Zoonie Sails Home

An inspiring account of triumph over tragedy to sail halfway around the world and complete a six-year circumnavigation.
By April 2017, retired British couple Barbara and Robert White have successfully cruised aboard their thirty-year-old sailing yacht Zoonie to the other side of the globe when natural disaster strikes. Alerted to the rapid sinking of their beloved vessel while exploring the countryside of New Zealand, they race back to her to assess the damage and set to work, determined to accomplish their ambitious journey home.
Alongside the challenging reality of short-handed bluewater sailing - enduring the elements, equipment breakdown and extreme isolation - life on land becomes increasingly fraught: a dangerous bacterial infection puts Robert's heart at risk, bush fires ravage Australia as the couple sail its coast and the Covid-19 pandemic closes ports and borders, sending half of humanity - including our cruisers - into lockdown. Tens of thousands of miles from home and family, Barbara and Robert must rely on their resilience, adaptability and an unwavering curiosity to keep on exploring.
As they traverse the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, island and coastal hopping along the way, old friendships are re-ignited and new ones forged, the couple finding solace in the company of those they meet en route. Weaving stories, past and present, of the people and places of their odyssey, Barbara invites us to see the world how others experience it, with warmth, humour and an indomitable spirit.
Picking up where A Tale of Two Yachts (covering the first half of their round-the-world voyage) left off, Zoonie Sails Home is an ode to a cherished boat, a love letter to slow travel and a tonic to the landlocked soul.

Sailing came into Barbara's life when she was a young girl. Aged nine, with her father and brother, she built a flat pack Heron dinghy and spent the next six years sailing and racing her off the beach at Worthing, the town where she was born. The challenge and pleasure of sailing has been a perennial thread running through the six decades of her life since then.Although she started sailing big boats in her twenties, the charm and immediacy of dinghy sailing is as dear to her today as it was back then, and with her husband, Rob, she still sails the dinghy she helped build all those years ago.At eighteen she embarked on her first voyage with the Sail Training Association (STA), and many years later became a watch leader for the renamed Tall Ships Youth Trust (TSYT), a volunteer role she undertook for a decade.While raising her daughter, Emily, by herself, Barbara graduated with an Open University Arts Degree and qualified as a middle school teacher, before transitioning to a self-employed driving instructor, allowing her to take long periods off work to go big ship sailing.In 2015 Barbara and Rob retired and having spent the two previous years planning their circumnavigation on Zoonie, their 40-foot Oyster 406, they were both ready to set off. The first half of this six-year voyage is documented in A Tale of Two Yachts, her debut book, published in 2022. Her follow up, Zoonie Sails Home, details the second half of their remarkable journey. Now back on solid ground, Barbara and Rob live in Dorset, South West England. They look forward to more exploration aboard Zoonie over the next year before they plan to sell her after fifteen years of shared adventure.Barbara has a sailing blog, skipperbarbwhite.com, and she has written travel pieces for the likes of Yachting Monthly, Yachting World, Sailing Today and Practical Boat Owner.