Slipstream - Leaders - in - formation

Life on a Sailboat: An Interview with Sheila Baildon 

Sheila Baildon, one of our regular listeners, has spent the last three years living on a sailboat and sailing from the Mediterranean to the South Pacific. We were curious and asked her a few questions about her experiences and what other podcasts she likes to listen to.

1) What's your story? Where are you from in the UK, and what did you do up until three years ago?

Actually, I'm Canadian, and I met my husband, Reinhard, in 1977 at uni in Vancouver, Canada.

Up until three years ago, I put most of my energy into ordinary things like bringing up our kids, doing housework and laundry, and being involved in my community and my church. At uni in Canada (a long time ago) I did a BA in psychology and then trained as a primary school teacher. Then, after our first daughter was born in 1981, we moved to Germany, and lived there till 1997.  We moved from Germany to Canterbury, Kent in 1997.

From 2002 - 2006 we lived in Michigan, USA, and then Victoria, Canada, and I taught English to speakers of other languages in those places too. My most exciting TESOL experience was in Michigan. The church we attended there offered Bible studies in easy English for international women. Most of those who attended regularly were truly curious about the Bible and especially the life and teachings of Jesus, and they enjoyed the classes.

2)   What prompted you to go on this sailboat journey?

The short answer is, my husband prompted me. He'd wanted to do this for a long time, and when he retired in September 2006 we bought a used sailboat, Blue Raven, and moved onto it in Mallorca. After about 7 months in the Mediterranean, we sailed to Gibraltar, and joined a group called the Blue Water Rally. That's an organisation that offers excellent support for things like transiting the Panama Canal and other aspects of long cruises. We went with the BWR as far as Tahiti, but then dropped out because they circumnavigate the globe in 20 months, and we had family commitments that made this schedule inconvenient for us. So we spent an entire sailing season in the South Pacific, and arrived in Australia late last year. We have spent the past year mainly in Australia and New Zealand (interrupted by a visit to Manchester in January for the happy occasion of our daughter's wedding), and our journey is almost over. In August we'll have Blue Raven shipped back to the Mediterranean and we'll pick her up in October in France.

3) What has been the most unusual experience you have had during your adventure? What's been your favourite place to visit?

It's incredibly difficult to choose just one. We've sailed a total of 20,000 nautical miles (that's about 23,000 regular miles) since moving onto Blue Raven in 2006, and we've been to over 20 countries and had a lot of experiences that seemed very unusual to us.

One day when we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with very little wind and barely moving, we were suddenly surrounded by about 100 pilot whales. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, and we just let the boat drift for about an hour, feeling like interlopers in the middle of a whales' social event.

I think one of the most unusual countries we visited was Niue. This island has a circumference of just over 60 km and a population of under 1,500 people, living in about a dozen small villages. Just visiting Niue is difficult because there are no navigational lights or even village lights visible at night, so we had to be sure to arrive in daylight, which was not easy as it took us six days to sail there from the Cook Islands. There are frequent shipwrecks in the reefs along the coast, so we didn't want to take any chances. If the winds had been too high to approach the island safely during daylight we would have given it a wide berth and sailed straight past it to Tonga. Fortunately we arrived on a fairly calm day so were able to stop. We spent a few days there and went around the whole island. Every few miles on the circular road around the island there is a 'beach track' and at the end of these tracks are some truly spectacular places: caves and chasms with fresh and salt-water pools, sandy coves, and natural pools in the coral reefs that surround the island. We met a lot of friendly local people who were always happy to point us towards the nicest places.

4) What podcasts (both Slipstream and others) have been the most interesting and helpful to on your journey?

I listen to several BBC podcasts, and several Christian ones in addition to Slipstream. Here are some of the Christian ones I listen to:

Godpod - sometimes a group of theologians from St Paul's Theological Centre discusses listeners' emailed faith-related questions; other times an invited speaker responds to the theologians' questions. Some of the topics are fascinating, as are the answers.

Sermon podcasts from various churches including All Souls Langham Place, Holy Trinity Brompton, Mars Hill Bible Church, Tenth Avenue Alliance Church in Vancouver, Canada, and one German podcast called Christus-Treff Marburg.

Science Newsflash - this is a podcast from a US organisation called Reasons to Believe, and the format is a brief summary of a recent science news story and then their Christian perspective on it. I like it because they are very respectful towards people who disagree with them, and their intent is to help people appreciate the loving God who created the universe and everything in it.

The Cell's Design - also from Reasons to Believe, this is a series of 14 podcasts corresponding to chapters of a book of the same title, written by biochemist Fazale Rana. Essentially, he revives Paley's approach to natural theology from a new angle, and looks at similarities between designs by God, and things designed by people who reflect God's image.

Tony Campolo's Across the Pond podcast.

5) What Christian leaders do you admire the most?

I know John Stott has retired, but he still has a substantial influence on Christian leaders as well as ordinary Christians like me. Someone gave me a copy of Basic Christianity shortly after I became a Christian in the 70s, and I found the book very helpful in trying to figure out what I'd got myself into.
I first read Jim Wallis's Agenda for a Biblical People in the 70s and it made a lot of sense to me - it was the book that gave me permission to think about issues that the churches I'd attended didn't seem to consider important for Christians, whose first priorities should be evangelism and worship.

When I was a fairly new Christian, Elaine Storkey was one of the first prominent female evangelicals I became aware of, and her approach to gender roles within the church seemed reasonable and level-headed to me.

I encountered Rob Bell fairly recently, and was thoroughly impressed with his book Velvet Elvis and his concept of 'Brickianity'.

6) What are you hoping to gain from this experience and what do you plan to do upon your return?

First of all, I've had a wonderful time and seen some amazingly beautiful places. I have learned a lot about people, animals and places. But this trip has not just been about where I am and what I'm doing. In one way it's no different from being at home - the most important thing to me is the people I meet and how I relate to them. After all, wherever I am, I am a Christian and I take Jesus with me. I am not the sort of person who goes out 'evangelising' - but I don't want to pass up opportunities to point to our loving God whenever there is an opportunity or a need and it seems appropriate. I have been experimenting with that a bit this trip, and have had some positively surprising experiences. I think some of the books I've been reading and the mp3 files I've been listening to have not only been highly interesting and sometimes entertaining, but have also helped me to find ways of doing this that don't seem tasteless, insensitive, or even irrelevant.

As for what we plan to do on our return, we're still full of ideas and otherwise not sure.