Sailing around the world • Lagoon 450S
How we prepared for a circumnavigation, years in advance
Steve and Meghan did not buy a boat and leave. Some Tuesday had been their boat since 2018, Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club had been home since 2017, and the departure date was on the calendar before the summer of 2025. This is that preparation: the timeline, the refit, the training, and the float plan they shared at the club, then what the voyage actually did.
A timeline of getting ready
Around 1998: a menu option
A sailing trip with Joe Stensland, around 1998, is when Steve saw that this lifestyle was a menu option that existed. He spent many years dreaming of sailing. Between 1998 and 2013 there were a few opportunities, but not many.
2013: get serious
When he moved to California in 2013 he got serious about learning to sail. The advice was simple: if you want to learn to sail, join a race crew. Doing that, you sail under skippers who were born with a tiller in their hand. Put your ego aside, ask questions, and soak up the knowledge, and you learn a lot. In 2013 and 2014 he took ASA 101, 102, 103, 104, and 114.
2017: a home club
Little Ships Fleet Yacht Club, in Alamitos Bay, Long Beach, has been the home club since 2017. The July 2025 talk, the newsletter pages, and the burgee that later crossed the Pacific all come from that membership. Read the Little Ships Fleet yacht club page.
2018: the boat, Meghan, and a date to set
In 2018 Steve and Meghan started working side by side. The same year he took delivery of Some Tuesday, a 2017 Lagoon 450S. She was christened on 17 March 2018 and sailed her first trip with Steve at the helm. At Catalina Island’s Buccaneer Days in 2018, a sailor told them to set a date or they would still be dreaming in a decade. The boat has raced the Newport to Ensenada every year since 2018, and won her class in 2018 and 2019. By the night of the talk, that partnership was seven years of working together, all day, every day.
2023: a date, and the refit
In 2023 they set the date: September 2025. That is when their business lease expired, so it was a natural date. The planned refit began in September 2023. It soon became obvious September 2025 was not realistic, so it slipped to October, then later with delays in parts orders and an electronics refit that expanded in scope because Steve kept seeing the benefit of additional upgrades. They never thought they would spend Thanksgiving in California. A delayed order for necessary parts made that happen, and that is how the date got pushed to 3 December 2025. Getting ready for a life change like this always takes longer than you think, no matter how hard you push, because you are basically shutting down a land-based life and opening up a sea-based one. Steve’s standard joke: “Pretty much every vendor in the maritime industry appears to think of deadlines as mere suggestions.”
26 July 2025: the talk at the Shed
About 35 Little Shippers came to the Shed. No slides. Photos, stories, and the float plan: a loop of roughly 30,000 to 40,000 nautical miles, around the world and home to Long Beach. S/C Moti handled the AV.
3 December 2025: the dock lines
Some Tuesday left Los Angeles on 3 December 2025, with a quick stop at Catalina. The float plan is the working document from there. Where the boat is now is a different page, updated from the boat.
Closing the business
This was never just a sailing trip. They closed Meghan, Inc. to make the journey, simplified everything else, and made room for what mattered. The line they kept coming back to, including at the club, was that closing the last physical location felt like cutting the dock lines. With every step they looked at each other and said they were really doing this.
Getting Some Tuesday ready
The planned refit began in September 2023 and became much more major than originally planned. The mast came down for inspection. New sails went up. The salon became a proper living room. The port forward cabin and head became the storage locker. An electronics refit expanded in scope because Steve kept seeing the benefit of additional upgrades. She is a 45-foot boat with three cabins, three heads, and a galley sized for living aboard. The name was already three generations old by then.
New sails
| Sail | Area |
|---|---|
| Main (extended roach) | 850 sq ft |
| Genoa | 527 sq ft |
| Asymmetrical spinnaker | 1,722 sq ft |
| Code Zero | 1,131 sq ft |
Safety gear
What went aboard for offshore: a liferaft, PLBs, an EPIRB, a drogue, offshore flares, and whale pingers. Where the Lifesling, dan buoy, extinguishers, and PFDs live on this boat is the safety briefing.
Systems, comfort, and spares
The refit list from the talk:
- Systems. PredictWind DataHub, glassed-in escape hatches, a wash-down pump. The watermaker, autopilot, and thru-hulls were serviced.
- Comfort. Solar, upgraded batteries (yes, for the air conditioning), a new mattress, a dishwasher, and a new barbecue.
- Spares. A house water pump, engine parts, joker valves, impellers, and zincs.
- Tender. A Walker Bay Generation 12 LTE, the daily driver.
The fun gear, including folding electric scooters
Paddle boards, folding electric scooters, a scuba tank compressor, and fishing gear. The compressor shows up again in the “ready for anything” list: stocking sutures and a scuba compressor felt, in their words, like preparing for anything.
Learning to sail, and training for offshore
No single afternoon made the trip. The pieces:
- ASA 101, 102, 103, 104, and 114 in 2013 and 2014, after years of dreaming about the time on the water.
- Newport to Ensenada every year since 2018, a 125-mile race, with class wins in 2018 and 2019.
- The US Sailing International Safety at Sea course (with the hands-on practical), taken at California Yacht Club in summer 2025.
- Practice in tough conditions on purpose. The line from the talk was, “Bad weather today? Let’s go sailing!”
- Steve taking on heavy-weather sailing and navigation. Meghan taking on provisioning and meal planning, and using her design work to turn the boat into a home. She creates; the couture, the crafting, and the interiors are hers.
Every passage plan uses PredictWind weather routing, the chartplotters, and a professional weather router, Ocean Tactics. That is the routing setup they use.
Who does what
Meghan runs provisioning, interior design, and cultural research. Steve takes navigation, mechanical systems, and safety gear. They learned early that clear communication, such as agreeing who handles the anchor, is what keeps the boat moving. Seven years of working side by side turned out to be the useful rehearsal.
The dogs
Colonel Mustard and Mr. Pickles are full-time crew. They have their own spaces aboard, life vests, and boat-life training, grass pad included, and dog-friendly stops were part of the plan from the talk. They crossed the Pacific. The papers on board, and the rule that import requirements get checked about 90 days before a new country, are in the float plan’s dogs section, next to the paperwork timeline.
Staying in touch, and ready when something breaks
Starlink is for weather and for work. A Garmin inReach is the backup messenger and a redundant GPS. If something breaks, the plan was spares, a drogue for emergency steering, a redundant autopilot, and a well-stocked medical kit. The float plan’s communications line is the same set, plus the PredictWind tracker: Starlink, inReach, tracker.
The downtime everyone asked about
People asked what they would do with it. The answer at the Shed was daily exercise, reading, Meghan creating couture, crafting, decorating, getting better at sailing, and learning local customs and a few phrases before each new place. The line they used: they are not just sailing around the world. They are building a new life with the dogs and each other.
The float plan shared in July 2025
A loop of roughly 30,000 to 40,000 nautical miles, home to Long Beach. This is the version they put on the table that night. The current document, revised as the boat moved, is the float plan.
- October 2025 through August 2026. South along Mexico and Central America to Panama, with Ecuador and the Galápagos.
- July through August 2026. Across the Pacific from Panama to French Polynesia, about 6,000 nautical miles. French Polynesia customs and clearance guide.
- August 2026 through August 2027. The South Pacific, with a cyclone-season pause.
- September 2027 through May 2028. The western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea.
- June 2028 through July 2029. The Med, then across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.
- June through October 2030. Through the Panama Canal and home to Long Beach.
What actually happened
Plans are written in sand at low tide. They still sailed down Mexico. Life changed the Panama plan, and the Pacific jump left from El Salvador.
- 3 December 2025. Cast off from Los Angeles, with a stop at Catalina.
- December 2025. Ensenada, Bahía Tortugas (Turtle Bay), then Cabo San Lucas on 20 December.
- December 2025 through February 2026. La Paz and the Sea of Cortez, Puerto Vallarta, Barra de Navidad, Manzanillo, and Acapulco. It took a while to sink in, even for them. Sitting in La Paz with a margarita, Steve told Meghan, “This may still feel like we’re on vacation, but we’re not. This is our life now. We live here, on the ocean.”
- February 2026. Meghan needed back surgery and flew home from Acapulco.
- Late February through March 2026, Steve solo. Steve solo-sailed over 700 miles from Acapulco to Bahía del Sol, El Salvador, with a checkout stop at Puerto Madero, Chiapas. Meghan flew back to the boat in El Salvador.
- 2 through 29 April 2026. Across the Pacific together, El Salvador to the Marquesas. 28 days. Waiting longer would have meant worse conditions and less wind. The crossing log. Landfall notes.
- From 29 April, the Marquesas. Taiohae Bay, Nuku Hiva, then Anaho Bay, Daniel’s Bay, and Ua Pou. French Polynesia customs and clearance guide.
- Late May through June, the Tuamotus. Raroia, Fakarava, and Rangiroa. How the passes went. French Polynesia customs and clearance guide.
- Late June through July, the Society Islands. Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora. French Polynesia customs and clearance guide.
- August 2026. Aitutaki in the Cook Islands, then Niue. Cook Islands customs and clearance guide.
- September 2026, Tonga. The Vava’u group, then the Ha’apai group. Tonga. Tonga customs and clearance guide. The whale swim is on the channel.
- Next, as of the club page. Back up to Vava’u to check out for Fiji, around 18–19 October 2026, and about six months there. Fiji customs and clearance guide.
The open question they already named: getting to the Med in 2028. The Gulf of Aden is not safe right now, and they do not yet know how they will get there.
Questions we actually get
How far ahead did you prepare to sail around the world?
Around 1998, on a sailing trip with Joe Stensland, Steve saw that this lifestyle was a menu option that existed. He spent many years dreaming of sailing, with a few opportunities between 1998 and 2013 but not many. In 2013 he moved to California and got serious about learning to sail. In 2018, at Catalina Island’s Buccaneer Days, a sailor told them to set a date or they would still be dreaming in a decade. In 2023 they set the date: September 2025, when their business lease expired. The planned refit began in September 2023. September 2025 was not realistic, so it slipped to October, then later with delays in parts orders and an electronics refit that expanded because Steve kept seeing the benefit of additional upgrades. They never thought they would spend Thanksgiving in California. A delayed order for necessary parts made that happen, and the date moved to 3 December 2025. Getting ready for a life change like this always takes longer than you think, no matter how hard you push, because you are basically shutting down a land-based life and opening up a sea-based one. Steve’s standard joke: “Pretty much every vendor in the maritime industry appears to think of deadlines as mere suggestions.”
What boat is Some Tuesday?
A 2017 Lagoon 450S sailing catamaran, 45 feet, with three cabins and three heads. She was christened on 17 March 2018. The name comes from a family line, not a calendar.
What training did you do before going offshore?
ASA 101, 102, 103, 104, and 114 in 2013 and 2014, and the US Sailing International Safety at Sea course (with the hands-on practical), taken at California Yacht Club in summer 2025. When he got serious, the advice was to join a race crew: you sail under skippers who were born with a tiller in their hand, and if you put your ego aside, ask questions, and soak up the knowledge, you learn a lot. Newport to Ensenada every year since 2018, and practice in tough conditions on purpose. Steve worked on heavy-weather sailing and navigation. Meghan took on provisioning and meal planning.
What did you do to get the boat ready?
The planned refit began in September 2023 and became much more major than originally planned. The mast came down for inspection, new sails went up, the salon became a living room, and the port forward cabin and head became storage. An electronics refit expanded in scope because Steve kept seeing the benefit of additional upgrades. The new sails were a main of 850 square feet, a genoa of 527, an asymmetrical spinnaker of 1,722, and a Code Zero of 1,131, in tri-radial Pro Radial cloth. Safety gear included a liferaft, PLBs, an EPIRB, a drogue, offshore flares, and whale pingers. Systems work included a PredictWind DataHub, glassed-in escape hatches, a wash-down pump, and service on the watermaker, autopilot, and thru-hulls.
How do you route weather offshore?
Passage plans use PredictWind weather routing, the chartplotters, and a professional weather router, Ocean Tactics. Offshore, Starlink is for weather and work, with a Garmin inReach as the backup messenger and a redundant GPS. The float plan also lists a PredictWind tracker.
Did the dogs come, and how did you prepare them?
Colonel Mustard and Mr. Pickles are full-time crew, with their own spaces aboard, life vests, and boat-life training, grass pad included. They crossed the Pacific. The papers carried on board, and the checks before each landfall, are on the float plan.
What happened to the plan to cross from Panama?
The July 2025 plan was south along Mexico and Central America to Panama, then across the Pacific. They still sailed down Mexico. Meghan needed back surgery in February 2026 and flew home from Acapulco. Steve solo-sailed over 700 miles from Acapulco to Bahía del Sol, El Salvador, with a checkout stop at Puerto Madero, Chiapas. They left for the Pacific from El Salvador, 2 to 29 April 2026, 28 days to the Marquesas.
The club version of this evening, with the newsletter and the burgee, stays on the yacht club page. The route from here is the float plan and where we are.