Parishioner will share story of 11 years on the oceans

Kimberly Lovo, parishioner at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, is speaking next week at the Women’s Club breakfast about the 11 years she spent living on a boat with her family sailing across the Pacific Ocean. 

Lovo, originally from Vermont, had grown up boating on Lake Champlain, but beyond that, she and her husband had little sailing experience before setting off in 1990.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I could live on a boat and do everything we did,” she said. 

The couple was living in Europe, where they skied every weekend before moving to Panama. Lovo’s husband served in the military, and she was a special education teacher. When they got there and could no longer ski on weekends, they began looking for a new hobby. Lovo encouraged her husband to take sailing lessons.

After unexpectedly losing several friends in a short span of time, the couple decided that life was too short not to chase an adventure. 

They got their 50-foot boat in Miami, hired a crew and sailed south to Panama. After living on their boat and working in Panama for a time, they spent about a year cruising around Central America before sailing west with their son, Alex, who was three at the time.

Lovo homeschooled Alex on the boat from kindergarten through eighth grade, using the world around them as their classroom – studying weather patterns, constellations, birds, sea life, currencies and cultures from every place they traveled.

“As he aged up, he was fantastic at the radar if we were ever in a storm,” she said.

They stopped at islands along the way, including the Galapagos, and ended up in New Zealand where they spent a season avoiding hurricanes. They sailed to Australia, up into Indonesia and concluded their journey in Thailand in 2002. 

They ultimately stopped sailing because they were dedicated to getting their son into a proper high school, Lovo said. Alex went on to become the captain of the sailing team at West Point and is now a major in the Army. 

The Lovos live in Rotonda and have been part of St. Andrew’s for 16 years now. Lovo helped launch the Women’s Breakfast at the church, and next week she’ll be speaking to the group. Due to growing interest from men, the breakfast has been expanded to include them.

“It’s my favorite subject to talk about,” she said. “We’re great at cocktail parties.”