Kids on ocean passages - reckless or character building?

I'm with Jonic.

We left in '93 with our children - one just 5 years and the other just under 2.

Circumnavigated (the easy way) rejoining so-called 'society' 6 years later.

My son is now a cad designer/engineer for a respected local company and my daughter has just earned an MA with distinction at university.

They both look back at our cruising days with fondness, their only regret seems to be not being able to remember all of it (I'm having that problem nowadays as well!).

jonic said:
Having actually lived aboard for eight years and had two kids along the way I can categorically say that half of you posting here have no idea what you are talking about.

It was incredible for the whole family and were are blessed to have been given the privilege.

Our bond with our children is unique, the experiences we shared as a family were literally out of this world.

Society is controlled far more than you realise, it's only when you break free that you can really see the thought conditioning.

Society doesn't really want you to think about striking out on your own.

We swam with eagle rays, fed sharks, ate fruit from the trees in the rain forest, tuna as sushi straight from the ocean and watched a hundred sun rises and sun sets together, as well as making friends without prejudice of every race, religion and creed.

It was an almost indescribable experience.

We home schooled for the early years.

Now we are back my eldest passed his 11+ today and is an A student, both of them captain their school sports teams and my eldest plays football at town level and has more medals than I can fit in his cabinet.

They play saxophone, drums and piano and sing in the choir and have masses of friends.

I detest the violent outlook the XBOX, 24hr News and the Internet has now given them.
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In general I think this a excellent experience for both the parents and the children. Learning to trust your own resources is something we do too little these days.
The one thing that came to my mind is if the chosen boat is suitable for this exercise. Given the fact the boat as been strictly designed a racing boat makes me wonder if it offers enough "passive" safety to keep children safe enough.
I deliberately use those words as I'm aware the "enough" level is different for most people. Fact is that this boat is principally designed for a bunch of ugly blokes to go fast.
For me I would not use such a boat to take young children around the world. But many other boats would be perfectly fine in my opinion
 
the obvious advantage of a race boat is that it's quick ... or can be anyway ... so open sea passages can take less time - handy if you're looking at a longer passage whilst avoiding inclement weather ...
but probably not as tough as the plodders that can carry on in relative comfort regardless of the weather ..
 
Though it's a bit different on ocean passages, I've long been a fan of the sprinter design types rather than the ' sit there and take it ' Colin Archer school of thought; time and again what has seemed ' bulletproof ' has proven anything but,

see

Heavy Weather Sailing - Adlard Coles

Once Is Enough - Miles Smeeton

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A faster design - within reason - may well allow one to skip around or get into port before bad weather, and in the meantime is rewarding fun to sail...

Edit; maybe only becoming possible now for small crews with the advent of decent autopilots.
 
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Seajet said:
Though it's a bit different on ocean passages, I've long been a fan of the sprinter design types rather than the ' sit there and take it ' Colin Archer school of thought; time and again what has seemed ' bulletproof ' has proven anything but,

see

Heavy Weather Sailing - Adlard Coles

Once Is Enough - Miles Smeeton

---

A faster design - within reason - may well allow one to skip around or get into port before bad weather, and in the meantime is rewarding fun to sail...

Edit; maybe only becoming possible now for small crews with the advent of decent autopilots.
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Speaking to many other liveaboards with all manner of yacht design and size it is amazing that 2 knots covers 95 percent of average passage times for most cruisers regardless of yacht size. Most long distance cruisers average 5-7 kts on ocean passages. There will be exceptions but not so many. The theory of lighter designs being crewed by families with small children and sailing as if they were a racing crew just doesn't happen.
We sail for comfort on long passages as discomfort brings on fatigue and fatigue makes life miserable. In my experience unless you are a racing crew and comfort doesn't matter the lighter designs will be going as slow as the heavier designs as the lighter designs are inheritantly less comfortable to start with in bumpy seas. Clearly this is less of an issue if you are coast hoping but it matters when you are at sea for weeks rather than hours
 
>I haven't changed my opinion because I do consider school to be of primary importancev for children. I am surprised at the number of responses suggesting that this is not necessarily so.

Not so. Kids on boats have lessons every afternoon and from what I saw are better educated and are more personable than children in schools. They also experience and see many things that no school kid would see such as different cultures, different foods, different scenenary and different languages.

My only worry about them was long distance cruisers generally return home in time for secondary school and university. The boat kids will be well ahead of all the other kids in education, life experience and personal skills which could cause problems not only with other kids but teachers too.
 
Um, just an observation here - i think the OP picked up an article about a fairly out-there experimental-type one-off boat with whacky rig which (for starters) set out on a fairly-to-very out-there passage eastbound from NZ and failing short of South America . There's a lot of difference between that sort of full-on extreme-sailing-focussed stuff and more family-life-focussed Med and Carib cruising , i think. Generally, I'm with Jonic ... but he and others have read this as a "kids on boats" and perhaps in this case the subject was "kids on boats which are setting out into conditions likely to be at leat 5m if we're lucky and very possibly up to 10m" which is somewhat different. I'm sure Jonic has been invited on some mad boats for a sail here and there that er probably best NOT bring the kids on this one. As always - it depends on lots of things - the scale of the adventure and the age/experience of the kids just two factors...
 
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In schools I think that progress is reduced to the lowest common denominator ie you have to cater for those children who are slower to learn than others.

On a boat this may (or may not) be the case.
 
jonic said:
We swam with eagle rays, fed sharks, ate fruit from the trees in the rain forest, tuna as sushi straight from the ocean and watched a hundred sun rises and sun sets together, as well as making friends without prejudice of every race, religion and creed.

It was an almost indescribable experience.
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John, will ou F***ING stop making me envious....;)... Great post (as usual)
 
I would say, it opens their minds. I believe that when they will grow older and have to make decisions, they will keep in mind that anything is possible, if you don't give it a go, you just don't know!

We just took our three children (9,12,13)across the Atlantic and away for a year. We did the schooling for the three of them, following the curriculum scrupulously. They have learnt a lot and more about anything and everything.
We had an amazing journey. Here is what we have done for a year www.smartsatsea.com
 
Sybarite said:
In schools I think that progress is reduced to the lowest common denominator ie you have to cater for those children who are slower to learn than others.
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It's not just that ... and anyway there is no guarantee that a cruiser's child will be a quick learner. The unavoidable trouble with schools is that crowd control inevitably takes up an awful lot of time. That's what good teachers are good at, and it's what bad teachers are bad at. Almost anyone can teach almost anything (as long as they know it!) one to one.
 
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