Selling almost everything you have, quitting your job, and leaving the landlocked place you call home for a year to sail across the globe with complete strangers. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? That was the reality for Jaci Smith, the previous owner of Crazy J Cafe in Powell.
Q: How did you find out about the opportunity to sail?
Jaci: Interesting enough, it was a Facebook ad. I still have the screenshot that I took when I stumbled across it.
Q: What were you doing before going to sail across the globe?
Jaci: I was working full-time at Gunwerks as Director of Operations. I had already closed the cafe and sold the building when I found out about the race. I still had the orchard. I sold or processed my remaining livestock.
Q: What did it look like preparing to leave and sail?
Jaci: I had a manual to read on the boat and sailing. Additionally, I had weekly webinars. I also participated in 4 weeks of on-boat training spread out over six weeks with testing at the end of each week to qualify for the race.
Q: When did you leave?
Jaci: I made my first trip to the UK to train the first two weeks of June in 2023. I returned home for two weeks to finish tying up loose ends. Then I returned to the UK for a weekend of team building. I traveled to Scotland for a fun 80-mile hike on the Skye trail. Then I returned to the UK for 2 weeks of training. I then traveled to Iceland for 2 weeks where I drove and camped on the Ring Road. Then back to the UK for two weeks of boat prep before we set sail from Portsmouth, UK September 3, 2023.
Q: What was your main job on the boat?
Jaci: We rotated through all the jobs onboard the boat. I was watch leader during some legs where I managed a team within the boat. I ran most of our evolutions (sail changes, tacks and gybes). I especially loved doing peels where we change from one spinnaker to another that we hoist outside the existing sail, then drop the old sail so we are never without a sail up. I did victualling for one leg where I wrote the menu and procured all the food for the entire leg.
Q: What were some challenges you faced along the way?
Jaci: Extreme cold, extreme heat, tired most of the time (lack of sleep because of schedule and discomfort) and hard work, ALWAYS wet… we all actually struggled with skin sores called yachty body and trench foot where our skin would delaminate from being wet all the time. We had difficult team dynamics. We were 18 people that had never met from all over the world in a very small space being forced to work together. Rough waters and big winds had the boat heeled over at 45 degrees and the boat pitching and rolling, which made every task from moving, getting dressed, cooking, and using the restroom difficult.
Q: What did a day in your life look like on the boat?
Jaci: We ran a 24-hour schedule where we worked on deck for 4 hours (helming, trimming sails, sail changes, tacks, gybes), worked below deck (cooking, cleaning, navigation logs, engineering checks, and also being on call the help on deck if they needed it), 4-hour break that we could take a nap, 4 hours on deck, then an 8-hour break. All meals happened during our breaks and each time we wanted to sleep on a break we would have to roll out our sleeping bags because we hot bunked meaning that we shared bunks so when we were on deck, someone was sleeping in the bunk and then they would roll their sleeping bag up and stow it to come on deck and then we could set the bunk up for myself when I went down and visa versa.
Q: What was your goal when sailing?
Jaci: Ha! The goal was to sail fast and win, but also stay safe and have fun. But it was all about making the boat go as fast as possible without breaking things because we were penalized for breaking things.
Q: How did the journey end?
Jaci: We started out dead last. We lost the first 3 races. Our boat name was Ha Long Bay and the rest of the fleet made a joke “Ha Long are you going to be out there?” because we were so slow. Then we started to click as a team and pulled off a win out of nowhere… We thought it was a fluke but we started securing a lot more wins after that with a few races where we came in the middle of the pack. By the time we came across the Pacific, we were sitting in first place overall. We did not maintain a giant lead but somehow we managed to pull off an overall win by just 1 point and it came down to the very last 4 hours of racing where the next boat was a quarter mile behind us!
Q: When did you get back?
Jaci: The race ended and we parked the boat for the very last time on July 27, 2024, back in Portsmouth, UK. I remained in the UK for a week before turning to Wyoming.
Q: How long did the race take?
Jaci: The race took around 11 months to race 45,000 miles.
Q: What was it like getting back to normal life?
Jaci: It has been more difficult than I expected. I feel like I have experienced something that no one will ever grasp unless they experience it also. It sometimes doesn’t feel like it is worth the effort of trying to explain because they won’t be able to grasp it. Also, a lot of the things that matter to most don’t matter anymore… I went weeks without a shower, ate over and undercooked pasta, was only allowed 40 pounds of gear for an entire year, so often went weeks without changing clothes and only brushed my hair once a week when we got a calm day, and I could go on deck and redo my braids… I had no air conditioning or heater. I think of the complaints and discomfort I would avoid before and learned to work through them.
Q: What are you doing now that you are home?
Jaci: Trying to remember the life lessons I learned on the boat about focusing only on what matters most. Embracing the things I missed like being able to walk around, mountains, hunting, friends, and family.
Q: Do you have any plans for more adventures?
Jaci: This has been one of the harder questions for me to handle…I feel like everyone has this expectation of me to do something grander… when I am really not sure what I want to do next. I thought I did but I really don’t know so I keep telling people that I will be just as surprised as them when I decide what comes next.
