The Long Way is an outdoor adventure company focused on small-scale wilderness expeditions on land and at sea.
The stars that frame our name are the Southern Cross and the Pointers: Alpha and Beta Centauri.
Long before modern navigation, these stars guided travellers across the southern hemisphere, providing dependable orientation in an unfamiliar world.
Beyond their practical role, they also reflect a deeper type of guidance. Time in wilderness removes distraction and restores perspective, creating space to think clearly and regain a sense of direction for those who find themselves at a crossroads in life.
Growing up on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, I was on the water almost every day, sailing Optimists from the age of six. Since then, not much has changed, except that the boats have become bigger and the passages longer. Over time, this led to more than 25,000 offshore miles, many of them as a skipper.
Those early years sailing on Curaçao also instilled a deep sense of freedom and a connection to the outdoors that continue to shape much of what I do today. At seventeen, this brought me to Southern Africa, where I spent a year completing a Professional Field Guide course. I fell particularly in love with trails guiding, which evoked the same sense of adventure and exposure as offshore sailing. In the years since, I have spent extensive time in the bush on foot, accumulating hundreds of big-game encounters and qualifying as an FGASA Lead Trails Guide.
I later completed a Master’s degree in conservation and worked briefly in academia and sustainable finance. Yet it quickly became clear that city life and office work were not for me. While guiding a primitive trail in Botswana, everything fell into place: I realised that walking through the bush is not so different from crossing an ocean. In both environments, three elements stand out: disconnection from the modern world, deep immersion in true wilderness, and total self-reliance.
Experiencing this, I believe, is profoundly valuable. It builds confidence, sharpens judgement, and creates space to think: luxuries increasingly rare as fewer people are able to encounter true wilderness firsthand.
Soon after this realisation, I decided to move to South Africa and build a company offering experiences grounded in these same principles. In winter, I guide primitive walking safaris; in summer, I skipper offshore passages. West across the South Atlantic toward South America or east across the Indian Ocean toward Australia, New Zealand, and beyond.
The Long Way is built on three core principles: immersion, disconnection, and self-reliance.
Few have expressed these ideals more powerfully than the French solo sailor Bernard Moitessier. His book The Long Way (originally La Longue Route) recounts his extraordinary voyage in the 1968 Golden Globe Race and, more importantly, his decision not to finish it. After months alone in the Southern Ocean, Moitessier came to see racing from Southampton to Southampton as meaningless. The fame awaiting him on arrival felt hollow compared to the freedom and clarity he had discovered at sea. He felt at home in the wilderness. Rather than return to Europe to claim his prize, he continued sailing, eventually reaching Tahiti after nearly completing a second circumnavigation. He announced his withdrawal by passing a message to a ship, explaining that he was continuing “because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul.”
