Singaporean Angela Diethelm, 57, who once thought travel was a luxury, never dreamt that she would spend the better part of her life sailing around the world.

Her landlubber life changed when in 1969 at the age of 20, she met Basil Diethelm, an Australian dentistry student who took a break from studies in Singapore. She was studying to be a secretary then and aged 20, and he was 25.

After a whirlwind courtship, they married and set sail with two other men, who were strangers, on their first sea jaunt as husband and wife. They anchored in Malacca.

It was a modest start to what would become a series of sea adventures that saw them call at exotic spots such as Antigua in the Caribbean, Kenya in Africa and Panama in Central America. This also included crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to the Caribbean as often as 11 times.

Over their 33 years of long-distance sailing together, they have owned five yachts but their current prize is the 15-metre yacht, "Nautor Swan" , made in Finland which costs about US$500,000.

A love story: A 1969 Straits Times clipping featured the couple who met and married a year after Angela's husband, Basil, sailed to Singapore - and found the girl of his dreams.

Angela who recently left her home in Sydney, Australia, for a visit to Singapore tells AsiaOne about those early sea-faring days: "I was sea-sick, home-sick, you name it."

"But there was always the surety that if I felt like that; Baz (nickname for her husband) could send me home. And you do that and you go further and further and before you know it, a year is gone."

Their sailing stopped briefly for the next two years so that her husband could finish his studies back in Sydney in 1971. Then after attending his graduation ceremony, they set sail on the next day itself

Then in 1974, while she was pregnant, they flew to London from Singapore where she gave birth to their first son, Shane, leaving their boat behind. They were back in Singapore for a while to visit her parents who were staying in Bedok at that time.

Soon after giving birth, they returned back to Singapore, sailed with an extra passenger on board and continued their marine adventures.

To pay for their oceanic journeys, for every year of sailing, they stayed 6 months onshore at the country they docked and Dr Basil would then work as a substitute dentist at established clinics to take over from the owner dentist who would then usually take his annual vacation.

Also, for most of the time, Dr Basil said that he often flew to the UK with the family to work as a dentist in London for various periods of time as there was always a high demand for dentists over there. But he would not do this without finding a safe place for his yacht to dock first.

Onboard, Angela said that daily chores such as laundry and cooking were made all the harder with the constant motion of the waves.

"Being a mum and beig at sea was not easy but somehow you just cope. The hardest bit at that time was when had to dry the nappies," she said.

She recalled that while in Egypt in 1975, she hung out her son's nappies to dry, only to have them flung into the sea because of the rocking boat. Laughing at the incident now, she said: "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I was just standing there.

In 1980, her second son, Tristan, was born and during this time she took a break from sailing to avoid anymore problems with nappies. They waited until he was about two before they set sail again.

And sailing was not easy on the two kids, as mealtimes would bring on bouts of seasickness, especially on the first two days of each voyage.

She said: "My younger son would get ready a bowl just in case because he knows how not to mess his bed. Pretty hard, you know with the family on board!"

Both children completed their early childhood education through distance learning from correspondence schools run by the Australian State Government for children in isolated places.

Before they left they were given weekly packages of work projects that would be posted back to the special correspondence school in Australia.

After that both were sent to boarding school in London for a period of time and finished the rest in Sydney, Australia.

Today, her elder son Shane, 33, is an architect and Tristan, 27, manages a pub in Sydney and both are as keen on sailing as their parents are. In fact, they will be racing on the current boat for The King's Cup Regatta in Phuket, Thailand in November this year.

However for Angela, nothing beats coming home to Singapore.

"I always come back to Singapore because it's like coming back to your roots," she said.

After all these years, she still holds a Singapore passport and she still misses local food. "I think food is more the attraction for me. My favourite is chicken rice," she said.

She also says that the changes she sees in Singapore are unbelievable.

"I've been to other places at different times and don't see too many changes but every time I come here, even after a year, I see more changes." she said.

Laughing she added: "They do land reclamation in Singapore which is a country that gets bigger when elsewhere there are countries which sink into the sea, or something like that."

Nowadays, the Diethelms use their boat for trips in the South East Asian region and have avoided long journeys.

She is looking forward to staying on shore permanently though.

"It will be nice to live ashore now," she says.

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