand. When he landed back in Toronto, he worked in the film industry while doing a total refit of an Ericson 36′ sailboat he named Afriki. He then set out on a 5-year circumnavigation, single-handing about half of the time, and picking up crew along the way. Once back in Toronto, looking for a new challenge, he started a successful home renovation business, which he has just shut down so he can set off sailing again.
Ann is a midwife who has worked in Nepal, Haiti, Uganda, Senegal, and the DR Congo with Médecins Sans Frontières. She continues to work part time as a midwife in the Canadian Arctic. She’s raised two amazing kids, reads a book just about every day, and is knitter and sewer extraordinaire. She did an Atlantic crossing in 2019 on her brother’s sailboat, logging several days of rather severe seasickness down the Portuguese coast before regrouping and fully enjoying life at sea all the way to the Caribbean. She has a PhD in Epidemiology so she’s the brains in the outfit – at least in anything on the boat that involves a spreadsheet.
Ian and Ann were introduced to each other by their mutual friend Krystie who thought they had a lot in common. A week before the introduction, in a character revealing moment for both of them, serendipity struck when Ian, while driving his van, almost hit Ann while she cycled along Davenport Road in Toronto. Both were concerned and apologetic for the brief moment they had eye-contact after the mishap but neither knew at the time that, one week later, they would be officially introduced and fall quickly in love. Soon after, they started looking for a boat.
Then 2020 happened, and so the story begins.
sailing Afrikii 