Hi. I’m Kiana. And I’m somewhere in the world right now…
But on the New Year of 2016, I was standing on my balcony in Downtown Miami watching the skyline light up with the sparkles of fireworks. The clock had just struck midnight, and just like that I had made up my mind.
Up until this day, my life had been propelled forward rather quickly by the choices made firstly by my parents, and as I got older, by myself. I was raised on a farm in a small town in Brazil, and was homeschooled by my mother, along with my younger brother and sister. After moving back to the United States, I enrolled in a public school in the middle of my 7th grade year. By the time I finished my sophomore year of high school, I knew that this system was not for me. I sought a way out, and eventually found myself attending university at the age of 16. A little over a year later, I decided that it was not the right time in my life for me to be pursuing academics or a degree. I had no focus, and was not in love with the fact that after only 3 semesters, I was well over $10,000 in debt. So I began to study real estate, and as soon as I turned 18 I passed the state exam, became a licensed real estate agent, and moved to Miami. That became my base and home, and I began chasing the dream.
The dream had always been of the day I would be able to take off and explore the world. Nevertheless, I was looking forward to a time that was to come after many years of hard work attempting to climb whatever ladder of success I had landed myself on.
Everything changed two years later, that New Years’ night, at the sight of hundreds of thousands of people celebrating the fact that they were all still alive and had reached another year. But what if we hadn't..? That short question became the concrete to my foundation. I was not going to let myself go on for years trying to achieve something that can be done today, especially being that we never know what is going to happen tomorrow.
Right away I began making plans, and telling everyone (literally EVERY one) that I was going to take off and go travel the world for an undetermined period of time (most probably forever). And I was going to leave only half a year from that New Years' night. Sure, I got a few weird looks and doubting comments, but the outpouring of love and support was, and has been, ten-fold.
Soon after I left my home in Miami and my travels began, I found myself in Saint Martin aboard a sailboat as English teacher/au pair. This was the first time I came to know that people actually lived on boats! I had no idea.
The freedom this lifestyle exposed me to was mind-boggling. You mean to tell me that I could move around the whole world, into any port, and along any coastline, using the wind??? However, my only example was this modern cruising family, who had worked hard to get where they were. I quit working, so logically I would never be able to afford my own plastic palace, or the sails to propel it, or the engines for when there is no wind. How about when some part or piece breaks and I have to import a new one?! Impossible, I concluded.
I sailed with the family from Saint Martin to Saba, then on to the Los Roques Archipelago followed by Curaçao. Finally, it was in the San Blas islands of Panama that I got a real taste of all that living on the water could really be.
I made a beautiful group of friends, all with their own styles of living aboard. One of these was a brilliant man by the name of Hans Klaar. He lived aboard a magnificent 70-foot long Polynesian voyaging canoe, which he built himself. Here I had an example of a wooden boat, built by hand and the sweat of one’s brow. A boat on which anything can be repaired, rather quickly and efficiently, using a piece of wood, a hand-plane, and some string. And he says he doesn’t use an engine when there is no wind!? His sail is made out of industrial tarp? How could that be?!
I soon found myself living aboard his ship, Ontong Java, and was to stay there for the following two years. During that time I learned, observed, and experienced things that began to further expand my mind and ideas about life and the innumerable ways in which it could be lived. I was able to differentiate the cruisers I had known, with true, tried, and tested sailors. And not only that, the sea began to call me to her in a way she never had before, making me fall more and more deeply in love without even noticing it… I wanted to be a sailor—a real sailor.
To do so I figured I would have to take these skills I learned and put them to the test. I wanted to prove to myself that I could continue to do anything I set my mind to, even when the ideas are bigger and wilder than I’d ever thought possible. So I began dreaming of my boat, and telling anyone who would listen about how one day I would live on it, and of all the wonderful things we’d do together. But not one day in the distant future, one day in the coming months. I didn’t know how, but I knew it would happen. Feedback came in just as it had when I began talking about how I was going to quit my job and travel, “you crazy girl!”
In 2018, I did what I had never imagined I would be able to do at the beginning, and the dream came true: I became a boat mom. But not of just any sailboat, rather of a black 41-foot plywood Wharram Narai catamaran, built in 1974 in an English shipyard. So these are the tales I will tell you of, from here on out. Tales of my journey with my old wooden boat, Mara Noka.
I thank you for being here (especially if you actually read through this whole bio!!!) and joining me on my journey, in any way that you do. Batten down the hatches, because it’s going to get wild.