Long Beach residents Jennifer Sanders and Greg King are remarkable exceptions to this rule. In the company of Jennifer’s 8-year-old daughter, Nicole, and a 10-year-old black Lab, Ducky, they’re delighting in the adventure of a lifetime. A leisurely and meandering voyage around the world aboard a 65-foot sailing vessel affectionately dubbed Cocokai (combining Nicole’s nickname and kai, which is Hawaiian for “ocean”).

Here’s their itinerary, according to Jenn: “We left California in October 2006, heading down the coast to Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Peru (by land), and the Galapagos. Now, in mid-2008, we’re in French Polynesia—specifically, the Marquesas. We’ll probably be heading north to Hawaii at the end of summer to wait out the South Pacific’s cyclone season. We plan to be in Tahiti by next February and spend four to five years in the South Pacific. Our overall goal is to circumnavigate in 10 to 12 years.”

Now, that’s an epic voyage—far more ambitious than most people would ever consider. But envy surfaces like a rising tide. So does a wave of admiration for this couple’s “nautical chutzpah.”

There’s the element of curiosity as well. Who are these two adventurers? Both claim Long Beach as their land-based home, with Greg boasting third-generation roots. (His parents are Wilson High alums.) Jenn earned degrees in economics and mathematics at UCLA. In quick succession, she was hired by an L.A.-based consulting firm, moved to Belmont Shore (“I discovered the wonders of Long Beach,” she recalls), won a major promotion, and spent the next decade in New York City. A year after that seismic East Coast shift, she heard from one of her best UCLA friends, the aptly named Tim Sailor, who invited her to join him and his family on a chartered vessel bound for the Bahamas.

“This was a life-changing trip for me,” Jenn says. “From the moment we left the dock, I fell in love with the whole lifestyle….And from that point on I jumped at any chance to go sailing.”

In 1994 she bought her first boat, a Catalina 30. At that stage in her career, Jenn had moved back to Long Beach, settled into a peninsula home, and taken on the professional challenges of being senior vice president for Compensation Resource Group (now Clark Consulting). She sailed whenever possible and earned her U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license. She also launched a small charter business and began restoring sailboats, including the vessel ultimately christened Cocokai.

Then, several years after the end of her marriage, she made the karmic King connection during Buccaneer Days on Catalina.

“One of my guests was talking with some other ‘pirates’ and mentioned I was on my sailboat,” Jenn recalls. Greg King was the captain of another sailboat, and that got his attention because women skippers are rather unusual. “He asked to meet me. Long story short, we got to chatting, discovered we both had the long-term dream of sailing around the world and, after getting to know each other, fell in love.”

Greg, who’s also a U.S. Coast Guard captain, had been skippering, repairing, and maintaining boats for more than 20 years. In Jenn’s assessment, he was and is “the perfect mate.” And so a synergistic partnership flowered as they worked together to expand the charter business and complete the outfitting/refurbishment of Cocokai.

Both partners continued to harbor the dream of a multi-year, world-circling voyage. Still, the timing wasn’t perfectly propitious, and Jenn’s executive post was consuming. But then her company was gobbled up by a voracious international firm, and the inevitable “culture shift” was like an insistently ringing ship’s bell. The moment had arrived!

Fortunately, savvy investments and conscientious planning allowed Jenn and Greg to launch their dream. Besides, she says, “it’s surprisingly inexpensive to cruise versus living in ‘civilization.’ Think of the bills you don’t have to pay—mortgages, car payments, utilities. In many ports of call, there’s little more to buy than food, and it’s usually very inexpensive.” Consequently, neither one of the Cocokai captains has regretted for a nanosecond the decision to become full-time, far-flung mariners.

What’s a typical day like on their odyssey? “It depends on where we are,” Jenn responds. Composing an on-board e-note in mid-May, she writes: “We arrived in the largest of the Marquesas Islands, Nuka Hiva, yesterday afternoon from a more remote island, so today is a town/provisioning day. We started the day with a delicious breakfast of sweet grapefruit (the largest I’ve ever seen), fried green banana fritters, and scrambled eggs. Coco and I did some school work, went for a swim to cool off, then all of us went into town to visit the gendarmes (must check in at each island) and do a little shopping. Afternoons are spent snorkeling, exploring, hiking to waterfalls, horseback riding—whatever adventures we can find here in the islands.”

Especially memorable moments when everything was just right:”Beautiful sunsets in gorgeous anchorages, watching Ducky being followed by a sea lion while swimming in the Galapagos (they’re very curious), seeing a ‘cloud’ of several hundred golden rays swim by the boat while anchored, under way on our Pacific crossing with five sails flying on a ‘beam reach’ 1,500 miles from land, sitting on the bowsprit with dolphins playing underneath…. I could go on and on.”

It’s impossible to suppress a sincere “What a life!”—even if we might not want to be gone from home as long as these adventurers plan. “We really do love Long Beach and were very involved in the community,” Jenn says. “Ultimately, we’ll return to the city. But every day we wake up and feel incredibly fortunate and happy because we’re living our dream.”