Your Family

The world’s best home school: a classroom that floats

For some, the pandemic has catalysed a leap that may have seemed irresponsible: one onto, if not into, the sea

The Chapman children from the boat they live and learn on, in Cabo, Mexico, photographed via Facetime. Photograph: Tayler Smith/The New York Times

Mariya Manzhos
Sat Oct 3 2020 - 01:00

Two years ago, Alison and Luke Williams bought a 13.4m (44ft) monohull Moody Blue with the dream of sailing around the world with their three children. But many commitments tethered them to shore: two full-time jobs, piles of debt and their children’s school in New South Wales, Australia.

Then the pandemic hit. Luke (43) lost his job, school went online, and life became restricted to the home. “If not now, when?” they thought.

They sold their home, most of their belongings and moved their crew of three kids aged seven, 12 and 13, two Labradoodles and a cat onto their new floating home. “Covid has given us a push forward rather than holding us back,” says Alison (39) who left her job as a kindergarten teacher. They are reclaiming something they’ve lacked for years. “We finally have time as a family.”

For many families, coronavirus upended the delicate balance of work, home-schooling and childcare. But for some, the pandemic catalysed a leap that may have seemed irresponsible: one onto, if not into, the sea.

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Unforgettable family adventure

“We have never been busier,” says Behan Gifford, a US coach for families seeking to set sail and the founder of Sailing Totem. “Our rate of inquiries and new clients are a multiple of pre-Covid. People want to get away. The families are home-schooling and working remotely anyway,” Gifford says. “Why not take the cash from a home or savings and turn it into an unforgettable family adventure?”

Families with children aboard are referred to as “kid boats” in the sailing community. Gifford estimates there are over 1,000 of them at sea.

In 13 years of cruising (another term for recreational sailing), Gifford, along with her husband and three children, circumnavigated the world, visited 48 countries and territories, swam through the wrecks of a Japanese fighter plane in the Western Pacific, and searched for Napoleon’s ghost on St Helena island.

This unconventional upbringing benefited her oldest son, who’s now a junior at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. “Our kids are articulate and interesting and very different,” says Gifford, who is currently anchored in the Sea of Cortez off Mexico with her family. “Being different is good; it means that you stand out.”

As online school launches, to use the term in its modern landlocked sense, many children are confined to the four corners of their computer screen. But for boat kids, their classroom is as wide as the world.

Nathalie and Michael Neve, along with their own three children, are anchored in front of a deserted beach, surrounded by turquoise water, in sight of the tropical hills of Moorea in French Polynesia. When they catch a fish, Michael and Noah (12) cut it open to study its digestive system before filleting it for dinner. They peer into its gut, often spotting smaller fish, little squid or a piece of coral.

“It’s not the kind of thing you’d do in a typical school environment,” says Michael, who left his engineering job in Oregon to cruise in 2018.

The Neves’s solar-powered monohull Ubi is itself an object lesson. “We always come back to energy and space – how do you get essentials like electricity and fresh water on the boat? Is there room for a Lego you just built, or do we have to break it back into pieces before we go to bed?” says Nathalie, a professor of mechanical engineering who enjoys teaching innovation to kids.

In addition to home-schooling books, the kids use an offline Wikipedia, which a friend downloaded to a hard drive for them, and a modest library. The internet signal wavers in remote locations like French Polynesia, which reduces fights over screen time. Instead, the children keep a running list of questions to look up once they can get access the internet.

“There is definitely something about the internet not being easily available that makes it feel like a special thing,” Nathalie says.

While parents relish the extra family time, kids still need friends, something in short supply at sea. This requires planning and flexibility to alter travel arrangements. “We have to put work into socialising in a sense that we need to seek out other kid boats so there is companionship,” Gifford says. “Just expecting it to happen is a good way to have lonely kids.”

Boat kids

Her children formed a tight friend group with boat kids from six countries during their time in the south Pacific and southeast Asia and continued to meet on Google Hangouts.

Many kid boat families find each other on a Facebook forum called kids4sail, started by Erika Lelièvre 10 years ago to find playmates for her sociable toddler. “At the time there was no community of boat kids anywhere,” says Lelièvre (40) who lives on a boat in Stamford, Connecticut, with her husband and daughter Lucie, now 11. “We would come to a marina in a dinghy, and they’d be like: You just missed so and so by two days. It was very frustrating.”

The Facebook group now has over 5,000 members, and its map displays dots for nearly 350 families at sea. Parents share tips on swimming with jellyfish, recommend the best childproof cushion covers and discuss best safety approaches. On the first of the month, families post their location and the ages and languages of their kids, which allows them to meet up in anchorages and plan play dates.

Travelling in tandem with other kid boats isn’t difficult, given the prevailing winds and cruising seasons. During hurricane months, boats hunker in hubs for months, allowing people to meet their neighbours at sea.

After putting their children down to sleep in Seattle, Genny Arredondo (40) and her husband Adam (39) watch YouTube channels of kid boat families at sea. This ritual helps her heal. In March, she lost a nonprofit job she loved. Shortly after, her father died from coronavirus just as they began to reconnect after a period of estrangement.

In mourning, she decided it was time to act on their wistful fantasy. They are updating their house to put it on the market and scouring the internet for the perfect boat; her husband enrolled in sailing classes.

“For us, this pandemic was a wake-up call that tomorrow is not guaranteed,” Genny Arredondo says. “If you have dreams or ambitions or aspirations, they’re meant to be lived.”

– New York Times