#humansofyachting – Kari Lundgren
#humansofyachting – Kari Lundgren
#humansofyachting

#humansofyachting – Kari Lundgren

The Lundgren family had the 26m sailing yacht Metolius custom built in order to sail her around the world – and then some. The family cruised over 150,000km before selling her. Kari Lundgren spent her formative years sailing with her father, mother and older brothers.

By Jill Bobrow | 12 September 2017

“My father always had a dream to sail around the world and he started planning the trip years before we actually set out. I spent my childhood on the first Metolius. There are baby photos of me taking bucket baths on the foredeck and reading comics back-to-back with my brother in the cockpit. For our second Metolius my father worked closely with the designers to get exactly what he wanted for his world trip with the family. I remember endless meetings when I was little where I would sit under a desk in an interior design office drawing horses while my father discussed the design details.

My father is American, from Oregon, and my mother is from Norway. As my father was in the airline business, we moved around quite a bit. And we spent a lot of time sailing. Before our year-long circumnavigation, I recall two special sailing trips: one around Ireland and another up the Norwegian coast to Spitsbergen. The most memorable year of my life was when I took a gap year after middle school and we all lived and sailed aboard Metolius. Rather than try and home school me, my parents figured that I would simply learn from the practicalities and necessities of what we were doing. I remember arriving on Easter Island and a tour guide came to the boat offering to show us the Moai. But as we had just sailed into the harbour with a broken clew on the mainsail, the first thing my mother and I had to do was get to a hardware store. We were not simply tourists on a two-week holiday, and I liked it that way.

#humansofyachting – Kari Lundgren

The Lundgrens sail out to sea from New York

#humansofyachting – Kari Lundgren

The Lundgrens sail out to sea from New York

We immersed ourselves in the cultures of the places where we made landfall; we became temporary residents. In my mom’s mind, it was more interesting for me to learn how to roast a breadfruit by burying it in the sand, or to weave hats from palm fronds than to read about American history while in French Polynesia. But we were always reading. On Robinson Crusoe Island, I read Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and when we went round Cape Horn, I read Jack London’s tales. The books were brought to life by what I saw from the cockpit. My older brothers joined us as their schedules allowed. We also had family friends pop in and join us at various ports of call. But often I had to entertain myself. I wrote journals and made scrapbooks about the places we visited. My father was the captain of our yacht for the world trip and our family was the crew. Scrubbing the decks, varnishing the toe rail and other chores were all part of the fun.

The experiences I had aboard Metolius will resonate with me for the rest of my life. I became a journalist in London and now I am on the PR team of Solar Impulse – the plane that’s flying around the world via solar power to promote clean technologies. I have exchanged the wind in my sails for the ‘sun in my wings’, but it is that experience of sailing with my family that keeps me dreaming about what’s just over the horizon.”

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