The Island of Poros

A mermaid fountain near the port of Poros, Greece.

Exploring behind the scenes.

Poros is about a 2 hour sail from Aegina and 5 hour sail from the mainland Piraeus). It is a very quaint little town with lots to offer. From the great views up near the clock tower to the winding and meandering pathways of the back streets, you will for sure enjoy your stay here.

Wisteria covers part of a building in Poros, Greece.

We have stopped by Poros a few times and have enjoyed it. Especially since we can see how the town is outside of the crowded sailing season, where boats are often rafted 3-4 deep from the quay.

They keep us young at heart! 

View from the top near the clock tower.

In addition to docking at the quay, there are a few anchorages nearby. We have stayed at both the quay and a couple of the southern anchorages. There is great holding there in sand.

Near the marina office at the public quay is a fantastic gelato place. In the opposite direction from the marina office, beyond the school (and you will notice a wooden dock instead of concrete), you will find two large grocery stores (one is just for household goods, like cleaning products, linens, etc., while the other is all food items). Both of these stores have better prices for provisioning, than the little markets near all the little tavernas and touristy areas.

We last visited Poros at the end of March, as we were working our way back towards Aegina from Hydra. We thought we'd take a couple more days to go hiking around the island and explore the less-known parts. We met up with a nice family who was vacationing from Athens. The kids explored tidepools and a playground together, and even made up some obstacle course races! The mom was super sweet and brought ice cream and cookie straws for the kids! What a treat!

On our second day there, the wind clock around and was blowing all of the boats against the dock in quite a violent manner. We were actually on our way back to the boat from getting gelato, when we noticed quite the chop in the little bay. We hastened our pace and when we arrived, we made the quick decision to untie and get out of there. No sooner had we pulled in the lines, other boats were trying to pick up their anchors and causing quite the congestion. While Zach was helping to pull in the fenders, one dropped into the water. We couldn't stick around to rescue it, but fortunately, a cafe manager ran across the street and picked it up for us. By now, we were really bashing around with the waves. I thought I would go and pull in the rest of the fenders before we lost anymore, but it was so hard to walk on deck and Jared yelled for me to just sit where I was and hold on, lest I fall overboard.

This is where things got a bit crazy...

We drove backwards out of the fray and motored over to a southern anchorage to wait out the blow. It was actually much more comfortable here and save for one other boat who came in after us, we had the bay to ourselves. Whew, what an experience!


The following morning, we hauled anchor and set off for Aegina to meet our upholstery guy, who had finally finished all of our projects! Below is a video of some of our wanderings around the island.

Giving Back: Hands Across the Sea

One of the many reasons we decided to go cruising with our kids was to give them a large perspective of this world. They've grown up in this tiny hometown with the usual suburban life---which don't get me wrong, we LOVE our hometown, and our friends are very dear to us-- it's just that our kids were starting to pay too much attention to material things and take a lot of things for granted. I think we all were, in a sense. You wake up, go to work/school, come home or go to different activities...there wasn't a whole lot of opportunities for enjoying quiet family time, as we were pretty busy! It was time to slow down, show our kids that there is so much more to this world, and sort of shake things up a bit.

We are starting off right away with the first leg of this journey. While in the Caribbean, we have volunteered to work with Hands Across the Sea, a literacy promotion program. The goal: get new books in the hands of kids and promote the love of reading. Our family will be helping to build libraries, deliver books, read with children, as well as a provide little teaching, as needed.

It is such a great program and one that is close to my heart. I absolutely LOVE reading, in fact, our entire family would be considered bookworms. Back home, the bookshelves were overflowing (and don't even ask about my classroom library)! In order to make room for new books, we would place others in the small little neighborhood libraries around town. It was a nice way to  give books a new home in our own community. Sometimes, movies would show up in those little libraries and we'd enjoy a free movie night. It would go right back into the library the following day along with a couple of our contributions. What a great concept as it certainly promoted the reuse and recycling of books!

This little free library is right
around the corner from our home.

We are all about giving back while on this journey and this opportunity will enable us and our children to do just that, while experiencing and working with different cultures along the way.

Here is their website, for more information (or if you would also like to get involved): http://www.handsacrossthesea.net

On the Move!

Exactly that! We are on the move! We've sold the house and bought our boat! Can I just say how GOOD that feels to be able to write that sentence! 

We close escrow on the house at the end of the month and it has been quite the whirlwind of activity around here! In addition to packing up the house, I've had to pack up my classroom. Over 16 years of teaching means a u-haul FULL of stuff. I even threw out and gave away a bunch of things I hadn't used in awhile and the u-haul was still packed. I think the more tired I grew throughout the day, the more I got rid of. It's always good to have a large purge throughout the career, so it was about time.

I must admit, I do love my job and will miss my classroom. The bright side is, it will all be waiting for me when we return. Still have to pack it all up though, which is not fun. As I took down bulletin boards, packed up books and supplies, and personal things, I kept thinking about the HOURS I put into this space. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you: setting up a classroom is no joke. It takes WEEKS! That also doesn't count prepping for the new crop of students either. Sigh, but it has to get done. 

So, today I finished getting everything out and packed up into storage. Next week, I will go in and make sure things are cleaned up and organized for the teacher moving in to my classroom. I am lucky in this sense, as it happens to be one of my dear friends. She was C's teacher this past year and decided to take the 5th grade spot while I am gone ( and she is going to be amazing)! Just love her (shout-out Laura!).

With that all behind me, I will now tackle packing up the rest of the house. The kids have been helping me out a great deal, so Jared can get some work done. We've pretty much sold everything and have the last items scheduled for pick up in a couple of weeks. I decided to have a final yard sale this coming weekend and we will donate whatever is left.

Now, about the boat. She is a Leopard 46 catamaran. I'll update the boat page and write a dedicated post with all the details in a few weeks (after we get out there and see her). We are flying out as soon as we close escrow on the house to do the haul-out, survey, and sea trial. We'll spend about a week in the BVI with the kids while this is going on and then head back home to get all of our gear/belongings packed up and shipped out. It will take a few weeks for all of our stuff to reach the boat, so we have decided to take a road trip across the country. The plan is to buy a small travel trailer and take our time driving from California to Florida. From there, we will sell the SUV and travel trailer before flying out to move aboard. 

There is so much to do between now and then, but that's all part of the adventure. We are getting there, and now after 9 years of planning, we are actually DOING it! =)

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

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!

Pirates and a U-Haul

Black Friday is typically a day for people who love to shop to get their fix. Well, not for us. We usually stay away from the chaos and instead, chose to go visit some sailing friends up north for a pirate adventure. If you are a Pirates of the Caribbean fan, you will understand. The Lady Washington was used in the first film (Curse of the Black Pearl) and starred as the HMS Interceptor.
We met up with the crew from s/v Odyle and toured the ship. Here are a few pics from the tour:

Afterwards, we let the kids play for a bit on the beach before heading off to pick up the U-Haul to bring home our Black Friday purchases. Yep, you read that right. We bought so much that we needed a U-Haul. Now before you start picturing TVs and the like, it was actually for all the insulation for the house. As we purchased over 30 bags, we needed something a bit larger to transport it back home.

Jared and Zach took off for Home Depot way up near San Francisco (this stuff isn't carried locally, unfortunately) while Matt, Cadence, and I headed for home. The plan was for Jared to drop off the insulation at the house and return the U-Haul that evening. Due to traffic, he didn't get back until 9pm, so we ended up making the return early in the AM.

The rest of the weekend was spent installing insulation to prepare for inspection on Monday. Talk about pressure! We passed with flying colors and could finally schedule the drywall installers (we did everything ourselves last time and decided paying a crew to do it this time was well worth it).

We are hoping to wrap up construction on this addition by February. Just in time to enjoy it for a few months before we sell it. We love this house, but unless we win the lottery between now and June, we need the money for the boat purchase and cruising kitty.

Last Night in the BVI: Snorkeling The Indians

The Indians are comprised of four large rocks jutting out of the sea off of Norman Island, named after the Arawak Indians. There is a 5th Indian underwater. Pelican Rock is on the other side.

There was only one other boat tied up when we secured ours to the mooring ball. I think it was a cruising family, as you can definitely tell these boats from your typical charter boat. Lots more gear and items on board. Again, we can hardly wait until that is US cruising around with our family! =)

Anyway, they were heading back to their boat, and we noticed that we didn't have too much daylight left and had better get going. We set off in the dink over to the dingy mooring that was set right up along the snorkeling area. Secured that, geared up and jumped in. Well, Jared jumped in. I was a bit more hesitant, as this was out in the open sea and the word 'sharks' kept popping into my head. I joined him a few minutes later, after he promised to stay next to me. I really need to stop reading so much on the internet... My fear came not from personal experience, but from reading a few sailing forums online and how some people have seen bull sharks in the area. Reef sharks don't bother me, but bull sharks do.

We snorkeled for about 40 minutes before the sun began to drop below the horizon. This was the best snorkeling of the entire trip and highly recommend this as one of your MUST STOPS if you venture this way! Beautiful purple sea fans waved back and forth, colorful coral as far as the eye could see, and the multitude of schools of fish were just breathtaking.

Hoping our new camera works better than this one. Just doesn't do it justice!

We had scoped out a couple of anchorages on the way over and decided upon Soldier's Bay. It had a low point where the breeze would pass through and was shallow that we could see the underwater world below. Just amazing. You could even see the shadow of the boat on the sea floor below in the moonlight.

You can see The Indians and Pelican Rock in the background!

We had a great evening, despite it being our last one in the BVI for awhile. We enjoyed it for awhile before reality set in.
We began the task of packing up and getting ready to depart for home the following morning. We had an early wake up call of 5am! We needed to be sailing by 6am in order to make port in time to check out and catch a cab for the 9am ferry to St. Thomas!

We will be heading towards those lights bright and early the following day!

Cruising Friends

While writing up our B.V.I. trip, I thought I'd better fit in a quick post about a cruising family we befriended. It's always nice finding like-minded people who have similar goals.

Jared met the family from s/v Odyle a few months back while they were anchored in Monterey Bay. They are hanging out on the central coast until they head south next summer. Susan and Abraham have a son and daughter, somewhat near our own children's ages. Susan is working as a nurse, filling up their cruising kitty, while Abraham watches over the kiddos and works on their list of boat projects.

We invited them to hang out for Feast of Lanterns and then they invited us to watch fireworks for Santa Cruz's 150th anniversary (they ended up pulling anchor and moving to Santa Cruz for a less rocky anchorage). We met them on the dock around 5:30pm, and headed off to their boat in their dingy. Waves were a bit rough on the way in, so we all got a little wet.

Their boat looks like a pirate ship, complete with two masts and beautiful craftsmanship. We all had a great time chatting it up, while the kids played down below. Eventually, after some snacks, they settled in for a movie while we waited for the fireworks show to begin.

Around 10pm, the fireworks show ended and we hopped into the dingy to head back to our car. We had a great time and look forward to keeping in touch as cruising families!