Many people facing a mid-life crisis seek change and adventure. For former Hong Kong resident Virginia 'Ginni' MacRobert, it was the voyage of a lifetime. Skippering a catamaran on a round-the-world odyssey that started four years ago, she battled 20-metre waves and fended off pirates - and that's despite having only sailed dinghies and made one long passage before setting off.
She had to seize the moment, says MacRobert, whose exploits are recounted in her book, Gin's Tonic: Ocean Voyage, Inner Journey (Proverse Hong Kong). She and her husband, a doctor, had two children of their own when they came to Hong Kong 26 years ago and later adopted four others. Raising six youngsters didn't give her much time for herself.
'I had been so focused on the children. Four are adopted and three were regarded as having special needs when we took them. I had lost sight entirely of who I was or what I could do. I felt that if I had to go back to work the only thing I could do was scrub toilets,' says MacRobert.
'But I'd reached the stage with the children when no one was doing a leaving year. I figured I had an 18-month window of opportunity.'
The MacRoberts had bought a 14-metre catamaran in the British Virgin Islands in 2004, thinking they might sail round the South Pacific together. But while Ginni discovered a taste for ocean voyages during the delivery passage, her husband preferred to sail closer to shore.
When she decided to go ahead on her own, her husband was philosophical about it, she says, telling friends that he wouldn't have been able to stop her anyway.