As the only child of immigrant parents (from
Poland to Canada) in the 70s I did what they did for recreation, be it hiking and camping and skiing and, from when we moved to the
west coast when I was 7, sailing. During the week I went to school and messed around with friends and on weekends I did trips with my parents.
When I was 10 we sailed to
Hawaii and back over 6 months. I don’t remember any other kids on
boats at the time and I spent a lot of time sailing our
dinghy around and building elaborate sand structures, as well as reading copiously, based on our
photo albums. I was a decent school student but really enjoyed skipping out on a bunch of school time for the
cruise.
When I was about to start high school in 1980 my parents decided on a
South Pacific cruise. Before leaving I don’t remember any discussion other than about the logistics of
living aboard a small 11m sailing vessel and who we’d leave our dog with.
British Columbia had (has?) a very good correspondence school system so rather than home schooling my parents registered me for the next grade just before we left. About half of our boat library was text
books and encyclopaedias.
We ended up cruising for 3 years and I did three grades by correspondence - mostly independently with a slow mail and return 3 months later system with the tutors. It meant I almost always had mail wherever we went at the local poste restante agent - one of my tutors was a stamp collector and really like my mail. I generally spent 3-4 hours per day on schoolwork and didn’t involve my parents. The biggest hassle was some of the physical science experiments, for which I would wait until I could access a local school’s or hospital’s lab. Once I used the sick bay of a European
fishing ship to conduct a blood separation
experiment.
I maintained contact via infrequent letters with my girlfriend (we had kissed!) and a couple of best friend mates. But we were in completely different worlds and the friendships didn’t survive the cruise.
I was the social butterfly for our family as at nearly every anchorage I would row over to the nicest cruising boat and ask them to invigilate a test I had to write. Usually they would say yes, then get me to bring my parents over to socialise while I wrote my test. With no
refrigeration on our boat, my most important task for finding an invigilator was did they have ice cubes?
At that time there were very few boat kids in the tween or teenage years. Lots of French cruisers with toddlers and some US or European
boats with late teen early 20s hitch hikers or children of cruisers, but very few people cruising with school age kids. When we did find another boat with school age kids then we would disappear together for as long as we could convince our respective parents to stay at that anchorage. With no
SSB or even
VHF all these friendships were fleeting and I don’t
recall ever buddy
boating.
Otherwise I usually found the local school or church and made friends with the kids there. My parents loved meeting the parents of my friends, though my mum was often teased and pitied for only having one child. Kids are the same everywhere and different spoken languages were not barriers.
I also spent a ton of time with adult cruisers during that time - most were good natured and usually happy to host an opinionated loud mouth kid who loved arguments and looking over their boat. Often I was without my parents, as I was quite gregarious while they were not. I did get sexually abused once by one solo cruiser, in an anchorage in NZ as it happened, but otherwise only good experiences.
From the very beginning of the trip I was an integral part of the crew and stood might watches and did whatever else was required. I was the primary anchorer,
dinghy master,
coral bombie spotter, and social secretary. I got more efficient with my schoolwork as time went on - I spent 6 months completing grade 8, 4 months grade 9, and 3 months for grade 10. Before our return to
Canada I had nearly 12 months with no schooling responsibilities.
We returned to our home town when I was 15 and right at the start of grade 11 - one of the reasons for returning at that time was that my parents wanted me to have at least a couple of ‘normal’ high school years. I was generally way ahead academically though behind in the physical sciences, way more mature than my peers, but way way behind in socialisation - I was used to drinking alcohol but not parties and drinking to get drunk, didn’t know anything about any drugs, and didn’t know anything about popular culture and what school girls found interesting. I don’t as definitely an outsider for the rest of high school. I was also quite bored and unruly, until I was placed into a strict academic private school for the last year and a half of high school.
My parents separated within 6 months of returning, with neither able to go back to their previous careers (my dad was a professional
engineer working for
government and my mum a gift store owner) - my dad went back to
Fiji and my mum
sold up and moved north to the Yukon. I finished high school, quit university after one year, and spent the next ten years as a ski bum, sailing instructor and
offshore racing crew, before meeting a
women and finally settling down to a later degree and a professional career.
I’ve been moderately successful in life but have never let go of my dream to go cruising again. Unfortunately my (now) ex-wife had no desire to go
offshore with our kids so I haven’t been able to gift my kids with the experiences of cruising. But I have a partner with whom I’m preparing to cast off permanently.
I don’t really have any
advice beyond my own n=1 experience, but would strongly urge you to go cruising with your family as it will most likely be a supremely positive life experience. Also, to assure you that you will realise that the big issues that you are now worried about regarding your kids are really not that big a deal at all.
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