Sea Saga, Part VI — Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare?

Tags

adventure, children, Cruising (maritime), Dreams Come True, life-style, memoir, sailing, Sailing Around the World

The following is an article published in Latitude 38 many years ago. I’m reprinting it here as part of our Sea Saga series, about our six and a half year circumnavigation aboard our sailboat. The article will be posted in two parts. This is the first.

Cruising with Kids–Dream or Nightmare? Part One

It was the last day of our garage sale and I was happily breezing through the house directing potential buyers to the last of the hanging plants and picture frames. Within the week we would be moved aboard “La Gitana,” our 46-foot Formosa, preparing her for our long-awaited cruise into Mexico and the South Pacific. I was so excited by the prospect that I almost didn’t notice Kelli, our eight-year-old daughter, when she came into the family room and stood staring at the empty walls as if stunned
.
“I thought it was only a dream!” she cried, then burst into tears.

It was “only a dream”–a dream-come-true for Dale and me. But for our children, it may have seemed more of a nightmare as they watched the bits and pieces of their lives being hauled away by strangers.

A year of patiently hand-feeding them tales of sailing off to tropical isles where they could swim, snorkel, and fish every day was rapidly losing its influence. When tasted with the very bitter sacrifices that were being required of them, such tales did not seem so sweet.

Our decision to go cruising had not been a sudden one. The idea had been playing in the backs of our minds since we were first married. We decided then that “someday” when the children were the “right” ages, when we were financially able to leave on an open-ended cruise without the need of returning to a work-day world any time soon, we would leave for the South Pacific. Ultimately, our dream was to sail around the world.

But it took an idyllic bareboat charter in the Caribbean some ten years later to finally budge that dream into reality. We realized that our children, then seven and ten, were the perfect ages for living aboard a boat. And with a little reshuffling of the financial deck and a lot of belt-tightening, we could just about squeeze by on that open-ended clause.

After all, if we didn’t go now, when would we? We could wait until the children were grown, but how could we deprive them of such an adventure? And who could wait that long anyway?

Dale and I spent many happy hours convincing ourselves that what we would be offering the children in a life at sea would more than compensate for the things that they would be giving up. We thought of the wonderful experience of traveling, the great cultural and environmental education, the challenges and opportunities for self-development. It all sounded so good, so true, and yet, a perverse thought kept plaguing me: Was it perhaps “too good to be true”? I began to consider the darker side of life at sea.

Simply moving aboard a boat and sailing off into the world was going to require some drastic changes in lifestyle quite apart from the obvious benefits. The mere logistics of gathering the four corners of our large house and fitting it within the space the size of our family room alone required some creative mental maneuvering. Trying to envision some semblance of tranquility and order within such a jumble seemed beyond the stretch of my imagination.

Could the four of us truly be happy living together in such close quarters? Wouldn’t the lack of space and privacy release hidden demons within us that would turn our cruising dream into a nightmare?

Even simple luxuries took on new ominous dimensions as I tried to mentally delete them from the frugal lifestyle we were contemplating. While it seemed we ought to be able to live happily ever after without the benefits of hot showers, a cold fridge, a washing machine and TV–what if we couldn’t? Who knew what trivial monkey-wrench could throw the whole dream askew?

One of my secret fears was that we might all become extremely bored with our cruising life. I tried imagining day after day, week after week of nothing but bright skies, warm seas and white sand, and found the effort becoming tedious.

After all, just how much swimming, fishing and snorkeling could one endure? Even heaven could become tedious after a while—couldn’t it?

Most of our worries centered on the children. Chief among these, and certainly the one most on the minds of the grandparents, was the question of safety. Were Dale and I being irresponsible in taking the kids off into the unknown danger that seemed integral in such long-distance cruising? Who knew what deadly storms or hurricanes, shark and appendicitis attacks, pirates or revolutionaries we would be exposing them to?

Then there were their social lives to consider. Our children never seemed so happy as when they had hordes of kids to play with. Surely it was grossly unfair of us to deprive them of their peers and of the opportunities and enjoyment that organized sports and recreations offered. Often, I would find myself closely watching my two children as they moved about their daily activities–the very activities of which we would soon be depriving them.

Christopher, at eleven, was fully enmeshed in that preadolescent social scene of soccer and baseball, skate boarding and video-games. It was a life-style in which he felt quite comfortable, and even while Dale and I felt that the life we were offering him was better, the question remained: Would he think so, say ten years down the line? Or would he feel cheated of the normal activities of adolescence?

At eight years old, Kelli’s life was so much simpler, and yet such simplicity seemed all the more wretched to deprive her: doll houses and baby cribs, roller skates and her first two-wheel bike, gymnastic classes and tap dance lessons. Was she a budding ballerina whose career was being cut to the quick? What other new talents and skills would be left unplumbed as we dragged her away from future softball games, piano lessons and Girl Scout activities? Really, just how much were we truly asking our children to give up in order to accommodate our dream?

With Kelli’s tears that bright June morning, all of these questions and doubts came bubbling back to the surface, bringing into sharp focus our quandary: would this cruising life that Dale and I so clearly envisioned reach in reality the expectation of our dreams; or would it fray somehow and wear thin under the wear and tear of everyday living, dissolving into the nightmare our children half-expected?

The trouble was that we would never know until we had lived it. And to Dale and me, regardless the outcome, this life we so clearly envisioned seemed worth the effort and the risk. We had this singular opportunity to draw together as a family and pit our strengths, our skills, and our spirits against an unknown life and, just perhaps, come out the better for it. It was a chance we could not pass up.

(To Be Continued) Read part Two HERE:

https://deborahbrasket.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/sailing-with-kids-into-the-unknown-continuation-of-sea-saga-part-vi/

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part V – La Gitana, Our Larger Self

La Gitana, Our Larger Self – Sea Saga, Part V

Tags

adventure, Boat, circumnavigation, Dreams Come True, Gypsy, La Gitana, lifestyle, live-aboard, Sail, sailboat, sailing, Sailing Around the World, traveling, Yacht

We named her “La Gitana,” Spanish for the gypsy, partly in tribute to our family’s Spanish heritage, partly because sea gypsies are what we would be once we moved aboard her and sailed away, partly for my long fascination with everything pertaining to Gypsies.

I loved the music, the dancing, the clothing, the jewelry, the colorful furnishings of the caravans. I loved what they stood for, the capriciousness of their existence living on the edge of society, their adventuresome spirit, their playfulness and spontaneity, their wildness—all the things we grew up thinking of as gypsy-like. La Gitana symbolized all of that for us. We feminized the masculine gitano and added the lyrical signifier “la” for alliteration, and to show her singular importance. The, not a.

Of course she had to be feminine—all ships traditionally are. They are vessels that serve us, that carry us in her belly, under her wings. Her sails are softly rounded breasts bravely and proudly pulling us onward. And she was alive! So lively with a personality and purpose all her own—a creature, not a thing.

She seemed almost as alive to us as the other creatures that she cavorted with, the dolphins that played at her side, the whales that swam beneath and circled her, the flying fish that landed on her decks. Her spirit was all her own. But her breath, her pulse, her beating heart, her life blood, was us, the people who inhabited and cared for her, plotted her course, walked her decks, stroked her beams, and dreamed her dreams.

It was a symbiotic relationship. We trusted her and sank everything we had into her. And she depended upon us to steer her away from the harbor and allow her to run with the wind, to lead her to a safe haven and hunker her down when the hurricane blew.
Originally she was called “Swagman,” which is what peddlers and tinkers are called Down Under. We bought her from an Aussie living in San Diego who had commissioned her to be built in Taiwan—a Formosa 46, a 46-foot Peterson designed cutter rigged sloop with a center-cockpit. Cousin to the better known and more costly Peterson 44.

We had invested so much more than money in her—our hopes and dreams, our safety and security, our hearth and home, our larger selves. She is what separated us from the sea on those long ocean voyages and moved us through the air by harnessing the wind. Deep in her belly she rocked and sung us to sleep. When the storms rose she sheltered us from the rain. When huge rogue waves came crashing down she lifted us up. When the wind died away and left us floundering in the middle of nowhere, she was the still center in a circle of blue.

I cannot tell you the pleasure and affection I felt when we were ashore and looked out at her waiting patiently for our return. What it felt like to bring our dinghy aside her and hoist our provisions aboard. The thrill of weighing anchor and heading out to sea, raising her sails, watching them fill.

Hunkered beneath her dodger during night watches, I listened to the rush of waves and sails in the black, black night, and watched her mast stirring stars. Sleeping below deck as she rocked with the waves, her rigging humming overhead, the soft gurgle of the ocean whispering through the hull, was sweetness like no other.

I loved sunning my chilled skin on her warm teak decks after a long morning hunting and diving for scallops. Falling asleep in the cockpit on balmy days in port, watching the stars gently rock overhead as she rolled with the soft swells.

How I miss her! But we carry her in our hearts and in our memories, in the words on these pages, and the novels I am writing. I like to think another family has taken over where we left off, hugging her close, and steering her on new adventures.

La Gitana—my larger self.

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Tags

adventure, bareboat chartering, beauty, Dreams Come True, lifestyle, Nature, sailing, snorkeling, Virgin Islands

“This is where it all begins,” Dale whispers to me we take off, rising through layers of clouds thick as fog. “This is where we leave the beaten path forever.”

We are leaving Puerto Rico International airport aboard a tiny six-passenger airplane bound for the British Virgin Islands and nine days aboard a bare-boat chartered cruise. This was to be our first step in testing the waters of living about a cruising yacht before deciding to consummate our long-delayed dream of sailing around the world.

“Start slow–and taper off” is the motto for island living we’re told by the manager of the West Indies Yacht Charters at Maya Cove as he greets us and our good friends Steve and Kathy with rum punches when we arrive.

We whole-heartedly comply as we sail away the next day on our O’Day 37 and anchor off lonely Norman Island, which is said to be the inspiration for Robert Luis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Somehow I’m reminded more of something written by Jules Verne as we set off early the next morning in the dingy to explore the caves hidden in nearby cliffs.

There’s an eerie beauty that clings to the island as we slip though long, cool shadows cast by the dark cliffs rising steeply from the water. Above us large sharp-winged albatross circle the pale sky and screech like ancient, flying reptiles once might have done. While in the seas below, I can almost feel the whirlpool that could soon be sucking us down to some prehistoric paradise beneath the ocean. We pull the dingy onto a small, rocky beach where two angry gulls swoop down from the cliffs, diving noisily at us. Soon we are snorkeling toward the caves, finding that the watered world below holds all the primeval beauty and excitement we anticipated.

We tack across the channel toward Virgin Gorda the next morning, where we stop briefly at “The Baths” and climb among the giant-sized boulders strewn along the beach.

Later we press on toward Spanish Town, where we wander down a narrow, squall-puddled lane amid wild orchids and flaming Jacaranda trees to find Fischer’s Cove Restaurant. There we dine on spicy-sweet pumpkin soup and the most succulent lobster that any of us can remember tasting.

The next day we sail into Gorda Sound and spend a quiet evening at Robin’s Bay, cleaning and cooking the tuna that Kathy caught on the way. In the morning we head to Mosquito Island and anchor off the reefs where we go snorkeling.

We circle past beds of plump brain coral and wander through the lavender gardens of lacy fan coral where fat butter-and-black striped fish seem to hover like bees. Swimming past the rocky point, the sea becomes so deep that we seem to be tottering on the brink of some dark, fathomless cavern. We dive down into these cooler waters and are suddenly swallowed by thousands of tiny silvery-quick fish. Always, lying just at the edge of our vision, wait the pug-jawed barracuda, like wary watch-dogs. We surface on the far side of the island and sun ourselves in a quiet, sandy cove before hiking back across the island through an intricate maze of sea-grape, palms and cacti, then swimming out to our boat.

That night we anchor at the Bitter End Marina, an appropriate name it seems. Sleeping under the stars on the deck, looking out between Saba Rock and Virgin Gorda, it seems we’re perched on the very edge of the Caribbean with all the Atlantic and the dark shores of Africa hidden in the night before us, blowing its hot jungle-scented breath across an ocean to touch us where we lay. From a nearby boat, men are singing a low, rowdy drinking song, floating across the water like remnants torn from a colorful, pirate-ridden past. Even the stars seem half-submerged in a night swollen with dreams. It’s our first night of no-rain, and we lie there in our pool of moonlight, talking quietly and sinking slowly into sleep.

The next morning as we head back toward Tortola the rain that avoided us the night before is close on our heels and Steve and I are busy snapping shots of the dark, but lovely on-coming squall. Too soon it’s upon us and I barely have time to put the camera away before we are heeled over, topsides awash. Kathy is furiously reeling in her fishing line, her bikini top blown down about her waist, while she slides helplessly over the side. I just manage to grab hold of her before she’s washed away, when Steve calls for her to run and get the soap so he can take advantage of this tropical shower. Within fifteen minutes the squall has passed and I have my camera out again. This time I make the crew line up and pose, asking them to look as much as possible like drowned rats. Steve, especially, seems well suited for the task.

The northern shores of Tortola are exceptionally lush and inviting with several deserted coves becoming our own private play grounds.

Here the water seems spilt from a paint box—deepest indigo flowing into turquoise, and then rinsing out to a pale sapphire on the soft, white sand—while behind rise groves of palms and steep, forested mountains.

Cane Garden Bay is but a wider, populated version of this.

We lay at anchor in her large generous mouth with run drinks in hand, a kind of easy languor settling over us as our senses become well sated. On shore we measure the progress of an old man on a donkey riding out of the steep hills, disappearing in the foliage, and crossing a stone bridge.

Nearby a boat plays at spinnaker-riding. We watch as the wind catches the brightly colored sail, lifting it high about the mast like a giant kite, while swinging on a line drawn between the clues, a young woman squeals with delight.

Toward evening, colors grow mute and sound emerges—faint tinkles, soft drumming, a syncopated beat. The two sleepy beach bars are finally stirring and soon a battle of the steel drum bands is in full swing. The hypnotic, calypso music is wafted through the balmy night, across starlit water, luring wayward sailors ashore. In time, we too succumb.

We make our last anchorage at Little Harbor on Peter Island. Kathy and Steve catch a red snapper and king fish on the reefs that we barbecue for supper. The moon rises plump and round over the mountain, dancing briefly with roguish clouds before another squall blows in. We sit below the Bimini in a womb of water, none of us wanting to go below and put the night to sleep. When we do it is one by one, each along, like candles that burn out slowly and separately in the night.

It is a rare occurrence, these last nine days in the British Virgin Islands—a trip that surpasses even our inflated fantasies of it. The best part is the naturalness of it all: the rising to a shared breakfast beneath the early morning sky, the daily scrubbing of decks, dishes and laundry, then festooning the life-lines with drying clothes; the fascination of snorkeling and sensuousness of sailing, when the sun and rhythmic seas soothe the soul even while vigorous winds and drifting vistas stimulate the mind.

There’s the feeling that this is life at its most eloquent and elemental form—a life worth pursuing. We leave the islands with one conviction firmly in mind: It’s time for our dream of sailing around the world to begin ripening into reality.

But before we do, we take one more bareboat charter into the tropics—this time to the Bay Islands of Honduras with Dale’s father.

[Stay tuned for Part IV of our Sea Saga—The Bay Islands of Honduras]

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Tags

adventure, Dreams Come True, lifestyle, sailing, Sailing Around the World

[Click Here for Part I – Catching the Dream]

We married on the fly. I had no wedding gown, no ring, no cake. No one thought to bring a camera. Our parents were given an hour’s notice to meet us at the altar. I’m still amazed the minister agreed to tie the knot on such late notice. We were married standing beneath a giant heart covered in roses in a chapel decorated for another couple’s wedding.

We drove off to Santa Barbara later that afternoon to spend our wedding night with our best friends, Steve and Kathy. They graciously gave up their bed to us, a mattress on their bedroom floor, and slept on the couch that night.

The next morning we rented a 10-foot sailing dingy and headed off toward the oil rigs in the channel, even though storm warning flags were flying. No one knew how to sail, but how hard could it be?

We made it half way to the oil rigs before the steadily building waves started swamping the boat. Kathy and I frantically bailed water with our straw sun hats while the guys managed to get the outboard engine started and the boat turned around. We finally made it to shore, wet and cold with ruined hats, but undaunted by the adventure.

That afternoon we headed south to find an apartment while Dale looked for work. Meanwhile I enrolled myself in the local high school. Although I had already turned 18, I was still two months shy of a diploma when we eloped. I lasted about a week at the new school, and then enrolled myself in a community college. By the time I finally took the courses needed to get my long-delayed High School diploma, I’d already earned a BA in English.

A retired Port Captain at Long Beach Harbor eventually taught us to sail.

Not long afterward we moved back to the Central Coast where we bought a small sloop that we launched and sailed at Lake Lopez, Morro Bay, and Santa Barbara.

Our next boat was a Columbia 26 named Dulcinea. 

We kept her at a slip in Santa Barbara, spending long sunny weekends aboard with the kids and cruising along the coast and to the Channel Islands.

Even so, it wasn’t until we took a bareboat charter in the Virgin Islands and later the same year to the Bay Islands off Honduras that we knew for sure we could do this—live this way fulltime, sailing from one island to another . . . forever.

Our dream of sailing around the world was reborn.

Stay tuned for Part III of our Sailing Saga: Chartering in the Caribbean

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Tags

Dreams Come True, First Love, sailing, Sailing Around the World

The wildest, bravest, and most romantic thing I’ve ever done was to fully embrace my boyfriend’s dream of sailing around the world and make it my own.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why I married him.

I was already falling in love at this point and the thought of sailing around the world with him someday pushed me over the edge.

But there was more to the sailing dream than that. I’d always been fascinated by the ocean and as a girl I loved reading books about kids who grew up around boats. I loved films about high-sea adventures and swash-buckling sailors. I was wild about pirates.

In a Junior High Home Ec class, we had to put together an album about our future lives, and mine featured a long, elegant yacht. When I showed my mom she declared, “You’ll never be a sailor—you’re far too lazy.” (Yah for moms with dire predictions you can rebel against!)

But I can see why she said that. I was a dreamer, not a doer. I’d rather read than go swimming. I gave up trying to surf because it was too exhausting (and cold!) getting the board past the breakers. To be fair, it was just me and a girlfriend winging it. I had no wet suit, it was winter, and the board was ten feet long. (To be even fairer, she learned to surf.)

So when I met this handsome, adventurous man who was a doer and dreamed of sailing around the world, I fell hard, all the way.

Dale was already a man of the world at age 21, a Viet Nam vet. He’d enlisted because he wanted to go to sea. He tried joining the Navy but they wanted a 4-year commitment and he was a man in a hurry, so he went next door and joined the Marines. You know–Marines—the sea—right? Clearly he hadn’t thought this through, but risky behavior was in his blood. His dad was a bull rider before becoming a high steel worker, and later a mountain climber.

By the time we met, Dale was racing off-road vehicles in the Baja 500, and earning a living walking high steel beams like his dad. He drove a Porsche. He had a mustache and sideburns. He looked like a pirate.

I was still a senior in high school. I wore pigtails and sang in the choir. I drove my grandpa’s old Rambler.

He was the opposite of everything me. Exactly what I was looking for.

Twelve years passed before we sailed away together and saw our dream come true. But by then I was largely the driver of the dream. Dale had become the responsible adult. He thought we should put our dream on hold until our two kids were grown. I said no way. I’d waited long enough. I’d never had the chance to grow up around boats, but by golly our kids would.

Stay tuned for Sea Saga, Part II – First Sail, Bailing Seas