Sonia Johal is sitting in Curaçao, in the Caribbean, with her chihuahua Buoy. She will spend her day walking him along the beach, catching up on emails, carrying out maintenance on her boat and exploring the island where she has been anchored these past few weeks.
But life has not always been like this.
In 2009 Johal, now 59, had completed the New York marathon and started a teacher training course when routine blood tests revealed that she had a pituitary tumour.
Complications during the surgery left her temporarily blind, and with cluster headaches and extreme fatigue. When the tumour returned in 2013, she needed a second surgery.
“It took me another year to get over that. I tried to work, but couldn’t — I felt like I was 100 years old,” said Johal, who is from Scunthorpe. “I realised I needed to do something drastic.”
It took years to build up the courage, but Johal decided to sell everything she owned, buy a boat and sail around the world. She had previously studied marine and coastal management, and had worked as a scuba diving instructor before gaining a skipper’s licence, which qualifies you to operate a yacht.
Johal sold her two-bedroom flat in Richmond, west London, for about £700,000 and, after clearing her mortgage and keeping back enough to buy a boat and for living expenses, put the rest of the proceeds — about £200,000 — into her pension.
Johal’s Hanse 385 sailing boat
She bought a 38ft Hanse 385 sailing boat, named Salacia, for about £100,000, using a specialist yachting lawyer to manage the negotiations and ensure the paperwork was in order.
“I got my old skipper books out and went through everything again. To build my confidence and fitness I island-hopped around Shetland, Fair Isle and Orkney,” she said. “I sailed to Ireland, then to Wales and round to Devon.”
Finally, in 2024, it was time to go further afield. She left England in July with her 17-year-old nephew Jay on board to help for the first few weeks.
Since then she has sailed to France and Spain, through the Bay of Biscay — “that was horrendous” — across the Atlantic to St Lucia and spent three months on Martinique, where the food was “amazing”.
“People were cheering and hooting as I limped into the marina at St Lucia. I’d slowed right down because something wasn’t right with the boat,” she said. “There was a crowd welcoming me and I started crying. It felt safe and like a warm, family atmosphere.”
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Johal often sails alone but on more difficult stretches employs crew — often backpackers with no sailing experience — to help her run the boat.
Just over a year into her journey, she has seen whales breach the surface, bioluminescence light up the water, and at times navigated using only the stars. “The Atlantic has got to be the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ll never see a sky as brightly full of stars as I did then, and the beauty of the sunsets,” Johal said.
Now enjoying Curaçao, a small Caribbean island that is 40 miles long with a population of about 156,000, Johal is waiting to replace the sail drive on her boat before she sets off again.
Boat maintenance is one of her biggest outlays these days, and she expects the repair to cost almost £3,000. It’s about $600 (£440) a month to keep her yacht in a boatyard while it awaits repair, but anchoring at sea is free.
Johal often sails alone but on more difficult stretches employs crew to help her run the boat
Other costs are low compared with her life in England. “I spend little on food, and there’s no point buying designer clothes when you live on a boat,” she said.
Stocking up for larger journeys is more expensive. A month’s supply of food and water for Johal and two crew while she sailed the Atlantic cost about £500.
“You buy more than you need in case something happens. If there’s a storm or you lose your engine and you’re stuck at sea, you don’t want to be worrying about food,” she said.
Boat insurance is her other main outlay. This was about £600 a year when she was sailing around the UK, but increased to £2,000 when she crossed the Atlantic.
“But compared to my expenditure when I was living in Richmond, it’s nothing. To rent there these days would cost £2,000 a month and I’m nowhere near that,” she said. “I draw down from my pension when I need to, and while I do worry about money I think I’ll be OK.”
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Instead, managing her health is a top priority — after Buoy, of course — and she makes sure to rest during the day and eat well.
While she has no set itinerary planned, she hopes to travel through the Panama Canal and then make her way to Australia.
“It will take me years, but I’m not ready to come home yet,” she said. “Being seriously ill makes you think about things differently. Taking a different path, for me, was the right thing to do.”
Clinton Mora is a reporter for Trending Insurance News. He has previously worked for the Forbes. As a contributor to Trending Insurance News, Clinton covers emerging a wide range of property and casualty insurance related stories.