SAILING SAOIRSE - What, how and why our journey came to an end.

I apologise in advance for the amount of tears in this video, it has taken us a while in the hopes that we could make it through it a little bit stronger but it doesn't seem possible. Robin was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in 2023. Saoirse was a dream and a goal that we set in motion 13 years ago. We decided to sell up everything we owned in South Africa and find a yacht that we could sail the world on. It took us a good few years to get the plan in motion and everything sold up. Eventually in 2019 we found Saoirse, a bare fibreglass hull that needed a lot of work and TLC. We took on the challenge thinking "we could get this done in 6 months? fast forward to 2 and a half years later. After her complete refit we started our journey across the Atlantic from Cape Town to Brazil. When arriving in Brazil Robin started showing some odd signs of what could possibly be a hernia. Later on we started to notice a funny looking mole on his leg that would disappear every now and then and then reappear. Eventually it reappeared and it started growing. We made our way up to French Guiana and then Trinidad where Robin developed a DVT (deep vein thrombosis). The doctors mentioned to us that this could be the sign of cancer, often times a tiny piece of a tumour will break off and make its way into the blood stream. After receiving treatment for the DVT, Robin insisted he didn't want to explore it any further and told us that we had worked so hard to get here, this wasn't going to stop our cruising dream. We set off up the Caribbean island chain and got to see some incredible places, this was not without constant fighting about steps going forward with this cancer diagnosis. Eventually when we turned Saoirse around for hurricane season and we started our journey back down south, Karen and Robin decided to head home to South Africa. Watch the video where we go into much more depth into the situation. Please remember to be kind, everyone has a right to their own choice in medical care , treatment and options.