A world of family adventure

Zhai Feng, along with his wife and daughter, seize the day atop their Rainbow Warrior. Photo: Courtesy of Zhai Feng

An ex-railway maintenance worker, who has already made the dream of traveling around Southeast Asia by sailboat a reality for him and his family over the past year, is preparing to embark on another trip with his wife and child early next year - this time to Australia and New Zealand, before heading west across the Indian Ocean.

Zhai Feng, 36, and his wife, Sun Hongyan, 35, returned home to Yanzhou, Shandong province with their 9-year-old daughter in June, after voyaging across some 4,000 sea miles, visiting six Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Myanmar and Singapore - tapping out all of, but 15,000 yuan ($2,460) of their savings on the eight-month adventure.

Despite strong opposition from their parents for their actions, Zhai and Sun, a former railway data entry clerk, quit their secure jobs that brought them a combined annual household income of roughly 96,000 yuan.

They gave up their envious lifestyle - selling their 128-square-meter apartment and their car - after Zhai couldn't bare to struggle through a life meaningless to him any longer.

"We were just like everybody else - a screw in the machine," he told the Global Times. "What's worse is that we all believed that was life, and that we couldn't change it."

Fate calls

But one day in 2009, Zhai went to one of Zhai Mo's art shows, when the painter, also China's first sailor to make it around the world in a sailboat, impressed Zhai (Feng) and encouraged him to teach himself how to sail.

Two years later, Zhai finally decided to quit his monotonous job and leave his empty life behind, to chase his dreams into the horizon.

At first, Zhai proposed to take half a year to himself to learn the ins and outs of life at sea before bringing his family along.

But Sun, who had grown a love for travel early on with her husband during previous family holidays, bicycling and motorcycling around China, wouldn't have any of that.

"We're a family and we have to stick together," Sun recalled, saying that they decided then and there to prepare for their trip together.

So, with the nearly 400,000 yuan they collected from selling off their home and car, they took off for Malaysia, where they bought a $55,000 yacht, an 11.8-meter cruiser with a kitchen, bedroom, toilet, four beds, three power generators and a 500-liter storage unit for petrol and water. They named it Rainbow Warrior - and never looked back.

"Every day out on the boat is a fresh day and there are so many new things to discover and tackle," Sun told the Global Times. "It's much more meaningful than sitting in front of a computer doing boring work day after day."

No easy ride

The ride at sea started off rather bumpy, with the family running into storms and Sun struggling to cope with seasickness - not to mention the time their boat nearly struck another fishing boat.

Adapting to life on the water also took some time, while navigating their routes also proved a tiring and endless job. But once the family got the hang of things, life on the boat was very comfortable, said Sun, who said the family often spends their days reading, drawing or fishing.