Time away from Bainbridge Island: six years, one month, six days.

Miles traveled: 52,034.

Countries visited: 46.

Pounds of coffee consumed: 250.

Fish caught on a 200-pound test hand line: many.

Sets of sails worn out: one.

Crew: two.

The statistics roll out like waves, each one carrying tales more fantastic than most of us bother to dream. For Joyce and Tad Lhamon, circumnavigating the globe under sail was not a vacation but a lifestyle change, a “lyrical adventure” that they hope will inspire others.

“Your dream may not be to visit another country,” said Joyce Lhamon, who with her husband is recounting the voyage in a lecture series sponsored by the Bainbridge Island Park and Recreation District. “It takes a lot of gumption to follow your dreams, to go do something, (but) it is possible.”

The Lhamons served together in the Peace Corps in Micronesia from 1967-70, then settled on Bainbridge Island with the idea of someday returning to the islands in the Pacific Ocean.

But their careers – Tad as an actuary, Joyce teaching English as a second language – and a family intervened, and it was nearly 25 years before early retirement allowed them to rig up their dream and set sail.

“The kids would have liked to have us go when they were here, but we were busy,” Tad said.

Longtime members of the Port Madison sailing community, the Lhamons in 1994 purchased the Lyric, a 44-foot cutter fashioned by schooner designer John Alden and built in Rhode Island.

The vessel boasts a short fixed keel and a retractable center board, allowing them to travel shallower waters than would be possible with a deeper draft.

The boat also included emergency power in the form of a diesel engine, but the great distances to be traversed ensured that most travel would be contingent on the whims of the wind.

Two years were spent preparing for what was envisioned as a three-year voyage, studying charts and currents and settling on provisions. Joyce trained in skills ranging from medical aid to sail repair.

The Lhamons set out from Port Madison in August 1996, and save for a few brief return visits by air – in Tad’s words, “to make sure the family was still alive” – completed their journey last October.

Life at sea

Once at sea, standard measures of time and distance quickly faded away; the first year out, the Lhamons “lost” the entire month of July as they crossed the Pacific.

“You pick up the rhythm of the season rather than the rhythm of the day,” Tad said.

Even with their sailing experience, a journey that included a 3,516-mile, 29-day passage would test the Lhamons’ seamanship.

A wind vein served as a functional autopilot, detecting wind shifts and correcting the vessel’s course. Yet for overnight passages – of which their were 101 during the voyage – the pair split three-hour shifts at the wheel to ensure against collisions with merchant ships and other problems.

Those spells also gave the couple – who grew conscious of the cozy confines, and spending all their waking hours no more than 44 feet apart – some needed respite from each other.

“When’s the last time you spent six years like that with your spouse or significant other?” Joyce asked.

Their wanderings took them to stops in Mexico, Polynesia, New Zealand and Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, through the Indian Ocean and around the African horn, north to the British Isles and Scotland, then back to the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal.

Because crossings had to be planned around typhoon seasons and other meteorological challenges, the couple had time at ports of call to immerse themselves in local cultures for weeks or months at a time.

And despite the ebb and flow of global tensions during their six years abroad, the Lhamons found the people they met to be unfailingly welcoming.

“They were warm and friendly,” Joyce said. “They wanted that cultural exchange.”

Their most harrowing tale came during a passage through the generally lawless South China Sea, one of the globe’s more exotic corners where piracy is a concern for commercial and pleasure vessels alike.

Sailing by agreement within sight of a second vessel for safety, the couple heard ongoing radio reports that a cargo ship carrying ore had vanished, with piracy suspected.

The crew was found adrift in a lifeboat 10 days later; they had been passed by numerous vessels, whose masters saw the castaways but refused to stop for fear they were actually brigands using the lifeboat as a ruse. The pirated vessel was later found in a Chinese port, its cargo gone and the ship itself being repainted.

“That area of the world is the worst,” Tad said.

The Lhamons, who have been published in various yachting magazines, are now writing a book chronicling their adventure and supporting the maritime safety efforts of non-profit foundations.

They also hope to inspire the adventures of others, under sail or otherwise.

“Be an ambassador of your own to another country,” Tad said. “If you understand another culture, you understand more about the world than if you sit at home in Seattle and drink coffee.”