Meet Georgia and Diego (AKA. Unforgettable Sailing) who have recently come on board as Ambassadors for Ullman Sails after winning the 2020 #CRUISINGWITHULLMAN Competition.
Georgia and Diego quit their jobs to refurbish a tiny 50-year-old sailboat to live on the sea. They soon traded that boat up for a more comfortable home, only to lose it a few months later to the biggest hurricane in history. “We were already in love with boat life and as the stubborn sailors that we are, we didn’t give up. 20,000 nautical miles later here we are on Unforgettable number 3,” say Georgia and Diego.
We catch up with them to find out more about what life is like sailing and cruising all day…
How has 2020 been for you as sailors?
Our first idea for this year was to sail to Australia from French Polynesia and stop at all the islands along the way. A few months before we decided to leave, Covid-19 struck French Polynesia. We changed our plans and decided to sail to New Zealand which is a shorter sailing journey. We were hoping to make it there in time before cyclone season but it was still uncertain if they would open borders or not, so we changed our plans again and decided to just stay in French Polynesia until next year. We were ready to stay until next year and enjoy a bit more of paradise when life made its move and suddenly everything changed once again.
We left French Polynesia and our beloved Unforgettable for three months to sail on a Superyacht. We traveled from French Polynesia all the way to Indonesia with a few stops on the way which is a 6000-mile trip with our first and most memorable stop being Fiji. We thought it would be fun to explore something different and show our followers how it is to sail on a 140ft Superyacht.
We are now exploring everything Australia has to offer, on a road trip with our superyacht crew, before heading back to our home in Tahiti.
What is the best place to which you have sailed?
As world travelers, we are often asked what place on earth we like the most, which is actually a very hard question. For us what makes a place special on Unforgettable is not only how crystal clear and blue the waters are, how old the buildings are, or how cool your photos look, what matters most, beyond everything else, is the human aspect; the experience, the exchange, and interactions with other people who share their place and time with us.
What do you love and hate about life at sea?
The true measure of a sailor, if it can be measured, would be the number of heartbeats and how many souls you have touched and are allowed to touch you, how many naked rain showers you took, and how many times you screamed out of pure joy. The true measure of a sailor also consists of all the times you had to jump into the unknown, just to find out something way better than anticipated. For instance, we went to Fiji without any expectations and we left Fiji full of reasons to come back.
With everything in life, there are also hard moments, not every day of sailing is calm. The comfort of a sailboat is very different from a house, but each sunset at sea, each reunion with old and new friends, each smile from a stranger ready to help us, each night full of stars or with a full moon, each time of complete idleness, compensate and make us remember why we are here. To be able to move our home from one place to the other and spend as much time as we want in each place is simply amazing!
