After two years, 36 countries and more than 41,000 kilometres, the Lenz family sailed into the Thunder Bay Harbour Wednesday afternoon on their superyacht happy to be home.
Thunder Bay native Chris Lenz sold his Hong Kong based restaurant business in 2006 and decided to travel around the world with his wife Vicky and their two children Kyana, 12, and Kanon, 10, on Lenz’s yacht Silver Lining.
“I started another boat before that, which was a failure,” he said.
He had that first boat commissioned but when it wasn’t working out, he stopped the project.
Then he found an uncompleted hull in Northern China and decided to build his own boat. He shipped the hull to Thailand and spent three years building the 32-metre vessel.
“After the dark storm of cancelling the other build, this was the silver lining,” he said.
The Lenz family set sail from Thailand two years ago and headed towards Australia first. They’ve travelled to Singapore, Malaysia, Malta, Greece and through the Caribbean up the U.S. eastern seaboard before heading through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes to Thunder Bay.
Each member of the family had a different favourite destination and Lenz said the trip was full of beautiful moments and some scary ones, too.
“There’s times of anxiety. There’s times of absolute joyous occasions. You see wonderful nature, almost more things than you can imagine,” he said.
The family was scuba diving in the Maldives one time and while Chris and Vicky were deep under the water, Kyana and Kanon were snorkeling near the surface. They could see the children excitedly pointing down below.
“As we came up there was a nice turtle there but there was also manta rays and sharks and the kids were snorkeling, happily taking pictures of them,” Lenz said.
The trip came at an opportune time when it came to family bonding.
“It’s a time (the kids) can remember but not a time where they don’t want to be with their parents anymore and with their friends,” Lenz said.
“For these two to be able to say at the age of 10 and 12 we crossed the Atlantic, that was amazing,” Vicky Lenz added.
“The family bonding has been incredible,” she said.
The family is spending the summer in the Thunder Bay area before moving to Panama this fall.
