Entrepreneur and Family Set Sail on 3-Year Journey

Scott and Mandi Leonard and their three children are set to depart on a 50-foot sailboat for three years, traveling to more than 100 countries. But the California couple insists this is not just a sailing trip.

"It just happens to be that the home we're going to live in and our mode of transportation is over the water," says Scott Leonard. "It isn't about going from point A to point B -- it's about the experience of really seeing all these different places as a family."

Scott Leonard, a 43-year-old entrepreneur, and wife Mandi, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mom, have both lived internationally and want to expose their sons -- Griffin, 11, Jake, 9, and Luke, 5 -- to other cultures outside of the United States. Their route will take them from the Caribbean to Indonesia, avoiding parts of Africa and other dangerous pirate areas.

The skilled sailing couple talk about achieving a better work-life balance while out at sea. Through a satellite phone connection (which allows anyone in the world to call them at a local number) and broadband internet, Scott Leonard will continue to run his business, Trovena, a wealth management firm based in Redondo Beach. He plans to take quarterly trips back to California. Mandi Leonard will homeschool the children, preparing their oldest to start high school when they return in 2014.

Talks of the voyage started in 2001, and by 2004 it was marked on the family calendar. Scott Leonard built his business so that he could eventually work remotely during the trip. Now the family's Hermosa Beach home is on the market, and nearly everything in it is for sale, "down to the dishes and silverware," he says.

The family's catamaran -- named "Three Little Birds," after the three Leonard boys -- is equipped with a washer-dryer and four cabins, each with a queen-sized bed and bathroom. (Check out the video below.) They won't have television but will bring laptops and e-readers so they can blog about their experiences on the Three Little Birds website. They plan to set sail the first week of July from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"My motto in the past two weeks has been 'Ready or not, here we come,'" Leonard says. "The house isn't sold yet, so we're basically going to walk away and hope for the best."

In an interview with SecondAct.com, Leonard talks about why this is an important trip for his family, how they've simplified their lives, and some of the things he'll miss.

SA: Why embark on such a long international voyage?
SL: It started as a childhood dream to sail around the world, to a newlywed's desire to go spend six months on a sabbatical sailing around the Caribbean, to what it is now -- a goal of sharing the world with our kids. Both my wife and I think it's so important to understand not only who we are as Americans, but also how fortunate we are in so many ways. We also wanted to try and spend some quality time with [the kids] before they started high school -- thinking that high school starts a transition to kids trying to break away and really gain their independence, and not want to hang out much with their parents. So this was probably the only time we could have this experience together as a family. My father passed away right after I was in college; he was 48. I'm 43 now, so it comes the time that I say, 'Why put it off?'

SA: What have you learned in planning the trip?
SL: [The process has been] such a simplification of our lives to what is critically important for us -- really relating to stuff. We've realized what hoarders we are, the stuff we hold onto as we try to downsize a 3,200-square-foot home to a sailboat. Why do we still have double strollers when the kids aren't in strollers anymore? We're saving memorabilia: the kids' photos, drawings, artwork, family photos, wedding photos. I'm still running my business, so there is a certain set of clothing that's being left behind -- all my suits and dress clothes are staying here in L.A.

SA: What challenges have you faced while planning the trip?
SL: What's been most difficult are those three o'clock in the morning moments when you wake up and you're like, 'What the hell am I doing?' I think: Am I being irresponsible? Am I putting my kids' lives at a risk that's not appropriate for a parent to do? As the sole provider and wage earner for the family, am I putting my career too much at risk? Am I taking risks that may not allow me to put my kids through college? Those are the biggest challenges, the quiet moments of reflection.

SA: What's your plan of action once you set sail?
SL: When we push out of Florida, the first place we hit is the Bahamas. Our goal is to get to the very southern part of the Caribbean because it's hurricane season right now -- so much of our plan really falls around the weather. As hurricane season ends around November, we'll start coming back up to the Caribbean in a more leisurely way, work our way to Mexico, Belize, go through the Panama Canal, to the Galapagos Islands, to French Polynesia, Fiji, and then to New Zealand and Australia, go back into the South Pacific, and then hit Micronesia, Indonesia, ending the summer of 2014.

It's not like you're planning your nine-month trip through Europe after college [where you have all your destinations mapped out]. It kind of gets made up as you go along. We're going to stay where we like and we're going to leave where we don't like. The boat only moves about 10 percent of the time, and the rest of the time it's going to be at an island some place. We're really going to try and stop everywhere along the way.

SA: What will you miss?
SL: First, there's a very superficial, materialistic list of things that I will miss and one of those is the ability to watch the Lakers play. It's relaxing for me and I've grown up watching them. Secondly, I'll miss the utter abundance of everything we have here in the U.S. You walk into a grocery store and just take it for granted how much food is there. It's the 24/7 nature, pure convenience of everything, and I think that's something that's going to take a while for us to get used to [not having]. Lastly, [we'll miss] a lot of the personal relationships we have with friends and family.

SA: How do you think your quality of life will change?
SL: Right now I think we have a pretty good balance in my commitment to work relative to my commitment to the family. Where I don't think we have the balance so much as a family is we are a typical suburban family where the kids don't go run in the street anymore, all of their activities are arranged and have to be plugged into a calendar. Mandi is as much a bus driver as anything else to get the kids from activity one to activity two, and I think that is one of the things that we're really getting away from. I don't know if that's so much work-life balance as it is back to the basics. It's back to not having our lives programmed and scheduled out and just be a little more flexible to do the things we need and want to do.

SA: Any last-minute preparations?
SL: The last thing set on the calendar is medical training. [Mandi and I] are doing four-day intensive medical training on the boat. We'll learn how to put in sutures, how to put in IVs and [perform] minor surgeries. We'll have medical kits with IV bags, syringes, penicillin, scalpels, suture kits, painkillers and antibiotics. We will also do training with the kids: four hours on basic CPR, how to call in for help, how to hook up a defibrillator. Medical emergencies are probably the big wake-up-at-night concerns. On a remote island, there is no 911 call.