Where are all the kid boats?

[Icarus]

Why planning about something with so many possible variants in the the distant future?
The children might not like travelling on boats , its your dream not there's.
Besides there is always schooling they have to do, that will keep them and you busy.
In my experience travelling by boat is a somewhat lonely affair the best of times, one constantly seems to say goodbye. ..

Happy days ...

[KaveingaMax]

Go for it! If you work at it, it will be amazing.
If you put an effort in you can find boat kids. We had 26 boat kids at my sons last birthday on 5he boat for an awesome beach party.

We have been ashore now for almost a year after two years on board in the Med and Caribbean. When we moved ashore the kids were 9 & 11 and had spent 20% of their lives afloat. The kids actually found the adjustment back to land life harder than the adjustment to boat life. We moved to a lovely new town and found conventional land life kids were not nearly as nice as boat kids and it took longer than expected for our kids to settle in.

The kids did grumble a bit on the boat, but they grumble at home anyway...
Boat life is not all a box of roses. We had some hard times and plenty of work is needed to keep the show going. On the boat there are less distractions and space to get away so it is not all plain sailing and effort is needed to keep some harmony.

Home schooling was the hardest part of boat life! Every gathering of kids boats agreed on this and interestingly the teachers seemed to put more pressure on themselves. We were pleased that an hour a day most days put our kids right on track or ahead of their current classmates.

Our family conclusion was the work needed and hard days were totally worth it for the highs and amazing experiences and friends we made.

[Dsanduril]

I've probably made a few similar posts along the same vein, but given some of the negativity here....

I started sailing as an 7-year-old and did a five year circumnavigation with my parents and brother when I was just getting into my teens. Some of my cohorts never wanted to see the sea again, others of us have made our lives about the sea. It's forty years later and I'm still at sea. As a matter of fact, when we were at Cocos-Keeling a few weeks ago it was 39 years and 51 weeks since I had visited as a kid. And I still remembered it as it was, and could see the changes.

Every place we've been so far in the most recent cruise we've encountered kid boats. Even though we don't have kids aboard ourselves we've found our large tramps make us a target for playtime amongst the younger set. Don't know about the Med, it's been a long time, but there are a fair number of kid boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, and they generally find each other pretty easily (in fact, kids are probably far better at that than their parents).

It can be hard living on a boat. The constant change and leaving of new friends can be difficult - and it doesn't matter if you're a kid or an adult, for some people these things are tough, for others it just means having long-time friends scattered all over the globe.

The one comment I'll make from an age perspective, when my family started sailing my brother and I were very much involved in the sailing of the boat. We stood watches (day at first, then night). We steered (no autopilot), held a course, trimmed sails, dropped and weighed anchor and generally operated the boat. To me, this provided invaluable life experience. I do observe in today's cruising fleet less participation by kids in the actual sailing/management of the boat and this does/seems to lead to some boredom. So, if you want some advice - involve the kids in the operation of the boat. Age 5 is not too young. Teach them to steer, turn off the autopilot. Teach them to trim sails. Even how to polish the brightwork. Actually sailing the boat will help keep the boredom at bay, provide parts of an education that can't be had any other way, and teach confidence and self-sufficiency that can go a long way later in life (and isn't that the very essence of parenting?).

[fxykty]

Home schooling is one way, but I wonder why more people don’t consider correspondence school - either private or from an education department. The schooling I did was from the BC Ministry of Education and their programme was established for lighthouse keepers, trappers, RCMP officers in remote postings and so on.

If parents don’t want to be teachers (and that isn’t a comment on parenting) then consider correspondence school. Certainly a way to eliminate one area of child-parent conflict.

A bonus from my parents’ point of view was that since I needed all my exams to be invigilated by someone not of my family, whenever we arrived at a new anchorage I would dinghy over to the nicest boat in the anchorage and ask for help. Once I was done with my exam, invariably they would invite my parents over for socialising. Voila, new friends (with regfridgeration!).

[Katiusha]

A lot of families cruise full time. If you start from Scotland, be aware that most likely you won’t encounter your first kid boats until Galicia or further south. Not sure if it’s been mentioned but here are some resources for you:

There’s a great fb group that is active and very helpful: kids4sail.
For those who are not on fb, the admin of that group created the website listing all blogs, vlogs, etc of families who like to publish their adventures: https://kids4sail.com
That website is very new so it’s still getting developed.

One of the cruising families in that group created a kid boat burgee and distributed it as a school project. The project was extremely successful and now they’re looking at printing more.

Also, if you’re interested in long term schooling kids onboard, there’s a general approach book written by Kate Liard while they were doing expeditions in Artica and Antarctica and homeschooling their two girls: http://katelairdbooks.com
Imho there’s a great photo of their phys Ed class in the book: dinghy sailing in Patagonia...

And there’s of course Beham Gifford of Totem who blogged a lot about bringing up three kids onboard while circumnavigating: https://www.sailingtotem.com
In addition to their own experiences they also keep a blog roll of cruising families, though, as I understand, it might be getting synced with kids4sail website soon.

For general home schooling resources, questions, etc there’s a large, overall intelligent fb group called SEA: Secular Eclectic Academic Homeschoolers. Plenty of info about resources, approaches, etc.

And if you need UK specific homeschooling resources, there are local fb groups with useful info re legalities, procedures, etc.

Other two fb groups that deserve a mention are Liveaboard Families with Kids and Worldschoolers. The latter is a large group of families who believe in “world is your classroom” concept and either travel full time or make a point of going on educational trips with kids.

[knobhdy]

I find it interesting how many of the negative comments conflate cruising with children with having a YouTube channel with children. It reminds me of the derision that used to (still does?) surround people to entered their children in beauty contests or got them gigs as child models and actresses. I’m personally more of a live and let live kind, but how closely the two activities are connected facinates me.

My husband and I are currently planning to head out on a cruise starting with the American Great Loop when our baby is 4 or so. We’re subscribing to Niko Water’s theory of “Do it as long as it’s fun.” And that means fun for all of us. However, as we talk through our plan and discuss boats purchases, finances, family obligations etc, we’ve realized that cruising is a means to the ends of being able to spend more time with our child. If it turns out she gets horribly sea sick, or one of my husbands or my aging parents needs more of our time, or the info sec market suddenly dries up and I’m out of a job (haha, right), if cruising isn’t the right means to our ends, we adjust, reassess and form a new plan. Children may be infinitely flexible, but parents can be too.
I say, go forth, cruise as long as it’s fun. Enjoy your time as a family, the people you meet along the way and the great adventure that awaits. And when it’s not the best life you and your family can be living, try something new. It’s all transient anyway; make the most of it.

[kellyh]

We're currently cruising with our kids in the US (east coast) and Bahamas. We've found that you have to purposely seek out kid boats if you want to find them. (Kids4Sail's monthly roll call works nicely for this.) Organic kid boat meetings rarely happen, but when they do...priceless! Here's blog post I wrote about it: http://cruisingmomblog.com/boat-kids...her-kid-boats/

[Flacor]

We will be sailing passage south from Miami to Exuma the next two months with our 3 kids, 9, 7 and 4 years old. We have been homeschooling since october while traveling US in an RV trailer, 48 days, 24 states and 9000 miles. We have this 5 month window on my working contract and taking advantage to travel around. Now preparing our Morgan 43' centered cockpit for this two month sailing to exumas and back to miami.

Highly recommended to read voyaging with kids, follow sailing totem and tacalpa. We have been taking them weekend sailing since they were born, transition also should include 3/4 days sailing or 9/10 days straight. Boat selection is very important, Safety First, Pleasure and Confort must also be the rule for boat selection

Please let us know is some other Family will be sailing around in Bahamas

[Svan]

Originally Posted by Flacor

Please let us know is some other Family will be sailing around in Bahamas

Next year or the one after, that will be us.

You can tell the kid boats by the webbing on the lifelines

Home schooling is my biggest issue. A, because my kid is strong willed and won’t take an actual lesson from an actual parent, and B, every time I read a government curriculum I come out feeling an cultured yob, and with a headache.

[steve77]

In the Med, Marina di Ragusa had a lot of kids. The moms all connected on Facebook to see where they were all wintering, and MdR on the south coast of Sicily was agreed on.

They have a group on Facebook, not sure of the name but perhaps Marina di Ragusa Liveaboards will get your search started off right. Nice people who will be happy to talk to you!

Cheers!

Steve

[Boatguy30]

First off, kids everywhere in the world. Under the age of 12, play is a universal language.

Being around other kids boats can be a great joy for the kids and parents, but can lead to a "keeping up with the Joneses" situation.

Plenty around in Georgetown Bahamas in Feb and March, Grenada in the summer. Tend to get pretty spread out.

Should be a good group in Tahiti most years for Bastille day also.

[SY Kelpie]

Originally Posted by steve77

In the Med, Marina di Ragusa had a lot of kids. The moms all connected on Facebook to see where they were all wintering, and MdR on the south coast of Sicily was agreed on.

They have a group on Facebook, not sure of the name but perhaps Marina di Ragusa Liveaboards will get your search started off right. Nice people who will be happy to talk to you!

Cheers!

Steve

Thanks for the tip on that one. We are considering that we might detour into the Med for a season, in case we feel that the boy is still too young for an ocean crossing.
Ragusa looks like a fantastic central med location, so we could feasibly make it to Greece for the summer and not have to make it all the way back out of the Med again by the end of the season.

[gcraney]

I'm loving this thread. Thanks for starting it. Sorry if I missed it, but I didn't see either of these linked:
https://www.womenandcruising.com/sailing-families.htm
https://www.sailsummerkai.com/
^ Lots of good anecdotal reading about families on boats.

My first kiddo is ~6 months old, and I'm starting to get some finances re-organized to be able to do something similar to sailsummerkai about 9 years from now (buy a big cat, then rent out our house in SoCal for a couple years). My SO is excited at the prospect of spending at least a couple summers on a boat exploring the Americas. I'm hoping that within the next decade I can convince my SO to start dreaming about doing a whole year or two as a family. The way I see it, we have a window requiring us to be back on the mainland when our oldest is about 1 year from high-school at the latest.

[SY Kelpie]

Thanks for the links- I'll check them out.
Just to update, we have put an offer in on a more suitable boat- she's 39ft, centre cockpit, and has three double cabins plus plenty stowage and tankage. We are still a couple of years away from casting off, but this should give us time to get the boat sorted out, and I'm hoping that we can save a bit of money by waiting for good deals on secondhand gear.

One of the advantages of the larger boat is that we will be able to more easily accommodate extra crew, which I think will make longer passages more achievable.

We've found the Kids4Sail facebook group really helpful, as suggested on this thread, and expect that it will become a vital resource on we set off.

[boatpoker]

Lived aboard since 94' and have met a number of cruising kids, some I got to know quite well. I managed to train most of them that all the chocolate was mine. What a treat to hear a young voice as a dink approached our boat ..... WALLACE, I got chocolate

I have yet to meet one who was not more mature, responsible, comfortable with adults, pleasant and happier than their dirt based counterparts. We wish you well and envy your kids.