Preparing the land yacht

Preparations continue...

I never anticipated that preparing to spend a year on a boat would include sanding and repainting weatherboards on our house, but so be it.





Actually quite good fun with the whole family helping. One of those many jobs we "should have done years ago...".

Now, back to the packing...

Katherine

Dear friends,

Hello I'm Katherine, I am 10 years old and I like to ride horses. I have a brother and sister.

I like to sail on my boat Meander. I'm excited for this year, my mother is teaching me. I also like cooking and many more activities. 

I've grown up sailing on an S80 called Outlaw. We have now got an Adams 36 called Meander, we're going up the east coast of Australia on her. 

I was born in California, America and I want to live in America when I'm older. I also want to go to the olympic games for horse riding. I live in the city of Melbourne, Australia.

I really love drawing and painting, all that kind of arty stuff. I like to swim and play netball in my spare time. I have some very good friends and I will be sad to leave. Next year I will be in grade 5 I'm in grade 4 this year. I also like to read and write. 

 My favourite tv show is i-Carly it's about a girl who has her own Internet show. I have a program called Meander News I will put some episodes on the blog. 

 

Evelyn

Hello my name is Evelyn. I'm 8 years old.

Relaxing after hiking in the You Yangs.

Next year I am going to miss the people I see regularly.

My hobbies are reading,drawing and painting.

I am looking forward to exploring islands and all the beautiful lands

I don't like being seasick or swimming on a cold and frosty morning. I enjoy cruising on calm waters and seeing places pass by and waving at the other people on boats and land.

I started sailing on our first boat Outlaw and I've been doing more sailing since I started Sea Scouts.

Arthur

Hello!

My name is Arthur I am 6 years old and I know a lot about sailing.

I started sailing on Outlaw when I was a baby.

I like swimming and fishing.

My favourite tv show and movie is all Star Wars and the Lego movie.

Lauren

It seems crazy to be writing my profile as our journey is coming to an end but I guess it's a case of better late than never...

I guess what has held me back is my struggle to write about myself in such a way as to explain how I came to be here, living on a  36' yacht with my family. I mean, who would make such  choice?

I'm no gung-ho sailor who pines for the opportunity to ocean race. I'm not that adventurous - when I travelled in Europe I did a Top Deck camping trip first. I like my safety nets.

I like travelling, I like going to new places. I have lived outside my home land 18 of my 48 years. But I also like stability. I shy away from change. When the kids were little I subscribed to the 'kids like routine' school of thought, probably because I did too. I like structure, I like knowing what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month would be good too!

Taking our family away for a year on a 36' yacht takes me far outside my comfort zone. So why am I doing it? Perhaps I should tell you a few of the things I haven't done and it might make more sense.

When we lived in Wellington, NZ Giles had a Laser 2. He enjoyed racing it with Warren and would encourage me out onto the water whenever he could. I had  a fear of capsizing so in true Giles fashion he made sure we capsized within the first 30 minutes.  Every Single Time! I never got over my fear of capsizing even though we always got the boat back upright and the only thing injured was pride. I did enjoy hiking out on the trapeze though, that could be fun!

When we lived in the Netherlands Giles suggested we buy a boat and sail back to NZ. Was he crazy?! Who would think such  thought? I started buying him books from the English bookshop about the perils of the sea, awful voyages, almost didn't make it boat races and about other crazy people who sail the high seas for fun.

When we lived in California it was 'We're halfway home let's sail home from here'. Still crazy, more books. We had recently married and started our family, who sailed the ocean with kids? Never heard of such a thing.

Then we moved to Australia. We chose our house in Newport because it was by the bay. Giles satisfied his sailing cravings with Wednesday night and Saturday sailing. 'We' bought  a share in Outlaw (an S80) and he also spent time maintaining her. I was busy with the family. We went out on a few sails, opening day, and weekend 'camping' jaunts.

After a while the syndicate wives and partners rebelled. The men were spending too much time away from their families and too much time on the boat. We knew why you might want to have time out from the kids but why on a boat? And so began the learn to sail keel boat years... David, Giles and other helpful men and women at Hobsons Bay Yacht Club taught us how to sail on Outlaw. I focussed on learning the ropes, literally. My job was 'in the office' I got to pull the ropes (now called sheets) to get the headsail to do it's thing. I even learnt how to operate the sheets and brace (thrilling and scary in equal measures) when we were flying the spinnaker.

I took part in two woman-only regattas and a Sunday winter non-spinnaker series. I enjoyed the companionship, and being on the water but wasn't too enthused with the racing aspects. It was good to have a purpose but I have never been competitive. I was happy enough to get the t-shirt at the end of the regatta but didn't have the killer instinct needed to become a racer. I happily left that to Giles.

I did like our pleasure jaunts, weekend trips away and enjoyed camping on Outlaw. So when Giles suggested we buy a cruising boat suitable for cruising on Port Phillip (our local waters) with the potential of later cruising up the east coast. I thought why not? Sailing without the pressure of racing, heading where the wind was going, having a fully stocked caravan on the water without having to drive anywhere with 3 kids in he backseat. Sounded like a win:win to me!

Our kids were 7, 5 and 3 when we bought Meander. We few up to Brisbane to collect her and spent a week cruising in Moreton Bay and sailing down through the intercoastal water way to Southport where we left Giles and two others to sail her back to Melbourne. Weekends , summer were spent getting to know Meander and hoping our cruising skills.

I took courses offered at our yacht club regards safety at sea and earned my boat license. I joined Facebook groups to learn more and ask questions. I heartily recommend the groups I joined - Women Who Sail, WWS Australia, and Kids4sail. All 3 groups are filled with women (and men too on the family sites) who sail with kids or without who have either been through what I have been through or something way more adventurous. I began to see that taking a gap year to sail up the east coast wasn't that crazy. Many people do a whole lot more... Cruising for years with their kids.

In the end it was a case of "what an awesome opportunity for all of us" how could I not sign up for this?

Morning in the park

Beautiful day today. The whole family went down to Meander early so I could climb the mast. before the wind got up. That didn't really work as it was soon blowing 20 knots which made life more interesting than I would have liked.

All the same, I managed to correct a couple of problems remained from rerigging the mast. I switched the spinnaker halyard block to starboard side of the mast head fitting and untangled the spinnaker and genoa halyards. On the way back down I confirmed that the stbd side cap and D1 shrouds are indeed twisted at the lower spreader, so we'll have to slacken the rig, pull out the spreader cap and switch the shrouds around. Fun, fun. We started to do that but Lauren didn't like the look of the top of the mast flopping from side to side so I was forbidden to go up on a halyard on her watch. Never mind, I'll do it tomorrow with Paul.

By then the kids were melting down due to lack of food so we went of to our favourite Williamstown cafe for a family "celebrate Meander being back in the water" breakfast followed by some playground action in the park.

Meander is back in the water!

Quite an important requirement for a boat - being in the water. However Meander has failed this test for the last 11 weeks while we have literally stripped and painted her from top of mast to foot of keel.

It was a huge amount of work and hard to fit in around a day job and some semblence of family life. I'll try post more details about all the jobs we did, but for the moment here are some photos of the end result...

This is what Google made of my photos of the event...

Frequently Asked Questions

So what do you want to know? Here are the answers to some questions we've heard already...if you have more let us know & we'll try to answer them...

Are you crazy?
Simple answer - no
Complex answer - maybe, maybe not. Having got to this stage I think we'd be crazy not to go. We see so many people in the cruising world who have put off their dream of cruising until they retire or until it seems more manageable. What we've witnessed is that sometimes that time doesn't come. We wanted to give our children an opportunity to look a little differently at the world, explore new places, and do it in an affordable way. Taking a year off is a commitment but we wanted to give ourselves enough time to settle into the adventure, not rush things and really just hang out together. Obviously a love of sailing helped push us in this direction. I liken it to deciding when to have children. You can never be ready to have kids, more money, time, knowledge is always useful, the same goes for planning a trip of a lifetime on a 36' yacht with 3 kids...we'll never be ready.... but we'll be ready enough!
There may not be many people who have done this at our school, although we know of 3 other families who have done or are planning to do something similiar, but worldwide this is actually more common than you might imagine. The blogs out there of homeschooling sailing families are inspirational and the sailing community is very supportive or such adventures.

How can you afford it?
Planning, saving, long-service leave, budgetting have all payed a big role in the preparation.
Choosing to make the trip a priority has helped. No longer are we buying stuff because we like it. It must have a use on the boat, be small or be absolutely necessary. It has actually been quite liberating being able to say to myself "No, you don't need that!". Out home is slowly losing some of it's less useful possessions that we won't need on board or when we return. Giving our stroller my beloved stroller away to West Welcome Wagon for use by asylum seekers felt wonderful.

Do you have a kitchen?
We have a small 'galley', which has a gimbaled stove with with  3 gas hobs, and a gas oven, our small sink has fresh & salt water taps (hot water comes when you boil it in the kettle). We have made biscuits & toasted bread in the oven but so far have mainly cooked dinners on the stove top. We carry 2 gas bottles and we turn the gas off after every meal.

Do you have a fridge?
Yes! We have a very deep fridge which stores drinks & other not-needed-every-day food on the bottom level and fresher, more frequently used items on the top level, dairy, meat, vege etc

How much food can you carry?
Enough. So far the longest we've slept on Meander is 15 days. We tend to run out of fresh bread, fruit & veges first but make do with wraps, pre-baked rolls, canned or dried fruit or vege or longer lasting varieties. Long-life milk (& juice) have been with us since the start, but maybe we'll even slip down to powdered milk if we get desperate. Shopping, or provisioning, is done whenever we go ashore. A loaf of bread (or 3), fresh fruit & vege, & sometimes ice-creams or other frozen treats. We have budgetted for the odd meal out to satisfy our roast dinner / chicken parma / fish & chips cravings as we travel.

Can you store wine/beer?
Yes! The fridge usually carries about a dozen bottles of beer (life it too short for canned beer unless your making shandy!), a bottle of white and soft drinks. Extra bottles of red & white are stored with dry goods.

Where will you sleep?
Giles & Lauren share the forepeak (the triangle at the front of the boat).
Katherine sleeps in the port quarterberth (left hand rear)
Evelyn & Arthur share the starboard quarterberth (right hand rear)
2 spare berths are in the saloon, where grandparents (& naughty children) have been known to sleep.

Are you taking your bikes?
No, but we may take scooters. We have budgetted for the odd rental car to get us further inland if we hear of something we can't miss.