MAKING A BREAK FOR IT

WANT TO SAIL AROUND THE WORLD WITHOUT RETIRING? MAX GOODMAN AND CHARLOTTE BRANNSTROM ON HOW THEY ACHIEVED THEIR DREAM AS ‘CAREER BREAK’ CRUISERS

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There’s an old sailing joke that goes something like this: “In search of single man with boat. Please send photo of boat.” Today couples find each other on dating apps rather than via the personal adverts in the back of a newspaper, but when a girl with a profile photo taken at the helm caught Max’s eye, the first thing he messaged was: “Do you want to sail around the world?” Charlotte did not hesitate in her answer: yes. Six years later we left Sweden, and our jobs, and set off for an adventure that had been a dream of both of ours long before we’d met. 

Max, a 32-year-old engineer, has sailed since he was young, and had bought small keelboats with money earned from part-time jobs while still at school. He crewed on an Atlantic crossing from Boston to Portugal months after that first message. Charlotte, a 28-year-old lawyer, grew up in a family where sailing is part of every summer and, partly to make a point to her older brother, sailed across the Atlantic on a yacht skippered by Nikki Henderson when she was 19.

Sailing around the world was a goal we both wanted to achieve. As we saw it we had two options: go now, before life gets too serious with dependants, or wait until retirement

Initially we thought the most sensible option would be to crew on the yachts of other people completing their circumnavigations. We knew we could be desirable to have on board as crew, thanks to our past experience and also the practical fact that we’d be a couple sharing a cabin. But that wasn’t our dream.

MAKING IT HAPPEN