September 2008, Wolfratshausen

Nicky started the trip as an almost 4 year old (3 years plus 9 months) and ended it as an almost 5 year old. I am not sure he will keep many specific memories of our trip throughout his life, but I am hopeful that his experiences have shaped him and will continue to frame his outlook on life and the world as he grows up.

Before we left on our cruise, Nicky had many little friends and quite the social life. Therefore our primary concern was how he would cope being with just his parents for long periods of time. As it turned out, Nicky did very, very well, and we needn’t have worried. He is at a great age for cruising: given Mommy, Papa, and a cozy space full of toys, Nicky was never lonely for kid company. He has always had a good attention span, which served him well on board, but his life on Namani also strenghtened this quality. He was perfectly happy spending hours with lego, a cutting/glueing project, or „reading” his books, usually without much input from us. Of course, he loved beach time when we were near land, but he also did very well during passages. Originally, we thought about sending him to stay with his grandmother while we crossed the Atlantic without him, but our 3-6 day passages in the Mediterranean gave us confidence that he would do fine. And we were indeed very glad to keep him with us on the Atlantic crossing for the family experience it proved to be. After 26 days at sea, he was the only person on board not counting down the miles! Nicky could have gone on another 26 days, as long as the three basics were in order for him: parents, cozy home, and playthings.

We observed that Nicky became more creative in his independent play as our year progressed. Originally, he was eager to build lego models the „right” way, according to the set instructuons. Later, he became more inventive in using the pieces to make totally different creations. His art reflected his life aboard: he has become quite the virtuoso when it comes to drawing cargo ships and sharks. He brought his toys to life and had them play out conversations and actions. Maybe part of this was normal 4-going-on-5 development, but it is hard to imagine that he would have shown the same traits if we were back home and he had more ready entertainment available to him.

Appropo „ready entertainment”: we did have a collection of about 5 movies which Nicky could watch on our laptop, but his viewing time was usually very restricted by the availability of power. For example, he never watched a video at any point of our Atlantic crossing, and didn’t miss it. One experience we had in the Caribbean sums up the attraction of videos to sailing children. A friend brought us a copy of a recent Hollywood movie that both sets of parents aboard Namani and her buddy Sea Bright were eager to watch. We set up movie night in our cockpit, using the other boat’s laptop to set up a kids’ movie in the cabin. Interestingly, the children quickly became bored with their movie and ignored it, restorting to the active, interactive play they both preferred. Without any parental direction, the kids just went ahead, decided what they preferred to do, and did it. Beautiful. No sooner had we returned to life on land than Nicky was bombarded with confusing images of superheroes, comic idiots, and age-inappropriate violence stylized in a way to catch a child’s attention. Sigh. Back to the real world. (But I have said it before: our simple, quiet life on Namani was real life, too. The alternate version which I am eager to get back to).

This isn’t to say that Nicky didn’t enjoy a healthy social life during our year aboard Namani. Markus calculated that we spent 156 days out of our 360 in the company of another boat with a child or children on board! These were chance encounters that turned into cherished friendships. For example, we met the sailboat Arearea in Tunisia when they pulled into the marina slip next to us. A beautiful friendship between parents and children quickly blossomed, and we spent the next 6 weeks together in the Med, and met subsequently in Lanzarote, St Lucia, Puerto Rico, and the US Intracostal Waterway. Just as we sadly left Arearea for the first time, we met Sea Bright, who were also crossing the Atlantic and then cruising the Caribbean. So Nicky often did have other children to play with: like-minded children of like-minded parents, exploring the world in ways both great and small.

Of course, we didn’t know we would meet these cruising famililes when we set off. Now, however, I would depart for another cruise in confidence that we would find other boats with children aboard. There are a number of cruising families out on the seas (usually with preschool or early school aged children; older children are harder to find). Given that knowledge, and the fact that cruisers tend to bunch at major departure points around the world, I would not be worried about finding playmates for Nicky on our next cruise. Many, many cruisers congregate in the Canary Islands in November into order to cross the Atlantic at a favorable season and arrive in the Caribbean just as hurricane season ends. The same phenomenon exists as boats await their turn to transit the Panama canal, as the Carribean hurricane season draws closer and the end of Pacifc cyclone season beckons them ahead. We have jut received an email from Sea Bright, who are anchored off Bora Bora with four other boats, all with children on board. Heaven on earth for parents and children allike!

Other than sailing friends, Nicky did enjoy impromptu meetings with local children in many places. Having a child also eased us into interesting conversations with locals which brought us insights and experiences we might never have had if we were travelling without a child. At times, I thought that our cruise would habe been easier without a child – only to conclude that Nicky enriched our experiences much more than he detracted from them. I suppose this is true of parenthood in general.

Aside from concerns about Nicky’s well being, I have to admit to worrying about myself: would I be able to take 24 hours of close contact in a confined space with my child? I am not at all a model motherly type, and the time I took off from work to stay home with infant Nicky was boring and dissatisfying. Before we left on our cruise, I was back to work and appreciated the time Nicky spent in child care. At sea, I obviously didn’t have the option to get away from my loved one. It took some time to adapt to for sure, but now, at the end of a year, I find myself to be a more patient and calm mother who can in fact spend hours enjoying time with her child. In this way, it has been a year of personal development for me as much as for Nicky.

Though we had a well stocked family pharmacy on board, we were hardly ever sick during our time cruising. In fact, being back in a crowded town and school environment has bombarded us with many more germs than we were exposed to in our cruising! We were lucky not to experience any serious injuries, either.

In many ways, we were less worried about Nicky’s physical safety aboard than him being lonely or bored. This is because we felt reasonably confident that our boat was a solid cruiser and safe for a child. We specifically looked for a cruiser that was child friendly, and found it in Namani: a deep cockpit, roomy (it’s all relative!) interior, and cozy pilot berth for Nicky to call his own. To this, we added many safety features such as netting around the lifelines and handholds at his level (details for anyone interested below). We had two lifejackets for Nicky as well as a simple harness, none of which he liked wearing. Usually, he chose to remain below in the cabin rather than come into the cockpit if it meant he would have to wear a lifejacket there. Nicky quickly developed his own safety habits: in the roughest seas, he would simply give up on any type of activity and simply got into his bunk to sleep! We never experienced any horrendously rough conditions that had us fearing for our safety, though we were physically uncomfortable at certain times. All part of sailing!

It is easy to glorify our year off now that it is behind us, so I am checking my words now. It wasn’t all roses, to be honest, but the frustrations we did have when sailing with a child would have been exactly the same had we been in a house and at work. In fact, the frustrations in that kind of life are greater in many ways (the biggest one being the rush out of the house in the morning to work and school, and the difficulty in finding time. Time was one commodity we had lots of at sea). Our year of sailing was a lovely time together, with no interferences from outside obligations, business trips taking Papa away, or the like. Cruising on a small boat might not be everyone’s dream, but I think it is wonderful to pursue and realize a dream as a family, whatever the dream may be.

Notes on safety features on board:

NETTING: We rigged netting permanently around Namani’s lifelines. However, it was impractical to rig netting in the bow where it would have fouled the anchor, anchor chain, or forward lines, and also impractical in the stern, which had to be clear to board the dinghy, use the swim ladder, or rig stern lines. My solution to these two gaps was to rig more netting over these points whenever we began any passage more than 24 hours. That meant that as soon as we were underway, I would set up the extra netting so that the entire deck was netted off. We also found the netting very useful to keep things other than our child from going overboard: toys, loose clothing hung out to dry, etc.

HANDHOLDS: We added several handles in the interior of Namani at Nicky’s height. He made especially good use of the handle in the head. I was also worried about the companionway where I found it difficult to screw in handles where he could reach yet that did not trip us in our comings and goings. My solution was to tie 2 ropes as bannisters, one on each side of the companionway. I tied knots into these ropes at intervals so that his hand could rest on them and not slip down the rope.\

LIFE JACKETS: Nicky had two different types. One was his seagoing, auto-inflating lifejacket which we fitted with an automatic light and crutch strap. The other was a good old fashioned, bulky orange vest which we used for rides in the dinghy when he could get wet without setting off the automatic inflation.