Preparation

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First of all I had to figure out what the heck we're talking about.  Tahiti and French Polynesia - are they the same?  What are the Marquesas?  And where exactly in the Pacific are those places?

Once I had that squared, one of my biggest worries was my work – how would my managers react? Was there somebody who could take over from me, and would we have enough time for the transition? Fortunately everybody at work was very supportive!

Then I had a ton of prep work to do. A lot of it were mundane tasks that I could have dealt with a long time ago.  Pretty much of it ended up consuming a lot of time just because my stuff was not up to snuff.

Important documents / Safe Deposit Box. Keeping important documents in a safe deposit box is not a bad idea in general. I had been thinking of it before, but of course, never did anything about it. Now I had to contact six different banks and branches in my area before I located one that had a medium size box available.

Electronic back up. Then I decided that I should back up my most important computer files (like my electronic tax returns) and keep the back up in the safe deposit box too. Now you guessed it, the filing system on my computer was a mess, and it took me a couple of days to get it cleaned up and reorganized.

Will & Health Care Directive. Important documents…. There was something. Ahh, maybe it was time to write up a will at last. While digging into the topic I realized that really I needed to set up a living trust, but there won’t be enough time. So a will had to do. And also how important a Health Care Directive is.

Bills & money matters. The bills… who is going to take care of paying my bills? I prepared a list of all payments that would need to be made in the next couple of months, approximately how much money I had to keep in my bank account, and then checked with each company if payments could be made electronically. Of course, each company is using a different system, so I had to sign up with each of them individually. I was glad I tackled this one early on, as I discovered that some companies need a lead-time of up to six weeks for electronic payments to work. With hindsight, this turned out to be a big time saver: I am continuing to reap the benefits every month, as I only need to review the bills, but don’t need to take care of the payments any more. What a no brainer!

Snail mail & junk mail. I could not simply put my mail on hold since I would be gone for such a long time. When I wanted to sign up for mail forwarding via USPS’ website, I found out they charged money for the convenience of using the internet. So I printed the form, filled it out, and mailed it. Guess what? My mail never got forwarded properly. I requested a start date a couple of days ahead of my actual travel date. When mail continued to arrive I called USPS to inquire if they received my forwarding request. They assured me that the information was entered into their computer and that the mail would be forwarded. Well..., it wasn’t. Instead, someone else’s mail got forwarded to the address I had specified! (I guess I should consider myself lucky that they kept delivering mail to my home rather than forwarding it to some arbitrary other address).

To reduce the piles of mail I’d have to dig through upon my return, I also finally signed up with various organizations to opt out of junk mail. This also helped in the long term: I don’t get swamped by credit card offers and the likes anymore.

Travel documents. Phew! On that one I lucked out. Mexico didn’t require a visa, and French Polynesia is part of the EU. My German passport would do.

Preventive Health Care / Immunizations: Also one of the tasks that need to be tackled as early as possible. Some of the immunizations require repeat dosages before traveling. I also loaded up on prescription-type motion sickness medications.

Moving out of my apartment. Since I wasn’t going to use the apartment for a while I decided to move out. I had to terminate my lease, get my stuff packed up, move out, cancel utilities, clean the apartment etc. Nothing unusual here, just a lot of work.

Things I needed or wanted to have for the trip:

Sailing gear. Since I go sailing on the SF Bay quite a bit, I had all the necessary sailing gear. Or so I thought... until my car got broken into two weeks before I was set to leave for Mexico. What was stolen from the car? My duffel bag with all my sailing gear! So I had to go on an unplanned, last-minute shopping frenzy for foul weather gear, sailing shoes, sailing gloves, tether, sunglasses, sun screen, boat knife etc. I lucked out a bit since West Marine had a fould weather gear sale, shaving about 20% off the bill.  I also downgraded a bit. Before, I used to have the most expensive line of Gill foul weather gear (which is well worth the investment when you end up as rail meat in a summer regatta on the Bay), now I bought lighter (but more versatile) foul weather gear.

Books. I decided against lugging books around with me. They’re heavy. Plus they had dozens of books aboard already. Instead, I decided to load my iPod with some audiobooks.

Music. Since I had already gotten tired of the music that was on my iPod, I spent quite a bit of time searching for new music. I also decided to switch to iTunes and file my music differently. This was probably one of the most time-consuming (but more enjoyable) preparation activities.

Clothes. Of course I packed too many. But overall I packed the right things.

Contact list and emergency contact procedures. It wasn’t going to be easy to stay in touch with folks while at sea. There was emergency e-mail available, but that was about it. I set up a network of emergency contacts including family, my neighbors, and key contacts at work. It also forced me to consolidate my various electronic and paper-based contact lists. I keep this information on the iPod now as well; which comes in handy to this day (note: I am one of those dinosaurs who stubbornly refuse to get hooked on a Blackberry).

All in all, this is pretty much the important stuff I had to deal with to get ready for the sailing trip.   I kept track of my to do's using a spreadsheet.  There were about 80 items on it, but I ended up dropping some as not important enough/nice to have.  I had almost three months for it, but remember I was still holding down a full-time job. (It is hard to imagine what boat owners must be going through when they are getting ready for long sailing trips!)