Hello Good People

[Island Heart]

I am new to any type of forums. In fact this is the first forum I have ever joined. I hope to learn a lot from all you! So thank you in advance.
Penny

[6string]

Welcome Island Heart. What kind of sailing are you doing? Have you been sailing long?

Hope we can help you. I have been sailing most of my life, mostly racing. Have done some charters and am looking now for the boat that my wife and I are going to live on for a circumnavigation.

Jeff

[Lancerbye]

Welcome aboard Island Heart, there are many interesting, amuzing and sometimes very informative topics here. Enjoy

[Ex-Calif]

Hello Penny - Looks like you are new to forums but not new to boating. You location says "on our boat." Are you living aboard?

[Island Heart]

HI Jeff, Thanks for the hello. We are just sailing around the puget sound right now. My husband is not here all the time so we don't get to get out as much as we would like. we have been sailing for about two years. We are hoping to get much more under our belt.

Hi Dan
Yes, we are living on our boat. And the kicker is we are doing it with a 15 year old.
Hopefully by this time next year we can be somewhere warmer.

Penny

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha Penny,
Welcome aboard!! Hope you enjoy this forum. Its the best I've ever seen. Lots of good discussions and great information.
Was just at Port Townsend for the Wooden Boat Festival. Met two other forum members there. Great bunch of boating folks.
Kind Regards,
JohnL

[mickmul]

Welcome Penny! Kinda tied down to limited cruising grounds myself because of kids etc! Hope your extended plans come to fruition, and you get to those warmer climes!! Are you educating on board? This is a great forum for asking for advice, or just learning by reading the informed threads! What sort of net access do you have aboard if any? Welcome again!

[Island Heart]

Hi Mickmul
Yes, we are teaching him at home. However he is not a child that is motivated and I am seriously considering putting him back in school. I just don't know what else to do to get him motivated. If anyone has any ideas, I will listen! I would like to continue home schooling. His father is a pilot and when he is home they can spennd time together and we can go sailing at anytime. But other then that, his education needs to be first in our life.

[Ex-Calif]

15 is a very tough age. My 10 y/o is lagging in math. I bought a few workbooks and gave him a 50c per page incentive to do it. We sit and correct it together. We're probably going to add a disincentive for errors at some point but I want to get the rhythm going. his accuracy is climbing quickly though. He's definitely a capitalist. I already owe him 30 bucks...

[S/V Antares]

Welcome Penny, I have meet many cruising familys and even married into one! My father in law put three kids (10 and up) and a dog on a boat and did not come back for almost 10 years. My wife is not a great speller but more than makes up for it in common sense.
I think you should tell hubby to clip his wings for a while and take junior cruising. He will want to leave the nest soon enough so do it while you can. Good Pilots can always get a ride.
MIddle and High Scools are nearly useless for real learning and are breeding grounds for bad behavior. Long days at sea are great for hitting the books and you all will be much closer for the experience. Even a year will change him for the better.
Then again he could end up a boat bum like us.... perhaps we are too hasty!

[Lancerbye]

Welcome Penny. We home schooled our kids up to what appeared to be grade 10 the older one was fortunate that he did not see the inside of a public school, wrote the adult High school equivalency tests and scored at the post secondary level. The younger one was not so lucky, we had moved to a community and because our proximity was at the time close to the schools we put him in a public school. I wish we had been Cruising then. As S/V Antares put it, most of what the kids learn in public school at that age is bad behavior. This is a discision we have dearly regreted and wish we could undo. Take him cruising he will get a lot more out of it.

[Boracay]

I'm pretty well retired now but I spent longer than I care to admit teaching teenagers maths and most everything else.

I don't really recall having a problem with motivation (this is in a classroom), normally there would be one or more other causes, the most common of which was disruption in schooling about grade 4 (age about 10 years).

I got one group of students to the point where I was teaching from grade 4 texts and it seemed to be working well but administration pulled the plug.

In reality it is probably a bit like one of those Russian dolls. As you uncover one cause there is another underneath.

One aspect of children cruising is that they do not have a hometown. I grew up in New Guinea and do feel that I missed out on my street creds. That is, my accent was different - I used a different English dialect to other Australians.

[swagman]

Hi Penny,
Welcome to the site. I find it really useful and trust you find the same.
Sail safe
JOHN