When The Family Freaks Out

When The Family Freaks Out! a post by Jared

Several family members have expressed serious concern recently and have asked a few questions. Hopefully, this will calm those fears a bit and shed some light on the lifestyle in which we are about to embark.

How can we afford to cruise? Are we sacrificing retirement in the future?  Are we crazy?  

Our plan of cruising does not involve taking off from work to go on a two-year vacation.  This is a temporary (or permanent) life style change in which we reduce our costs, get a safe home that floats, and continue to work while we travel and educate our children in various locations around the world. 

Before I even considered this lifestyle, I asked myself: 

Are there risks?  

What if we lose the boat to catastrophe?  

What if it sinks or starts on fire?  

What about pirates?  

Why would you sell your wonderful home with an ocean view?

Are there risks?  

Yes, there are risks.  Some are the same as we encounter in everyday life in addition to some additional risks (like sinking!).  If you want to get depressed in a hurry, start studying the risks of living amongst people.  People are crazy!  

What’s worse, those crazy people can go buy guns (in the US) and do some serious damage pretty quickly.  What is riskier than that?  Driving.  We take some necessary precautions to make driving safer but still, people die every day in vehicle accidents.  

Every time you get in the car, you are essentially rolling the dice.  And I hate driving to boot.  The first half of my driving life involved sitting in the car driving for at least 20 to 30 minutes to get anywhere.  This is a quick way to waste one to two hours every day.  It’s not healthy to sit that long either (more on that later).  If you think you’re safe in your home and nothing could hurt you there, please realize that 1 in 1 million people die from eating peanut butter (not allergy related), our own water systems have killed hundreds of people (water treatment mistakes, oops, that chemical wasn’t supposed to go in there), and sickened countless thousands (think lead pipes).  

The materials in our home can also do us in (asbestos, lead pipes, formaldehyde…) and talk to a grocery supply expert about the amount of food recalls every day!  We don’t hear about these things because it’s not news worthy.  It happens too often and we live with these risks.  The barn may seem safe until it’s not!  How do we live with these risks?  We buckle our seat belt, filter our water, and use our heads to think about keeping ourselves out of trouble.

Losing our boat would be a major setback, just like losing our home would be a major setback.  People die in house fires every year.  Boat fires are scary, too.  Our answer to this is to be prepared. The boat will have insurance, we will practice fire drills, have smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, and be as safe as we can in this regard.  This is probably my biggest fear.  If it happens in the open ocean (a very rare occurrence), we will have an emergency life raft and our dingy to jump into, several EPIRBS to alert the authorities, and of course, fire extinguishers and lots of water nearby to bucket brigade if possible.  

Our kids swim well, but life jackets on passage, and harnesses for all anywhere outside of the cockpit / interior of the boat will be our seatbelts and personal locator beacons on life jackets. 

Pirates?  

How about car jackings, home invasions, or theft in general?  Nope, you don’t escape bad people on the water, they just call them pirates.  The definition of piracy? Criminal acts at sea. 

We choose not to live in high crime areas and we are choosing to not visit high crime areas.  Does it eliminate the risk? No, but the risks are manageable and if conditions change, we can leave and seek safer locations.

But your beautiful home! That ocean view! 

We have a wonderful home in a small city. We can see the waves breaking ½ mile away.  It’s great!  We can also hear the neighbor two doors down washing their dishes.  Yes, two doors down!  That means they can hear us, our kids, and anything else that makes noise.  It’s kind of weird.  We could sell and move back to our home town, but that would involve lots more of that driving stuff and being located close to high crime areas which isn’t all that fun.  It’s also not very enriching.  

We have an opportunity to travel and learn about our world; not though text books, but through the world itself.  I’ve read about Venice, seen pictures, and sailing affords the possibly to experience and learn about amazing places like this with our children.  Way better than a text book in my opinion and worth the risk to our finances.

Finances!  

We do not plan on exhausting our finances.  As part of our making the decision to cruise, we talked to a financial planner.  It wasn't a decision made over night, but after YEARS of careful and thoughful planning. We can do this without exhausting our savings/retirement.  

True, it is risker investment than owning a home.  A home has the potential to go up in value, where as boats tend not to go up in value, ever!  That said, we have been on the wrong end of the housing crises and we don’t plan on doing that twice.  The money we make from selling our current home will buy the boat and provide for about one to two years of cruising.  I will continue to work as I spend most of my time sitting at a computer.  I need frequent but periodic access to internet to keep working but that appears possible from all that we have read.  The other portion of our home sale funds will go to investments and a portion will go to emergency funds.  When we are done cruising, we will either put the boat into charter or sell it to recoup some of our investment. 

Why not wait and cruise when your children go off to college?  

There are a few reasons not to wait.  The chief one being that we want take our kids with us while they want to go along.  In 5 years, the boys will be in high school and would not want to leave their friends or the experiences of high school (girls).  

Another reason? My health. After having health issues for the past several years and it culminating with pneumonia last summer, I realized that time may not be on our side.  We are rolling the dice every day and each new dawn could be our last.  My doctors feel that we have my health issue figured out and thankfully, I’ve had no issues since last fall.  We will not be away from medical care while out cruising and our doctors have shared their personal phone numbers and emails with us!  They have been overwhelmingly supportive.  Our child’s pediatrician said we inspired him to do something similar with his own family.  They are in the initial planning stages and have a departure date four years from now. 

Are we crazy?  

Yes, but in a good way.  I feel we have been living the typical white collar life in lots of ways.  A teacher and engineer with three kids. We even have the typical golden retriever! Each of us spends most of our day working to pay the bills and when we get home, spend the rest of the time corralling the kids to events, meals, and bed time. 

“Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future, that he does not enjoy the present moment. As a result, he does not live in the present or the future, he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never truly lived.” – Dali Lama

I have a great job.  I work for myself from home.  I also sit on my butt 8+ hours a day.  Then, when I can, I head off to the gym in hopes of not losing my health to this lifestyle.  I fit into the Dali Lama’s quote like a key in a lock.  My health, at 39 years old, is fair.  I only get exercise when I can break away.  On the boat, I’m hoping to swim, surf, paddle board, walk and run more (on land of course) and gain fitness through an active lifestyle while we explore the areas we are visiting.  And because our expenses will be much lower than they are now, I will not need to work nearly as much.  I’ll be spending more time with my wife and kids, taking part in my children's education, and taking better care of myself.  In my mind, the additional risk of living on a boat are far exceeded by the benefit of an active lifestyle, world travel, and the experience with my family.

So to our family and friends who are a bit worried. We love you and cherish the relationships we have with each and everyone of you. We hear you and understand your concern. We will not sacrifice the safety of our family and we hope you find time to join us.  However, we are choosing to experience more than just life in a box.   

Related posts on this same topic:

Nomadic Matt

Totem

Boat Shopping in Europe

Why Europe? Well, that's where we'd like to start off on this adventure of ours. Boats are also less expensive over there, largely due to the charter industry. Thus, it makes a world of sense to us to head in this direction.

Now, google "boat shopping in Europe" and lots of posts come up in sailing forums. There aren't too many blogs on this topic, that we've been able to find (if you happen to know of any, please leave the link in the comments). 

We are hoping that by writing about our own experience, it can help someone else down the road. 

The Search

The usual websites, such as yachtworld, yachtmarket, apolloduck, and so forth all tend to have the same boats listed, give or take a few. Most boats are listed by brokers and charter companies who are phasing out older boats. In addition, there are some charter companies and broker agencies who list boats for sale on their own websites. Some of these are in other languages, so using google translate has been a helpful tool. 

Exercising caution: We tend to be wary of boats that list stock photos instead of actual photos of the boat listed for sale. We've also found different boats that all use the same photos. Either the poster is lazy or it could be a scam. Again, we are practicing due diligence in this matter.

We are working with a broker (who by the way is the most awesome guy) to help us out, especially with buying overseas. He is experienced and has a fantastic reputation with both buyers and sellers. Yep, we did our research on brokers as well, after our first one turned out to be a dud. 

We started out with a list of potential boats and sent them to our broker. He set up the viewings for us, and so we took a quick trip to Florida to set foot on all of the candidates. Walking around on all of these boats, opening cabinets, measuring storage spaces, exploring lockers, checking the size of the engine rooms, sitting at the helm station, etc., all helped us to narrow down the list and get an actual feel of the boat. It's one thing to look at photos and a totally different experience actually being ON the boat. After narrowing it down to one make and model, we were able to then focus in on our search. 

Making an Offer

We are just about to this point. Once we get the house listed on the market, (and hopefully it will sell quickly), we can start making offers on our future home. 

The first steps would be to have an initial survey done on the boat(s) we like. This costs a few hundred dollars and would give us an idea on the condition, tons of photos and other details. If we like what we see, we can then move forward with making an offer. If the offer is accepted, we would put down a deposit and then travel to see the boat in person for the full survey, sea trial, and haul-out. 

Purchasing Process

From there, the purchasing process can take anywhere from 2-8 weeks, depending upon how quickly the repairs (if needed to be done before the sale goes through) and paperwork are completed. 

Timeline

If we buy the boat in April or May, we would haul it out to get any work done that was needed. After school ends, we'd fly out the first or second week of June to move on board and begin adding the additional cruising equipment, settling in, etc. 

We will spend the next 6 months cruising around the Med and preparing for our Atlantic crossing in November. 

Fortunately, we have friends in Croatia who can help us out with logistics and they've even offered to go look at any boats we are interested in and send us their reviews. Being avid sailors, they know what to look for and can help eliminate any that would be a waste of time.

So, here's to the next few months, which will be a whirlwind of selling off our stuff, our house, and tying up loose ends before we set sail on this new adventure! 

Disclaimer: It isn't all sunshine and rainbows over here. We are totally stressed with all we still need to do, but know it will be SO worth it once we get on board! 

The 'WHY are we doing this' post

Jared introduced me to sailing back before we were married. We would take his little 16' Hobie Cat out onto lakes and sail it to a remote camping spot. We loved the feeling of being out on the water and the freedom to go where we wanted.

Fast forward to marriage, careers, and three kids later. We sold the Hobie Cat and moved up to sailing a 32' monohull, joined a racing crew, and brought the kids along. While we continued on with our typical suburban life, we never gave up on our dream of setting sail someday. Jared and I worked like crazy, while also raising our kids. The years were flying by!

We discovered that life was getting away from us. All we seemed to do was work, drive the kids to their activities, work again after the kids were in bed, and then do it all over again the next day. We found that the words "too tired" ventured into our vocabulary much too often for our liking. Our kids were growing up so quickly before our eyes, so we decided that NOW was the time to go.

We would finally have quality time with our kids and each other, while exploring this amazing world together. What  better way of seeing things from different perspectives and embracing what the world has to offer, than together as a family. This is the best gift we could ever give to ourselves and to our children. And get this, we aren't the only ones who see things this way!

Here are some other families that decided to ditch surburbia and head out on their own adventure 

Dessert First 

Around N Circles

Totem

Maple

Terrapin

and quite a few more over in the "blogs we read" sidebar!

Will you always be out at sea?

Of course not. We will spend most of our time on the hook (at anchor), tied up to a mooring, or in some instances, berthed at a marina. We require the internet for work, so we won't really be far from land, except on long passages. We plan on crossing the Atlantic in November 2017 and then the Pacific sometime in 2018. While out at sea, we will still have ways to communicate and access the internet (its just a bit more expensive).

What about pirates?

Yes, we know about pirates and this activity is monitored internationally. Thanks to the many cruisers out on the big blue, there is a lot of information out there. We are not going to any of those risky areas and will always do our research before setting off for a new port.
We have the necessary equipment on board to keep us safe and in communication with the world at all times.

What about storms?

Sailors know how to read the weather. Not only do we have this equipment on board, we are experienced and know how to stay safe. We won't go anywhere until we have a good weather window. Safety equipment such as a life raft, ditch bags, EPIRB, etc. are all on board, as well as a few other items we threw in for extra measure. We are extremely safety conscious. Just ask our kids!

How long?

The plan right now is about two years, however, if we really love it, we will find a way to keep doing it.

Don't the kids need to go to school?

Yep and they will! Stef is a teacher, so we lucked out in that regard. We've got it all planned out.
Stef's taught combination classrooms before, so this isn't any different; it's actually better because she can just focus on teaching our own kids. Check out the education plan here.

What if you get sick or injured?

We certainly hope this doesn't happen, but are prepared in the event something does. We began talking with our medical professionals about a year in advance of leaving. We took classes on medical training, obtained prescriptions for all sorts of medicines to bring on board, conducted hours of research, and talked with other cruising families.We have quite the extensive medical kit for both the family and the dog. The kids pediatrician and dentist are excited to be our "boat doctors" should we need to call or email them for anything.

Any more questions? Send us an email. 

A Life Less Ordinary

We are not independently wealthy, trust fund kids, nor did we all of a sudden win the lottery. We have made a lifestyle choice to change course for awhile. This didn't happen instantly, as if we just decided to do this. It took YEARS of careful planning and thought to get to this point.

We are selling our house and most of our belongings to buy our boat and set sail around the world for awhile. We want to provide an opportunity for our children to experience different cultures and some serious family time.

Jared will still work from the boat (he is a civil engineer and can do a lot of his work from the computer). My school district will grant me a leave of absence from teaching. I will provide outreach education, but mostly as a volunteer. If I happen to get paid along the way for some STEM / science classes I provide, so be it, but we are mostly about giving back and making a difference wherever we happen to be sailing.

We are going on an epic adventure and the best part is we will experience it all together!

Perpetual Yard Sale

We have been in the process of slowly selling off our stuff. It's like a perpetual yard sale around here. We have stuff listed on ebay, Craigslist, and a couple of community Facebook groups. We started with random small items and have progressed to selling off some of the larger furniture. We will hold off on the beds and other needed items until right before we move, but for now, it feels good to have some of this already gone.

We donated a couple more loads to the Goodwill last week. Included in the most recent load was 20 pairs of shoes. How the heck did we amass that many extra pairs? It's mostly my fault, as I had dress shoes from back when I wore heels (read: pre-kids), weddings, and other formal events. Don't think those silver heels will work on the boat, so in the bag they go. I mostly wear flats these days, as teaching means I am on my feet constantly. I could have listed all those shoes on ebay or some other site, but honestly, it was just easier to donate the whole lot. I was really tired after a long day of sorting and just didn't have the patience to take photos, write the descriptions, and then manage the postings.

Among the furniture we sold was the large dresser Jared built for me when we were first married. That thing could hold A LOT of clothes! This is both good and bad, in the sense that I had clothes at the bottom of the drawers I hadn't really worn in years. I am in the process of pairing down that pile and will be donating a few more loads to  Goodwill this morning. I've given the kids the task of filling up a bag to donate, as well. The more we get rid of now will make things so much easier in a few months.

A friend and I decided we would have one massive yard sale together later this spring (she is moving to Maine), and that pile is growing by the week. Sometimes I feel like just donating it all, so I don't have to deal with it. Jared just wants it out of the garage. So, maybe I will hold a sale this month, just to see if that pile can diminish a bit (and then donate the rest).

I think this is one of the difficult parts of changing your lifestyle; getting rid of all the excess. It really made us think about what we buy (will it fit on the boat) and how easy it is to just fill your house with stuff. It is a lifestyle change that will stick with us for sure.

My classroom is another example. We teachers store a massive amount of stuff in our cabinets! Supplies for art and various projects, file cabinets of lesson plans and activities, boxes of science lab equipment and experiment necessities, books--my classroom library alone consists of a few overstuffed bookshelves, bulletin board decor, posters for various subjects, math manipulatives, small group materials, and so much more.  I haven't bought much for my classroom this year because I already had overstock from previous years. Knowing that I will be out of my classroom for awhile is forcing me to go through all the stuff I have so that I don't have to pack it all up in May.  My desk drawer is full of all sorts of stickers, stamps, and what-not. I am sure you teachers out there can relate! I am sure that when I return to the classroom, I will approach things differently.

Another goal of mine is to scan all of my lesson folders so that all I have is just a digital copy of everything, including photos of the project samples. This will take me down from three stuffed filing cabinets to none! That alone is a huge task, but I figure if I do one row of files a week, I can get it all done before April! #fingerscrossed

So, for all the other families out there in the same "boat" as we are, how is it going with downsizing? If you have a blog, share it below in the comments!