Some people are out on the water chasing fish. Others are chasing a waypoint they’ve always wanted to visit. Still others are chasing an idea of freedom that they’ve never been able to find on land.
Richard and Ali Hadida are out there chasing a feeling, one they experienced secondhand when they attended the arrival party in Antigua at the end of the last Oyster World Rally. The owners of those Oyster yachts, having just spent more than a year exploring the world as a fleet, made a real impression on the Oyster shipyard’s owner and chairman. He and his wife stood amid all the returning sailors and felt absolutely mesmerized.
“They’re so excited, and they’re all in tears and emotional and making speeches, and everyone’s crying,” Richard recalls. He and Ali looked at each other and realized they were witnessing human beings who had actually had a true experience of a lifetime.
They wanted to have that feeling firsthand. Initially, they talked about taking Richard’s Oyster 885, Lush, on an Oyster World Rally a few years in the future. But then Ali reminded Richard that he has carpe diem tattooed on his wrist. “It’s how I get my way most of the time,” she says with a chuckle.
The two of them—with their 2-year-old son, Harry, barefoot and diapered—set off in mid-January from Antigua with a crew that includes a nanny. Their plan for the 16-month-long Oyster World Rally is not to come and go from the yacht while the crew handles the tough stuff, but instead to sail every inch of the globe with the rest of the Oyster owners through the end of this year and into 2027, when the fleet is scheduled to cross its wake in Antigua.
From the start, the Hadidas were standing watch just like everyone else as Lush headed for Panama’s San Blas Islands. Ali was getting over an initial bout of seasickness and starting to feel more at home on board, and the two of them were acting as full-on members of the crew.
Young Harry was in his element from the first day, Richard says: “He loves it. One of Ali’s friends said to her, when she hears that we’re taking a 2-year-old around the world, she finds it stressful taking her 2-year-old to a shopping mall.” Early on, though, Ali realized that one of Harry’s most troublesome habits—he likes to wander off—vanished on the boat. “He looks at the sea and he knows there he is,” she says.
Perhaps at any age, there’s just something about being out there on the water, catching that feeling.
