Five years before the mast

CLEARWATER -- On a recent breezy afternoon, a pirate cruise ship passed through the Clearwater Marina with crew and passengers boogieing to Who Let the Dogs Out?

"When we left here, they were playing the Macarena," said Dr. Bruce Senay from the family's 45-foot Island Packet sailboat, Dream Catcher, docked at a slip at the marina.

It was Sept. 15, 1997, when Senay, his wife, Mary Carol, and their then-10-year-old daughter Lindsay did what many dream of but only about 200 people a year accomplish:

They sold their house and cars, put their furniture in storage, their lives on hold, grabbed their cat Snowball -- and sailed around the world.

"It was the first time in my life I was doing something without thinking about the future," said Bruce Senay, 51, who had quit his job as a urologist for the Diagnostic Clinic in Largo. "We were planning on taking a yearlong cruise in the Caribbean, and then it turned into a five-year cruise around the world."

For those five years they lived on a $300,000 sailboat with a 300-square-foot cabin. Within the cabin are: a galley containing a stove, oven and sink; a living area with a foldout table and seating; two sleeping areas; and two heads (bathrooms). Sixteen portholes provide fresh air, and air conditioning is available when the boat is docked. A water converter makes saltwater fresh.

During the 40,000-mile journey, they visited about 50 countries, riding camels around the Pyramids, horses on top of a volcano and a gale through the Mediterranean Sea.

They went scuba diving with hammerhead sharks, held baby orangutans and shared a beach with Komodo dragons and green monkeys. They stood on the Rock of Gibraltar, the Parthenon and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Alas, it was not all fun and games.

They battled rough seas, seasickness, equipment failures and the threat of pirates. But the biggest peril came midway through the trip, when Mary Carol Senay, now 46, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

During the Christmas season of 1999, the family decided to leave New Zealand and visit family in Virginia for the millennium. On the to-do list: visit dentists and go for physicals.

A routine mammogram revealed a suspicious lump. A biopsy confirmed the worst.

Mary Carol Senay had a lumpectomy, followed by a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. By mid March, the family was back in New Zealand.

For her, the diagnosis was the turning point of the voyage.

"In the beginning I thought I had bit off more than I could chew," she said. "I wasn't even sure I wanted to finish the trip. After the breast cancer, I looked at this as the opportunity of a lifetime. I embraced the trip and looked at each day as more amazing than the day before."

When they returned to New Zealand for the second half of their trip, the family rented a motor home and reveled in two weeks of extreme sports.

"We said, 'Screw this; we're going to have some fun,' " Mary Carol Senay said.

Her husband bungee-jumped off a bridge, and he and Lindsay went skydiving. Not wanting to be outdone by them, Mary Carol Senay hang-glided from the side of a mountain. Together they all scaled a glacier and went black water rafting in underground caves.

"It was absolutely freezing, but fun," Mrs. Senay said.

So far, her cancer has not reappeared. No matter where they were in the world, they returned to Clearwater for her six-month checkups. She is taking the anticancer drug Tamoxifen.

There were other stresses.

"You really miss your family," Mrs. Senay said. "I think for women, the lack of communication and privacy are the biggest issues. You also have a limited water supply and can't take a tub bath. Many times I had to wash the laundry by hand using a washboard and a plunger.

"Getting groceries is an ordeal, too, because you have to put them on the dinghy to get them out to the boat. Both you and the groceries get soaked."

Her husband said the hardest part of the trip for him was "keeping the women happy."

"Also, everything is always breaking. Sometimes it's hard to get parts, and you have to pay extra for shipping and duties," said Bruce Senay, who has been sailing for 23 years.

Regrets? They have a few. They missed Mrs. Senay's grandfather's funeral and Bruce's parents' 50th anniversary celebration.

For Lindsay, now 15, the most difficult part of the trip was the lack of friendship.

"I was fortunate to have seen so many places, but I'm glad to be back," she said. "There weren't many kids. It's really sad when your best friend is your cat."

During the trip, Lindsay was home-schooled through the Calvert School and University of Nebraska's Independent Studies Program. She recently scored in the 98th percentile of her Secondary School Admission Test. Now 15, she will attend Tampa Preparatory in the fall.

The Senays aren't sure how much the five-year journey cost, but they say cruisers can spend anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 and up a year, depending on their lifestyle, entertainment, eating habits and equipment costs.

They found many ways to economize. They shared potlucks and pizza dinners with other cruisers; caught their own seafood; stocked up on granola, canned meats and dried fruits and vegetables; and often cooked their own food instead of dining out.

They anchored out instead of paying docking fees, sent daily e-mail to family and friends over the ham radio to save long-distance phone charges and chose inexpensive entertainment such as watching videos, hiking and snorkeling.

One unexpected snag: Their health insurance company has refused to pay for any cancer treatments and surgeries. The dispute is in litigation.

The family returned to Clearwater on May 6. For now, they are living on the boat and plan to move to an apartment.

"It will be so nice to have a washer, dryer and flushing toilets," said Mary Carol Senay, who is returning to her part-time job as a nurse anesthetist for Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater.

Bruce Senay is unsure about his future, but feels certain he will not return to his 100-hour workweeks as a urologist.

"When we came back, I was shocked at the materialism of America," he said. "I have come to realize that it is family and friends that really count, not the material things."

Around the world

Here are highlights from the Senay family's five-year journey:

Most unusual activity: goat hunting with the locals in Fiji

Best scuba diving: Whitsunday Islands, Australia

Best native dancing: Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Hottest place: Trinidad in July

Coldest place: New Zealand in April

Most sharks: Tuamoto Archipelago, part of French Polynesia

Scariest moments: Sailboat knockdown in the Marquesas Islands during a storm; the Senay family of three plus a driver piled on a small motorcycle in the Dominican Republic

Best food: Thailand, with Italy running a close second (but much more expensive)

Best cup of coffee: Made by a native over an open fire in a bombed-out building in Eritrea, Africa

Best beer: Presidente, from the Dominican Republic (50 cents a cup)

Worst beer: "Aruba's National Beer" ($5 a cup)

Best bread: Hot pita in Suakin, Sudan

Best ice cream: New Zealand

Worst shopping mistake: Forgetting to buy kitty litter

Number rolls of film used in five years: At least 60 (plus hundreds of digital pictures saved on CD)

Best marina: Raffles Marina in Singapore

Dirtiest harbor: American Samoa

Best fishing: Red Sea

Worst job: Unclogging the heads (toilets)

Great timing: Accidentally meeting a whale shark while diving for lobster in the Bahamas; having the last beer at the historic Balboa Yacht Club just hours before it burned to the ground; arriving in New Zealand in time for the Americas Cup 2000; making a night passage between the boot of Italy and Sicily while watching Mount Etna erupt in the background; close encounter with humpback whale in Samana, Dominican Republic.

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