The Viatorians are “swallowing the anchor” as they say, selling our boat and moving to Oman!

The last 4 months have been kind of frustrating – we got back from Cuba and then decided to keep cruising but thought our family would be more comfortable on a power boat.  We spent months looking at power boats, renting vehicles to drive up to Miami and way too long in a car, before coming full circle and deciding to buy a sailing catamaran, instead.  We even landed one and had an accepted offer.  Next we got an email from a Shell co-worker who recently moved to Brunei and said it was awesome and we should come too.  It took nearly 2 months to determine whether we would and should get a job or whether we would continue on a boat.  Yesterday everything fell into place!

We received and accepted an offer on Viatori and we were offered and accepted a job in Muscat, Oman!

For me, it is a little bittersweet as I know I am not entirely done with living on a boat.  Leah feels the same (I just checked).  We are sad that our cruising friends will be heading south without us in a few months, we are sad that we will have to say a longer goodbye to family than just Florida when we move across the globe instead of the continent and I am sad that I will have to wear shoes again as flip flops don’t quite cut it in an Omani office.

We love cruising, we enjoy being together 24/7 (most of the time ;), seeing new places, meeting new people and experiencing new cultures.  We will miss that.

We are excited to be close to Europe and able to explore that part of the world and we hope to meet many of you there (Edmonton has a direct flight to London).

Oman itself defies the (or my) stereotype of what the Middle East is like because it is south of Saudi Arabia.  They are religiously tolerant, show high respect for women and have a very large expat community as about 1/6 of the population is foreign.  The job offer we got was too good to turn down – the job is going to be a natural step for me from my last job, comes with a ton of vacation, is a cheap flight from Europe and will help grow the cruising kitty dramatically.

However, our long term plan is to eventually return to cruising, so while we are in Oman we plan to spend at least a few weeks a year on the water in charter boats in Greece, Turkey, Croatia and possibly the French Canals.  We are also exploring the idea of buying our next cruising boat now, putting it in charter and paying it off while we are working.  As per usual there are still a lot of details up in the air and the only thing that is constant is change but after of a year of living that way we are almost used to it.

The boys are excited about the idea of travelling and seeing different parts of our planet, going back to school and enjoying life in a completely different setting.

We intend to continue to blog as we travel the world, experience new cultures, buy our next boat and plan our next trip.  Stay tuned.