2025 Recap | The Year We Gave Our Kids The World - Ep: 35

2025 was the biggest adventure of our lives. We'd sold everything we own and bought a boat on the other side of the world. Here I've put together a compilation of our year. We leave Sydney Australia, to meet our boat Smile, in Croatia. We got set up, fixed a whole lot of things, spent longer in the Marina than we hoped while our registration came through, road tripped and had slow days. Then we finally headed south to export our electrical goods before doing our upgrades. We were learning as we went and saw some beautiful sights along the way. While we were on our way to Montenegro we get stuck in terrible winds, our generator broke, batteries weren't holding power and was an all round a terrible week. Montenegro. Some of the most picturesque landscapes I've seen. The Marina, Porto Montenegro was one of the best we'd seen throughout the whole year and we found some hidden gems along the way. We didn't plan to do our upgrades here but given our battery and generator troubles at the time, this is where we had to. A quick road trip to Bosnia while the electrician changed over the batteries, had us see the famous Mostar bridge and the stunning Kravica Waterfalls. Back to Montenegro and we haf our boat upgrades complete. We had our eyes on Greece for summer, but had to wait longer due to Visa reasons. While this almost drove us mad at some points, we had a beautiful period of about a month where us and a few other boats spent most days together and this was our first little sense of the sailing community. Sadly with sailing everyone has their own itineraries and eventually we parted ways. Some we were lucky enough to see again down the track, others we haven't... but hope to next season. Now with the boat self sufficient we couldn't wait to leave Boka Bay and explore more of the Montengrian coastline when weather allowed. Morale got quite low so we made the call to leave early. We had our buddy boat (who are absolute legends) and we were heading South towards Greece. We did our first over night passage and it felt surreal, intimidating and blissful all at the same time. Greece. The country that has our hearts. This really was a turning point in our journey. 3 days in and we met just our 3rd family boat since starting out. Little did we know just how close we all were going to become. Next stop, following our new friends to meet the rest of the family boats in the Ionian. To see over a dozen children in similar situations, but different nationalities and languages, playing together and living their best boat life was something else. We had our first guest come and the kids were over the moon to see Nanny. We hopped around seeing some of the best little Greek towns & islands. A short stint in Albania to balance the visa then back to Greece. During this last month or so we discovered two of our favourite anchorages. We met back up with our friends from Montenegro and enjoyed the last month of warmth. Winter is approaching and we are heading back to Australia to chase Sumner's. Smile is hauled out ready for winter.  We Roadtripped to see Olympia & Acropolis before the journey home. Stop 1 Dubai. Some sand bashing, sight seeing then a little luxury at Atlantis. 2nd and final stop - Bali. Where we organised to meet some of our besties here and suprised the kids. Jet lagged and exhausted we enjoyed the sunshine, swims and company. Australia. Many hugs were had and tears shed. It was quite the adjustment but spending time with people we love made it easier. Camping, road trips, sand and waves saw out the end of the year. Let's see if 2026 can top this. If you're all up to date with out videos you've only seen up to the 14 minute mark. After this point will give you a little taster of what's to come for the rest of the season. Things are only on the up 🙌🩵 Want early access to our videos? We now have Patreon... - https://www.patreon.com/c/SailingSmile If not, a simple Like, Comment on Subscribe is greatly appreciated! =)