How did the narrator and his …

The narrator and his wife wanted to ‘duplicate’ the round—the world voyage made 200 years earlier by Captain James Cook. They had been making formidable preparations for the last 16 years. First of all they got a boat especially designed and professionally built for this purpose. It was a 23 metre, 30 tonne wooden-hulled boat. They tested it for months in the roughest weather. They were both mentally and physically prepared to undertake their exceptionally long and challenging sea-voyage.

OR

They had been preparing for the past 16 years, spending all their leisure time honing their seafaring skills in British waters in lieu of their round the world voyage. Their boat, the Wavewalker, was a 23 metre, 30 ton wooden-hulled beauty which had been professionally built and they had spent months fitting it out and testing it in the roughest weather possible. The family also took on two crewmen, American Larry Vigil and Swiss Herb Seigler to help them tackle one of the world's roughest seas,the southern Indian Ocean.