...but you can't take the boat out of the girl.

It may come as a surprise to learn that that are long stretches of time when we are not sailing. World cruising comes with what I refer to as ‘go times and slow times’, which are largely dictated by hurricane seasons and family events.

For example, our sailing in the south Pacific was a nine month period of continuous momentum as we explored numerous groups of islands in the countries which lay en route from Mexico to New Zealand. The key factor was to tuck ourselves in safely out of the cyclone belt before December signalled the start of the tropical storms. We would then have to limit our movements to coastal hops or marina life until the following May when the forecasts would show it to be safe to return to the tropics. These pauses in the sailing season allow you to travel inland and get up to the mountains, take on major boat projects and other work that wouldn’t be possible when on the move, or even pay a flying visit to your homeland.

This is the option that we have taken for the moment, travelling halfway round the world to introduce our latest little crew member to the rest of the family; combining our absence with work in the boatyard that would make life on board quite awkward.

Our land legs, however, are somewhat uneasy as leaving our boat home on the other side of the globe gives us a strange pang and we find ourselves oddly tuned-in to certain sailing patterns and rhythms, which are less usual in city life.

Firstly, it’s the constant wearing of socks that seems so bizarre to me. Having dwelt in the tropics for the last four and a half years, my feet are used to the touch of teak and sand underfoot or the well-worn rubber of my ageing flip-flops. Pulling on both socks and shoes to tramp the London streets feels as though my toes are over-dressed and restricted. The years in the warm have made me soft and the English weather sends me running for hot water bottles, cups of tea and woollen jumpers and our boat babies are bundled in countless layers of clothing.

Then there’s the question of space. Accustomed to cabin-living, the four of us have happily set ourselves up sleeping in one bedroom of a two bed flat, ample room for the whole family when you’re used to the confines of a yacht. This ten square metre room is also spotless, with everything stowed away neatly, every shelf and cupboard organised, and all the clothes lined up and folded, despite there being no chance of rogue waves or dragging anchor in the night. The rest of the tiny flat seems enormous to us now. James describes the boat as being a space that you almost wear, as everything is within arm’s reach; it’s proportions and distances tailored to that of the human body. By contrast the kitchen here is cavernous and the walk from stove to sink seems inefficient.

Then there is the question of weather. A glance outside shows the trees in the street battered by the wind and I wonder if we should venture out in these gusts. Or else I don my foulies and boots and walk down the high road looking all wrapped up like a fisherman in bright yellow, receiving a raised eyebrow from the grey and black clad city-types. And I can’t help but prick up my ears when I hear the shipping forecast, although my boat is thousands of miles away from Dogger and Fitzroy, and on the hard-standing at that.

The unbroken presence of electric light means that our evenings get later and we’re less ruled by the natural cycle of the day. A glimpse at the moon, now full, makes me realise I had no idea that we were approaching the Spring tide, and gives me a twinge of guilt as it feels like bumping into an old acquaintance that I have forgotten to keep up with.

I too look different. My hair is no longer tousled with salt spray and my skin seems grey and pasty. The frenetic and intense pace of life in the capital, no matter how enjoyable, leaves a furrow in my brow and I find myself looking wistfully at the calendar, counting the days until we can return to ‘normal’. Until then I’ll tie my hair up using a reef knot, put powdered milk in my coffee and go to bed when the sun goes down just to remind me of my other life.

I have never been a neat freak, nor was I very messy in my land-lubber life. However, living on board a boat does teach you the advantages to being that bit tidier. But it’s a lesson that you only learn by getting it spectacularly wrong to begin with.

A yacht is really a kind of tardis as, once you empty out all the cupboards, drawers and bilges, you’d be amazed at simply how much stuff can be crammed into our floating home. The key to stopping it from becoming chaotic, however, is that everything has to have it’s own place that it stows away into so that it can both be found at a moment’s notice and be safely squirrelled away whilst on passage. Multiply that logic by the thousands of items that any normal family owns, ranging from tools to toys, silicone to snorkels, nappies to navigation aids and you end up with a sort of three-dimensional storage list of our entire boat contents. And then of course James and I will make remembering where something is that extra bit more complicated by moving things without telling one another!

But far from being some sort of obsession with order and cleanliness, the art of packing up and giving every item it’s proper place is actually a matter of safety on board. Boats move, they lurch unexpectedly, they heel over dramatically and, what’s more, they have to be manoeuvred swiftly, unexpectedly, or in the dead of night. If things are not put back where they should be then they can become a flying missile across a cabin or they can obstruct your managing of the boat.

One of the first sails that we did together was in the Scilly Isles. After lunch one day we happily readied the boat and hoisted the main, unfurled the headsail and moved smoothly out towards the next island whereupon we heard an almighty crash from down below. We looked at each other and realised in an instant that all the dishes from the meal were now in bits on the cabin floor. Our land life had taught us to be good and wash up after eating but our sea instincts were not yet well-tuned enough to remember to tidy it all away in the cupboards.

On another occasion we were cruising the southern coast of Cuba and, having sat at anchor for a few days, we were keen to move on to our next stop. Despite the lack of wind we made everything fast down below and turned the engine on to begin a day of motoring. This time, however, we soon understood that our error was in not prepping the deck. Knowing that we wouldn’t be sailing we had neglected to take down all our washing lines, so we were now moving towards a reef pass with shirts, towels and bedding flapping all around us! Needless to say visibility is rather important on a boat so we hastily scrambled around the deck and bundled all the laundry away.

An ocean passage poses even greater challenges to your stowage skills as the seas are bigger and you’re inevitably carrying a lot more food provisions with you. Our fruit and veg bounces around happily in hammocks, suspended from the roof of the cabin, which normally do well at keeping them safe. But all it takes is one slightly messy wave or hitting the sea at a somewhat different angle and you suddenly have an escapee apple falling down and rolling about underfoot, or a banana bashed to smithereens in a sticky mess against the cabin wall.

And of course, with all that movement, something that was tied down fast when you left harbour, may become less secure after several hundred miles. I heard a strange sound in the night when we were mid-Atlantic of something sliding back and forth above my head. I climbed the companionway steps and found James at the helm. He’d heard it too and, in the dark, we were able to make out the shapes of three of our extra diesel jerry cans skidding about the aft deck, having worked loose from their lashings. He clambered out to deal with them but soon gathered that there had been a spill as seconds later he was slipping and sliding round the deck, covered in diesel while I was at the helm in my pyjamas!

These days we’re more fastidious in our checks, with a place for everything and everything in it’s place. Which, with two infants around, means that keeping shipshape is a full-time job.

Jess is in this month's Yachting Monthly magazine as the only female member of the panel contributing to an ensemble article called "How to anchor like an expert". 8 sailing pros were consulted on their techniques and tricks when it comes to dropping the hook.

...and they're probably right.

For us a 'quick' trip back to renovate our London flat while living in it with our two teeny ones has turned into a somewhat epic battle of spiralling costs and overworking.

Ho hum, all in a days work. I prefer our view from the deck but for now, here are our surroundings.

It’s often surprising to me how many people say that they’d love to do what we’re doing and go out sailing long-term to far-off exotic lands but are unable to because they suffer from seasickness. Yet, what’s more unexpected perhaps is that I reply somewhat nonchalantly that I too get seasick. That’s right, we’ve sailed halfway round the world, been living aboard our floating home for nearly 4 and a half years, crossed two oceans and popped out a couple of babies en route and the chink in my armour is that there are still certain types of sea-state that can make me feel quite ill.

My first ever day sailing was spent crossing from Gibraltar to Morocco in a sloppy sea one January. The wind was blowing at force 7, with gusts of 8 and the straits were covered with white horses. I was in the cockpit having the absolute time of my life. As a totally green newbie I had no idea just how rough the sea really was and how tough a time my fellow crew were having. And then I became green in another way and was soon bidding farewell to my lunch. Mal-de-mer had crept up on me, seemingly out of nowhere, and temporarily caused my cruising ambitions to falter. We had already schemed our adventure of buying a boat and setting out into the blue. Wouldn’t seasickness be the shipwreck of our plans? These thoughts, it turns out, were just another aspect of the illness itself.

Unlike many other common ailments, which stem from infections and viruses, seasickness is essentially your eyes, ears and stomach all getting and sending each other rather confusing messages. There are countless drugs that people swear by, or gentler remedies like ginger, seabands, antihistamine or acupressure. My own trick to overcoming it involves my elegant mantra of “eat a lot, drink a lot, go to the toilet a lot” and recognising the warning signs.

We’ve had great numbers of friends, family and crew stay and sail on board with us and without a doubt the first sign of any sort of seasickness is people insisting that they are not feeling seasick at all. You might be gently pointing out that they have gone a little quiet, are looking rather peaky or seem to be slightly grimacing as their face turns a pasty putty colour but they will vehemently deny that they are succumbing to any sort of queasiness.

Not wanting to go down below into the cabin is another sure sign of getting woozy. That feeling grows worse the more that you want to use the head. I once had a very kind sailing instructor who advised us to remove as much of our foul weather gear as possible while on deck so that we could hurry down below if we needed the loo and then bolt back up to get dressed again. Allowing yourself to get cold also makes you susceptible to queasiness. This was the case on my first sail; I was so enjoying the thrill of being out on the water and having the wind in my face that I ignored the fact that it was slowly giving me a chill. Then there’s dizziness, headaches and not being keen to eat or drink at all: all classic signs that the motion is getting the better of you.

Yet, surrendering to the feeling of sickness and actually throwing up doesn’t seem to be the worst element of it. In fact it can make the invalid feel so much better afterwards, so long as they clip on, hold on tight and remember to aim their stomach contents downwind and nowhere near the furling line! No, instead the most unpleasant aspect of seasickness seems to be the psychological toll it takes on you. We crossed the Atlantic with another couple and the girl suffered terribly from the ocean sea-state. Her worst symptom by far was how hard she was on herself, angry, disappointed and convinced that her enfeebled condition was somehow letting down the rest of us crew. It took huge amounts of reassurance to persuade her that we were coping fine and that she needed rest in order to recover. Which of course she eventually did as often the only real cure is three days at sea.

So yes I get seasick and yet I’m still out sailing. Hands on the helm and eyes on the horizon and you’d be amazed at how far you can manage to get.

Getting out on the water and sailing is a pursuit that most people have to save for their time off. It represents a respite from their other life of being defined by their weekday job and makes every weekend, every summer break and each public holiday a chance to play with the wind and the sea, as if reuniting with old friends.

For those of us who have chosen to live on the water, whether it be for just a short while or indefinitely, this pattern changes. We have the luxury that the separation of weekday from weekend becomes somewhat blurry, that days are punctuated by tides, sunrises and sunsets and that ‘time off’ is more about lingering in a particularly lovely anchorage for a few more days than you had planned. It is into this seemingly blissful haze of non-schedule that James and I chose to re-introduce the Bank Holiday.

Full-time, long-term liveaboard cruising is an incredible way of life but it is not exactly the total freedom that it first appears. Your movements and timings are forever governed by the weather, the seasons, the depth of water and the ability of the crew. The boat can laze by a white-sand beach for weeks on end but it’s inhabitants live in a perpetual state of ready and poised for action, even if that feeling only lingers in the backs of their minds, like something you glimpse in your peripheral vision. Because the sailing life teaches you to always be alert to the unexpected changes, the sudden squalls, the anchor dragging in the dead of night, the frantic call for help over the VHF.

Sure, to the outside world, we may appear to be just reading a book in the cockpit, pottering around the local market, playing by the water’s edge with our children or piling into the dinghy to explore the nearby reef, but this veneer of tranquillity that fools the casual onlooker (and even ourselves at times) hides the truth that we are always prepared for that calm to be dramatically shattered by some unforeseen boating drama. The more experience we’ve had at sea the better we’ve learned to roll with the punches but it still means you need to keep your wits about you.

So our bank holidays are invoked on the occasions when one or both of us proudly declares that we are not in fact ready or capable of tackling the unexpected today. I suppose it’s the watery equivalent of a land-lubber calling in sick at work. The preparations for the next passage may have been made, all the provisions are on board and the weather window you were waiting for has appeared. It simply doesn’t matter. Because, if for any reason one of you is feeling too tired, too slow, too unwell or off your game, or even just not quite convinced, confident and happy enough about the forecast, we’ve learned that it’s far more important to own up to the feeling of weakness and take a day’s breather instead. It’s particularly valid for our type of sailing too, given that there are just two of us adults on board and two infants.

Sailing, particularly passage-making, requires a very engaged and aware kind of energy. Yes it’s essential to be capable of the physical strength needed for changing sail plan, winching lines and hand-steering. But the real muscle that you need for offshore or ocean cruising is something more holistic than that, you need to have all-over responsiveness no matter how second-nature and familiar all the processes are to you. And it’s that quality that makes the difference between being ready to go or needing to take an extra day to re-charge.

These pauses have been a great lesson to us so far. They’ve enabled us to take the time to make even greater preparations for going to sea, cooking more meals in advance, taking a more detailed look at elements of the passage ahead or learning new facts about the planned destination. Or the hiatus has given us a bit more down-time, a few more hours to catch up on lost sleep, some extra brain space to relax and read a book or even write. The result has always seemed to work in our favour as the additional day means that we come to face the next journey or passage well-rested, assured and calm.

It’s funny to admit but sometimes the best thing that you can do in order to enjoy your everyday sailing life is just the opposite of what the casual, hobby boater does and say “Let’s not go sailing today”.

With various parts of our boat strewn across Whangarei and a new arrival in the family we thought that it was time to check in with the folks back in England.

Flying for over 30 hours with a 2 year old and 6 week old infant in tow is no easy move, I'll admit. But our two boat babies did us proud, sleeping well and being generally truly lovely to everyone on the two long flights it took to get us back to blighty. They got in on London time straight away and have really been on very good form.

We, however, are still struggling with the jetlag (perhaps we've grown used to moving at 5 knots instead?) so will be laying low until further notice. So, the scene at our place looks a little like this:

The New Zealand winter and having a new baby crew member meant that we weren't going to be sailing on the boat for a little while. This makes for a perfect time to haul out and do some routine maintenance as well as address any niggling issues that have popped up along our travels.

We haven't hauled out the boat since setting off in 2011 as we've done all our hull-cleaning in the water and had copper coat on the bottom which supposedly reduces the amount of hull growth. So, we took her out and cleaned her down to begin checking for any issues, both known and unknown, that could be made good whilst we're in such a well-equipped cruising country.

Our main reason for hauling is to investigate whether the osmosis has returned that we had treated in the UK before we left. It seems that the hull is riddled with new blisters so hopefully we get can this sorted once and for all. James also removed the rudder to fully investigate the corrosion in our rudder stock, first noticed when getting ready to leave Pacific Mexico in March 2014. Thankfully it proved to be only surface and some grinding and filling was all it needed to be repaired. We've even pulled out the mast and removed the rig in order to tackle the issue of some deck compression.

So the boat is in bits but it makes for some quite interesting images.

Sailing is no longer an isolated venture. Every cruiser seems to have a blog, a Facebook page or an Instagram account that can broadcast their breath-taking images of picturesque settings, sending them worldwide in a second. And why do we do it? To share, to transfer some of that boating magic back homewards with the adage of “wish you were here” and to further validate that this way of life, our way of life, is so special.

But the pictures are only a snippet of the reality. Sailing’s greatest mysteries and wonders lie in the un-captured moments; the times you lower the camera and set it down on the chart table; those great occasions when you can’t stomach the separation that the lens would create. My favourite images from our cruising adventures so far are the ones that only exist in memory.

One such encounter was when we were motor-sailing and the water was a still and clear bright blue, which is how we saw the grey shape appear so distinctly. A lone humpback whale, extending the entire length of the boat, drew up alongside us. Our crewmate was asleep, I had our infant daughter strapped to me and James was at my side in the cockpit. I don’t remember which of us saw it first but I can still feel the joint intake of breath as we both gasped at the sheer, immense size of this creature. That first sight held exactly the same thought for both of us: would the whale hit us?

But then, any fear evaporated and what took over, made us sigh with pleasure and consciously choose to not grab for the camera, was the pure grand and humbling feeling of witnessing so large an animal swimming next to us. He span around, exposing his big white belly and then rolled again, blowing water. The salty, fishy smelling spray misting our faces made us laugh at being “kissed by the whale”. We continued to stare at him gliding along, diving and surfacing, until he left an hour later and we felt nothing but awe.

Sailing at night is one of my favourite things about boating life. It always strikes me as wilder, giving a sharper awareness of the speed of the boat and the hiss of the water as we cut along. But we’ve never been able to capture the stars that we’ve seen. Out on the ocean, thousands of miles from light pollution, you see stars in such great densities that you actively feel your eyes widening as they try to take them all in. Every turn of your head reveals another shooting star, a cluster of the Milky Way or a brightly shining planet. And there you are, on a tiny little boat, bobbing about in the water below.

Other shots that never made it to my camera include the super-pod of dolphins, jumping, leaping and spinning as they played around us. Then there was the giant manta ray that rose up from underneath us while we were snorkelling. I remember sitting and marvelling at the dramatic flashes and forks of far-off lightning, blazing against a rapidly darkening sky or the loud roar of sudden tropical rain, instantly rendering our surroundings white.

There are sights that no technology can really communicate, like the bio-luminescence in the water. I love that the strength of light relates to the speed of the motion and you can only distinguish what is creating it by reading the activity of the lights. Fast-moving animals, like dolphins, create glittering zigzags whereas eagle rays dance in the water, only their tails and wing-tips edged by the glow. Shoals of fish are a mass of shimmering sparkles and individuals are reduced to splashes in the darkness, leaving bursts of light hanging in the water. Even our own boat creates a show as luminous waves explode against the hull and our wake becomes a fast-fading jet path of bright green light. I’ll never forget how we dangled our legs over the sugar scoop at the stern, kicking our feet in the river and stirring up millions of tiny glowing fireworks beneath the water’s surface.

I’m so glad we’ve avoided countless bad shots with bits of fin sticking out from dark water or endless blurs of light, smudges of stars or phosphorescence that would rob these moments of their magic. No matter how fancy the camera, some things are best described by the reaction that they arouse in you, rather than recording what is seen.

And the very best bits, well, you’ll have to come here to find them.