Bryan and Polly Boissoneault are lifelong sailors and had been involved sailing members of the Sandusky Sailing Club over a lifetime of sailing and racing in the Great Lakes. When they started their family their own racing took a back seat as they supported their children through the formative years of their sailing education.
Once their children had left home (one is still sailing, the other focusing on their career - for now) Bryan and Polly decided to take Joli, a C&C 61 with a 93 foot rig from Offshore Spars, and started planning for a retirement rich in experience and adventure at sea.
They had owned Joli and sailed her on every Great Lake other than Lake Superior in the 18 years that they had owned her, but the horizon was calling them.
Among an extensive refit program in preparation for this journey Offshore Spars were asked to carry out a full service on the rig in 2017 and the couple sailed the boat hard on the great lakes, racing with a crew of up to 18 to handle the large sailplan.
Having learned Joli well in the Great Lakes proving grounds it was time to venture to salt water and start an adventurous retirement. As any seasoned sailor will know, you either run out of time or money when planning a long passage, and it was time that got to the Boissoneaults
“When we left Algonac we didn’t even have insurance to sail offshore, we had owned boats for 25 years, sailed for 50 years and logged over 100,000 nautical miles but it was incredibly complicated to get insurance to cover us on the ocean.
So we just left and, you know, as long as you’re not going into a marina, it doesn’t really matter. We just knew that we would have to anchor offshore until we arranged boat insurance which took us until about Boston!”
When Bryan and Polly bought Joli she was equipped with two aluminum spinnaker poles. Each one weighed in at over 130lbs. Something that the couple knew was that they needed to make their sail handling as simple as possible without sacrificing performance.
While their longer passage making, involving night sailing, often sees Joli having an expanded “guest crew” on a watch rotation, the couple generally sail Joli alone so Polly convinced Bryan to gift her a carbon fiber spinnaker pole.
“It was a Christmas present for me.
It was a good move to go to carbon because it’s so much lighter and a lot easier to handle. The first time we sailed back from the Caribbean to the East Coast of the States, it was just the two of us and one other woman.
She and I were like - OK, we can handle this spinnaker pole which we wouldn’t have been able to with the old aluminum ones
So really, it was almost a necessity to have that carbon fiber pole”
At 26 feet long the new carbon fiber spinnaker pole offers a huge weight saving and safety gain for Bryan and Polly while sailing downwind. The ability to fly a spinnaker makes for much more comfortable and balanced downwind cruising. The pole can also be used to maintain goosewinged sailing on a dead run.
While Bryan and Polly entered retirement as highly seasoned sailors, they have now completed six years of ten months a year cruising the West Indies.
This has given them more than just memories. Bryan speaks like a walking almanac of marine trades in the Caribbean and, several hurricane seasons, Joli has been hauled out in Trinidad for annual maintenance.
“Firstly Trinidad is south of what the insurers call the Hurricane Zone, we need to be out of that Zone for those months, essentially it is the same climate as Venezuela so a lot safer than the other islands.
Trinidad is also one of the big areas that you can get fiberglass work done, they're very good and they do so many boats down there”
While Bryan and Polly haven’t ever managed to coincide their yard period with the famous Trinidad Carnival the ambition is still alive after experiencing Trinidadian steel drums
“Well that’s one of the fun things to do when ashore in Trinidad, you go to the pan yards and they’re just huge, you’ll have 5 or more bands with nearly 200 steel pans all playing taking their turns to play. It’s just so much fun”
Since living on Joli full time, Bryan and Polly have sold their home on land. They are at sea ten months a year and when they go ashore for the other two months they are “just visiting family and mooching off everybody”
The couple has noticed a huge growth in liveaboards and see this growth stemming from YouTube liveaboard channels and the effects of COVID on how we work and live.
We meet all kinds of people that have never sailed before and they're out here cruising.
You know, they're 61 and they decide we're going to go cruising and they buy a boat and they go yeah and figure it out. People started watching those YouTubers and they say, oh, we can do that.
And then when COVID happened and everybody was stuck, I think the used boat market went crazy because everybody said, OK, I've watched those channels, I'm stuck here, I'm going to buy a boat and go sailing.
It's amazing how many people did what we've done, we've been sailors all our lives so it wasn't that big of a leap for us to move on to the boat and go sailing.
But for people that, you know, are 55/60 years old and they decide, let's retire and go sailing.
Well the couple we had drinks with today, they just did the same thing. They just sold everything, bought a boat.
And I was talking to him and he says, yeah, I'd like to talk to some of those YouTubers now and punch them in the nose. They don't tell you all this stuff.”
All that glitters on social media is not gold - when we sat down to speak with Bryan and Polly they had just emerged from scrubbing the waterline - “We’re both salty”
Over the last six years Bryan and Polly have ticked off nearly every Caribbean Island, but they have omitted Barbados - “You know, that's upwind to get there from here” - it is clear that Polly likes to use her Christmas present and the couple favor sailing off the wind.
After this season’s two months ashore the couple have further reaching plans:
“We want to go back to Bermuda and then the Azores (stopping in Pete’s Bar of course) and then Portugal and Spain. We'll probably put the boat in a Marina in Spain and just kind of use it as a cottage for a while and explore Europe that way. And we'll also try to get a 1 year visa through France. If we can do that, that'll make life a lot easier.”
When asked whether they would explore Northern Europe the response was unanimous:
Too Cold, We're warm weather people.
That's why we're not in Michigan any longer.
Offshore Spars offers custom, made in the USA, carbon fiber masts, booms and spinnaker poles for sailboats ranging from 24 to 120 ft.
Built in Detroit, used the world over.
Contact us to discuss upgrading your yacht’s rig, our team can find the perfect solution to improve your boating experience.
