General Info: Help Introduce Us to Lagoons!

[TheMastaDon]

Background info:

My name is Don, I have a wife and 4 kids and we love change. So one day we packed up everything, sold our house in New Hampshire and drove down to Texas to close on a house we hadn't seen in person and to purchase a business we knew very little about. Needless to say, everything went swell! Last December I decided I wanted to be a sailor, so I signed up for a "Learn to Sail Vacation" on an Island Spirit 37 Catamaran where I got my ASA-101, 103, 104, and 114 certs and contracted the sailing bug. I convinced my wife (in theory) that we should sell everything again, but this time buy a Lagoon and be a liveaboard family! Now's where I need help.


Wife's Concerns:

Will she get sick?
Can she adapt to the close quarters?
Will quality of live improve, or become frustrating?
Is it realistic to live in a marina with 4 kids?


Next Steps:
Charter a Lagoon 380, 39, 400, 440, or 450 (or 52 if I win the lottery) so she can experience it. However, flying the entire family to BVI then chartering a boat, significantly cuts into our down payment for our own!

Ideally, we'd love to connect with someone near us (we actually live in Central Texas...so "near us" means somewhere on the Texas coast) who owns a Lagoon, is intending to take it out into the gulf of Mexico and wouldn't mind two stowaways! Our kids will be gone from late July to early August visiting relatives, leaving my wife and me to make every effort possible to get onto a Lagoon and learn about the liveaboard lifestyle.

Extra Info:
I'm not entirely clear on this, but I believe you cannot charge us for a trip on your boat if you don't have a captains license (please correct me if I'm wrong on that) but that doesn't mean I can't bring all the provisions, any preferred drinks, pay for the fuel, etc. I'd even help with any maintenance. I've never scraped a hull or changed a Yanmar engine's oil, but I follow directions well!

Thanks for taking the time to read this far. At the very least, I'm hoping to hear some opinions and/or idea for how we should proceed. Hope everyone has a great day and for everyone who's out sailing right now...I envy you!

-Don