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Community Corner

Westport Family Circumnavigates the Globe in 32-Foot Sailboat

The Hopkins Family returns home to Westport after 6-1/2 Years on the high seas.

Doug Hopkins' dream ever since he could remember was to sail around the world.

On Sunday morning, having spent 6 1/2 years making his dream come true on the high seas, he returned safe and sound to Westport with his intrepid crew of three — wife Kyle and daughters Eliza, 15, and Abigail, 12.

With their 32-foot sailboat the Estrela (Portuguese for “star”) safely docked at Compo's Minuteman Yacht Club, two sets of deeply relieved grandparents — Roy and Betsy Dickinson of Westport and Tony and Kay Holt of Mansfield — greeted the world travelers with heartfelt hugs and kisses.

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On November 6, 2003, outfitted in down parkas in biting cold weather, the family set off from Cedar Point Yacht Club for an adventure they expected to take about two years. They followed a route through the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to New Zealand with a stop at the Galapagos archipelago, and onward to South Africa, Brazil and thence back home.

But a combination of mechanical repairs, weather conditions and a desire to extend the trip so that Abigail — just 5 years old at the journey’s beginning — would have memories to hold onto forever, made it necessary to prolong it.

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With 24 hours of videotape and 30,000 photographs, the Hopkins will have plenty of reminders of their incredible experience.

They also kept a running log of their trip which they “sail-mailed” to Kyle’s brother George in Concord, New Hampshire. George kept their website, www.SailingEstrela.com, current and compelling. Abigail, then six, contributed drawings to the blog during the early days of the journey.

The website is a chronicle of nature photographs and detailed accounts of the time at sea and landside treks into Malaysia, the Galapagos, the Luang Nam Tha rainforest in Laos and an expedition in flat-bottomed canoes through the pristine Okavango Delta in Botwsana.

The Hopkins had their share of scares, including a close encounter with a giant crocodile during the delta passage, but they said their adventure was magical. The water was so pure that they drank the untreated river water out of straws their African guides fashioned out of water lily stems.

“We fell in love with Africa and Africans,” Doug said in an interview during a celebration party his parents gave at the Minuteman Yacht Club. ”We made many friends.”

The family spent three months traveling to rural areas in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, setting up makeshfit camps with the help of African guides.

“It was like traveling at sea; we were self-sufficient,” Doug said. ”In the vast open spaces we saw elephants, lions, leopards, rhinoceros, snakes and birds. We saw places we had only dreamed of seeing.”

The scariest moment at sea occurred during the next-to-last day of the odyssey when they narrowly missed colliding with an unseen freighter in heavy fog. But there were no encounters with pirates and the Hopkins were unarmed, relying on their instincts to reason their way out of unwelcome encounters.

In its tight, cramped quarters, Estrela is outfitted with sophisticated electronics for navigation, receipt of weather faxes and a computer that enabled them to have close contact with their families back home.

With three solar panels, a wind turbine and hydropower — dragging a propeller and converting the energy to electricity — the Estrela’s engine was a back-up.

“We can see weather coming several days in advance,” Doug said.

They were also assisted by Herb Hilgenberg who operates a ham radio in his Toronto home and, as an “amateur weather expert,” he's in touch with mariners in the Atlantic and Caribbean.

“One time he alerted us that a system was coming and that we should slow down to avoid its worst effects,” Doug recalled. “We stopped for a day and missed the worst of the weather” which had not been apparent in the weather faxes.

Another time, they avoided disaster in the Pacific by departing a popular coral reef in advance of a storm; four other boats did not survive and there were human casualties.

Early on, Kyle wore a skin patch to control seasickness; it backfired, causing a severe eye problem that nearly blinded her in one eye. She discovered an effective antidote that cured her condition that was available in certain ports. She bought it in quantity, as she purchased sunscreen in bulk that was waterproof, non-greasy and highly protective. She credited the sunscreen with maintaining the fair complexions of the girls despite the years of travel in Equatorial latitudes.

“They look like they’ve been living under a stone,” Doug observed.

Early in Doug and Kyle’s relationship, it was established that sailing was Doug’s passion but Kyle was a land-lover, she said.

It was difficult to overcome her dislike of “heeling” (sharp tilting of the sailboat to stay on course in the wind), but Doug bought her a book, The Capable Cruiser, and shared his subscriptions to dazzling sailing magazines with her.

They bought a catamaran — a double-hulled sailboat — when Abigail was an infant and the ability to escape as a family on seaborne outings eventually hooked Kyle.

“We sailed to Martha’s Vineyard and spent the time with books and games and making dolls out of rope,” she recalled. “It was so great! I was ‘Wow! I like this!’”

“It’s all about the family,” she said. Kyle bought into Doug’s dream to circumnavigate the globe.

They spent two years planning for the adventure. They sold their house in Westport and their cars, found new homes for their dog and two cats and took their time deciding what boat to buy. The 32-foot West Sail with its full-length rudder for stability, its survival in the real-life “The Perfect Storm” event and its use as a lifeboat designed for nasty conditions in the North Sea as a rescue vessel” was selected.

Doug had been an environmental lawyer specializing in the oceans for the Environmental Defense Fund, a national advocacy organization, when he decided to break loose and fulfill his lifelong dream.

He’s now shifting gears, about to begin a second career as a high school teacher of environmental studies in his native Buffalo, New York.

“I’m so turned on to education from this experience,” he said. “I’m committed to inspiring the younger generation to make the world a better place. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

As one example, the Hopkins learned about depleted fish stocks when they observed hundreds of Malaysians board small candle-lit boats in the dark, casting nets with small mesh.

“There are no big fish left in those waters,” he said. “I can't see how we’ll ever have those big fish back.”

In Buffalo, Kyle will teach theatre, dance and music at the same school that their daughters will attend.

Estrela will never be far away. On June 29, the Hopkins family will board Estrela once again, bound for New York City, the Hudson River and Lake Erie to their new home in Buffalo.

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