Voyaging With Kids - A Guide to Family Life Afloat

Review The best thing parents can do for their children these days is to unplug them from society and give them a wider and deeper perspective of the world and more meaningful way to experience the life as they grow. The best way to remove them from the bad influence of todays tasteless movies, violent video games, and shallow peers is to take your kids cruising. As more parents are doing exactly that, a brand-new book on the subject tells how. Voyaging with Kids: A Guide to Family Life Afloat was written jointly by a trio of sailors who have made this choice. Their collaboration is being supported by Lin Pardey who is publishing the book and has watched many cruising kids grow into extraordinary people over the years since she and Larry first threw off the docklines.Authors Behan Gifford, Sara Dawn Johnson, and Michael Robertson each represent one half of a cruising couple that has been out there voyaging with their children for several years. They address the issues of breaking away from land-based commitments, dealing with the naysayers, and helping children make the transition. They talk about choosing a family cruising boat, safety afloat for kids of all ages, staying healthy, and provisioning for a family aboard. They specifically address issues surrounding cruising with infants and at the other end of the spectrum cruising with teenagers.They also discuss how families spend their days aboard (with chores, holidays, home schooling, and great playtime) as well as relationships aboard and those they develop with other cruisers and cruising families. Just as important as transitioning to life afloat, they also cover preparing for the end of a voyage and re-entry into the hyper-society they have left behind.My favorite part of this book is the essays by former cruising kids, those who spent several years afloat. We often wonder what has become of them. Did they get a proper education? Did they grow up properly socialized? Do they look back fondly on their cruising years? Yes. Yes. And yes. While some, once grown, have planted the anchor firmly inland, many have continued to sail or cruise as adults on their own boats. They are exceptional adults in every sense of the word and a tribute to the idea of family cruising.This is a gorgeous book with additional interviews with and input from many other cruising families. If you know of a sailing family with the dream of cruising, buy them the book and then watch their children blossom far from the maddening crowd into very capable, independent, and special people --Karen Larson, editor, Good Old Boat MagazinePassion, resilience, perseverance, humility are just some of the words you can learn when at school. Or you can give your child (and yourselves!) the most amazing education this planet can provide. Taking a child long-distance sailing requires another useful word: planning; 'Voyaging with kids' delivers with this comprehensive guide. Take the plunge and we will see you out there. --Phillip Ross, Editor, Cruising Helmsman (Australia)Voyaging with Kids is a beautifully designed and very comprehensive reference on cruising with kids. It covers everything from picking your boat to what to bring along, how to stay safe and healthy, provisioning in far away places, and activities to pass the time or expose the kids to new experiences. There is a full chapter on boat schooling which has some very interesting suggestions, like attending local schools while voyaging and dealing with rules and regulations of the home country.Most important are the fantastic insights from other contributors in side bars throughout. Because of this, you get the benefit of many experienced parents and kids from varied first-hand perspectives that provide a truly balanced view of the experience. A lot of work went into this book and I applaud the authors and editors who pulled it all together so expertly.The book also covers the transiting nature of voyaging by boat and how it influences relationships both aboard and on shore. It provides detailed advice on passagemaking. It even covers how to deal with the challenges unique to babies and teenagers aboard. Finally, it deals with the challenges faced when ending the voyage and transitioning back to a life ashore and all the things that will stay with them forever and keep them grounded on the land.Voyaging with Kids ends with interviews with and letters from former cruising kids. They talk about their life aboard and ashore, what they learned from both, and how they dealt with the transitions. It s really inspiring to read about the great takeaways these former kids remember and how those learnings shaped their future lives. Bottom line, you get the sense that they became better human beings for the experience.The book is rich with photographs of kids doing interesting things in exotic places. It also focuses attention on the ability of children aboard to take responsibility and contribute to the tasks at hand. They learn independence and self-reliance from an early age, very valuable traits in this passive world. They also learn what s important in life in general and what s important to them specifically, not like the kids in routine lives ashore who just follow along with what everyone else is doing.The Index is very handy for looking up specific topics. There are six pages of contributors listed, three pages of bibliography, and thirteen pages of additional resources and references used in researching material.Voyaging with Kids is a really important addition to the cruising armamentarium for anyone contemplating life afloat. What these authors have done is extraordinarily valuable. They ve done enormous research to provide access to the kind of information every parent needs before taking off, and they share real life assessment of how everything actually translates into practice. This is destined to be a bestseller in the sailing books category...the parenting bible for the cruising family. I bel