“Westchester Family Prepares for Trip Around the World” – Hometown News Article

Starting this October, Westchester’s Rigney family will embark on the trip of a lifetime as they leave their home, their friends and most of their possessions behind to spend the next three to five years traveling the world and its most exotic locations on a sailboat.

For Eric Rigney, the trip is the culmination of a lifelong dream that started when he was just a teenager, when he and his uncle, Bill Kohut, sailed to Hawaii on a cement sailboat they built together. Later they would travel to French Polynesia and spend 18 months living on the island like locals. The experience left Eric with the dream of working hard and one day recreating a similar experience with his own family.

Now Eric and his wife, Leslie, and their two children Bryce, 12 and Trent, 10, are renting out their home, tying up loose ends and getting their 42-foot sailboat named “Kandu” ready for the trip that will bring them to 70 different countries if everything goes according to plan.

While the snug living quarters or the danger of sailing in the open sea may scare most families from making a similar trip, the Rigney’s see this as an experience to grow as a family and take a break from the instant gratification, video games and fast food culture that is prevalent with a lot of teens these days.

“We are trying to pull them [the kids] out of the commercialism a little bit and pull them out of the Internet and the texting world. Life seems so fast right now, that we are going to slow things down. It’s also an opportunity as a family to grow,” said Eric. “I think it’s rare that parents get the opportunity to live with their kids, shoulder to shoulder, almost like back in the day when people were farmers. We have that opportunity where we can work along side each other and then have a unified goal to take care of the boat, maintain the boat and get to where we need to get. We need to rely on them and they have to rely on us, so it makes us a stronger family unit.”

While the chances of encountering a pirate ship, a whale bumping into their sailboat, or a direct lightening strike are rare, the Rigney’s are confident they can handle any situation that comes their way. They have carefully calculated their route to avoid storms and they will stay away from areas where pirates are known to congregate. They have been studying navigation, practicing first aid and will have shipwright, “Uncle Bill,” on board for the first seven month. He brings decades of ship maintenance and sailing to the team.

When the group sets off this October, their first stop will be Cabo San Lucas for the Baja Haha, a sailboat cruisers’ rally. There they hope to meet up with other like-minded families before heading off to such exotic locales as the Easter and Pitcairn Islands. For the Rigney family, the more far-off and unusual destination, the better.

While their days will be filled with cruising the oceans of the world, learning about the cultures they are visiting and all of the chores that accompany life at sea (laundry, fishing, taking care of the boat), a few creature comforts will be smuggled on board, including the Xbox that the boys will be allowed to play every once and a while. Leslie and Eric hope that once the trip gets started the experience and the hands-on learning will far outshine the lure of electronics.

While their friends and their family’s reactions to their trip range from excitement to concern, the Rigney’s hope their trip will motivate people to go back to basics and spend more time with their families.

“For a lot of people what [this trip seems] to do is inspire them to want to do something with their family and do something as a group for an extended period of time,” said Eric.

Interested in learning more? The Rigney’s will be detailing their travels through their website at rigneyskandu.com. They are also looking for schools or organizations to team up with to collect data and information.

Posted August 2013

http://www.thehometownnewsonline.com/familypreparesfortriparoundtheworld