Sally Lippert and Mark Shrosbee aboard their boat, Ra. Photo by Alex Alfaro.

By the time you’re reading this, Sally Lippert and Mark Shrosbee are already knee-deep in the adventure of a lifetime. Well, keel-deep is probably the better term for it. Lippert, a 69-year-old local real estate broker and Shrosbee, a 65-year-old South African, met about a year ago. Shrosbee was well on his goal of sailing around the world—he’d started in 2016, going from South Africa down to the Caribbean, running into various boat-related troubles along the way, before eventually coming to a halt in Panama. “I told my kids in 2016 that I would have circumnavigated the world in three years and that was 10 years ago,” says Shrosbee. “You can do it in three years, but then you just see nothing of the world.”

Just over a year ago, Shrosbee, staying in the United States on a visa, met Lippert, who was selling her boat. Although Lippert’s boat proved too large for Shrosbee, the pair clicked. Lippert is a self-described “sail bum”, who has sailed all around the world, but never with a romantic partner. “It is the great adventure,” says Lippert. “I’ve been looking for somebody to share an adventure with.”

The couple’s adventure first will take them across the state, from Fort Myers through the Caloosahatchee River into the Atlantic. The idea is to get outside of the country prior to when Shrosbee’s visa runs out of time. “From there, if the weather is good, we’ll shoot across to the southern Bahamas, the Exuma chain, which could take up to three weeks. From there, I can fly back and forth—I have three kids and four grandchildren here, so I’ll need to return to see them,” says Lippert.

The ship on which Lippert and Shrosbee are sailing has been an adventure in and of itself. Dubbed “Ra” after the Egyptian Sun god, the 40-foot Chinese junk rig, is Shrosbee’s “dream build”. Replete with a center cockpit, a shallow draft and twin masts constructed from former street lamps, the couple is confident that Ra will get them to where they need to go, swiftly and safely. “I always wanted to build a schooner junk rig,” says Shrosbee. “This build has been in my head since I was probably 25 years old.”

Sally Lippert and Mark Shrosbee aboard their boat, Ra. Photo by Alex Alfaro.