How I Went From Never Sailing to Crossing Oceans: My Journey to Sailing Around the World
You’re reading this because you’ve been following my journey across the oceans—or because you’re searching for what it takes to sail around the world. Maybe you’re wondering how a complete beginner learns to sail, or whether someone with no experience can really start a circumnavigation. The reality is just to commit. In our limited time with personal and professional lives, it just takes the desire to commit and embrace being a beginner.
My story might surprise you.
Less than six months before joining an ocean-racing yacht, I had sailed only once 25+ years before.
So how did I go from a childhood fantasy to actually sailing across the Atlantic, navigating storms, and training to complete a round-the-world voyage?
Here’s how the journey began.
A Childhood Dream of Exploration
I grew up in a Taiwanese immigrant family in Tennessee, learning English on stories of exploration and adventure. I spent hours reading National Geographic, dreaming about remote places. One destination captured my imagination more than any other: Easter Island. I knew I wanted to go. I just didn’t know how to get there. Possibly by boat was my only thought.
That dream planted a seed early. I didn’t know it then, but it would guide the trajectory of my life—and eventually my decision to sail around the world.
My First Real Encounter with the Ocean
I moved to Los Angles for University, where a mandatory Physical Education course introduced me to sailing. We sailed from Long Beach to Catalina Island, and something awakened inside me: maybe seasickness.
Even though I didn’t have the money, knowledge, or time to pursue sailing, I knew I had touched something important—something I would return to one day.
The Long Detour Before the Ocean Called Me Back
After school, I moved to New York. The real life began quickly. Work, saving money, meeting new friends and partners. Still, the idea of sailing didn’t leave. I even researched sailing classes at the Marina in Battery Park where I worked, but then 9/11 happened, and life took a sharp turn.
My work required constant travel—Central America, Southeast Asia, Africa. Over time, I became comfortable being the outsider, the observer. In a way, work let me live pieces of the adventurous life I’d always imagined… but the sea was still missing.
A Leap to Europe—and a Step Closer to the Dream
I love New York City. It’s where I became an adult. It was the place that I became me. But I knew I didn’t want to stay in New York forever.
So I took a leap: I moved to Madrid for business school at IE. The friends and networks I built there would later become part of the support system behind my global sailing journey.
Never having worked in South America, after graduating, I moved to Chile through the Start-Up Chile program. And that was where the childhood dream resurfaced: I finally set foot on Easter Island. Reaching that goal taught me something crucial—
Dreams don’t disappear. They wait.
Exploring the World Up Close
But sailing didn’t come back yet. My post-MBA work took me deep into remote regions—often the same kinds of places adventurers and sailors visit while circumnavigating the world.
I worked on Coca-Cola’s “last mile” distribution projects in Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Looking to transition to environmental restoration, I transitioned into coffee, leading to agriculture.
That led to long-term projects with WWF Switzerland and Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, supporting coffee farming communities near Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and endangered Mountain Gorillas.
Agriculture took root, and I began working on community farming, bringing my financial acumen to support regenerative agriculture transitions in support of food security programs and youth outdoor engagement.
These experiences taught me how interconnected our planet is—land, people, water, but not yet oceans.
The Turning Point: Why I Returned to the Sea
In recent years, changes in USDA federal funding for agriculture pushed me to re-evaluate my direction. At the same time, my concern for the oceans, climate change, and marine ecosystems grew stronger.
Then the old dream of the ocean resurfaced—louder this time. Reading journals I’ve kept since I was 8 years old since that Easter Island piece in National Geographic, I knew it was time.
I started researching:
How to sail around the world
Beginner sailing courses
Whether it’s possible to sail across oceans with no experience
That research led me to sign up to ASA 101, asking a gym member with a gym bag made of old sails, and learning about Clipper Round the World Race, one of the only global sailing programs where complete beginners can train to cross oceans safely.
And I realized:
This was my call to adventure.
Crossing the Threshold: Becoming a Beginner Again
I said yes.
I trained intensively.
I learned everything from navigation to night watches to ocean safety.
Six months after touching a sailboat for the first time in decades, I was crossing the Atlantic with Team UNICEF—something I once believed was impossible.
Today, I continue my journey across the world’s oceans, not only to fulfill a dream but to represent Taiwan, raise awareness about ocean health, and show others that you can start from zero and still sail across the world.
Why I Share This Story
If you’re researching:
How to start sailing
How to sail around the world
Whether a beginner can cross an ocean
How to chase a long-forgotten dream
I want my story to be proof that it is possible.
You don’t need to grow up on a boat.
You don’t need a lifetime of experience.
You need a dream, a decision, and the courage to step into the unknown.
This is my journey—
and it’s only just beginning.