Our Boat's Medical Kit

Preparing for cruising takes quite a bit of planning ahead. In this post, I will talk about our medical kit and what we are packing into it.

We took the kids to a final checkup last week (dental and also their pediatrician). While there, their pediatrician went through an extensive list of medicines we might need, discussed our plans in the event we need to contact him, and so forth (I'll post a list below later on in the post). After a hug good-bye and bon-voyage wishes from the office, we were checking one more thing off the big list! We still need to acquire Sunny's medication from the vet, which will also go into this bag (she takes a pill for allergies and fleas).
Jared and I are seeing our own doctors for our own list of medicines next week.

We also ordered a huge medical kit with additional supplies and enough room to store all of this "just in case" medicines. This comes with a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, CPR equipment, and a large variety of bandages, and other supplies. It will be a tight fit, but I think everything will pack inside there nicely. It is perfect for the boat, bright neon-orange, water-proof, and clearly labeled. We will store this along with our bright neon-yellow ditch bag.

A frequent question we are asked is how we knew what to ask for. Basically, after reading other sailing blogs and talking with our medical professionals, we arrived at a general list of "just in case" medications and supplies to have on board.  We also have search and rescue experience (Jared was a part of the SAR team when we lived up in the mountains), have taken multiple CPR, first aid, and emergency responder courses (most recently last summer), and will have the ability to contact our medical providers if the need arises.

The medical kit we ordered came with the following supplies:

*stethoscope
*blood pressure cuff with gauge (aneroid sphygmomanometer)
*CPR pocket mask and a face shield
*foil bunting
*diagnostic penlight
*forceps
*gloves (disposable)
*bandage scissors
*emergency airway kit (set of 6)
*rescue blanket
*instant cold packs and heat packs
*burn dressings
*ll sorts of different sized bandages, gauze, tape, and surgical dressings
*sting pads
*ammonia inhalants
*alcohol prep pads
*PVP prep pads

In addition, we also added:

SAM Splint (multi-use splint)

*neosporin (antibiotic ointment)
*motrin (for kids and one for adults)
*tylenol
*aspirin
*nasal spray
*tums
*pepto bismol
*additional bandages (band-aids, waterproof, variety of sizes)
*vitamins
*sunscreen
*aloe vera gel (for sunburns)
*aquaphor ointment (for dry skin / irritated skin / good for chapped lips as well)
*saline drops for the eyes
*white distilled vinegar (for stings)
*apple cider vinegar (this helps takes the sting out of a sunburn)
*all of the prescriptions from our doctors: variety of antibiotics, skin creams (to combat a multitude of infections), eye drops (to combat a variety of eye infections), ear drops (ear infections), inhalers (for asthma), stomach meds (traveler's diarrhea, worms, etc)), cough syrup, and I am sure I am forgetting something (will update when I go back through the kit). Of course, we will not administer these without first consulting our doctors.

I am sure we will continue to add to this list as we go along. If you have a suggestion of something we should have, please comment below! Countdown to setting sail is about a month away!

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

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. 

Taking Precautions

Jared and I have read a lot of books on sailing, blogs about sailing, and hit up our yacht club members and our race crew on The Soggy Dollar (our Erickson 9ll). There are so many stories out there of incidents occurring while on passage, far away from land and immediate medical help. While we will have the ability to make contact with our doctors back on land, we feel we need to do a bit more preparation in this area. OK, a lot more!

There are so many variables out at sea, that we feel we need to do all we can to be prepared for the worst. This morning, we finally began the search for EMT level medical training. This includes refreshing the basics to moderate procedures such as stitching up a wound or administering fluids via an IV. Our medical kit is going to be huge.

Volunteering for a local Search and Rescue provided some experience, however, this was back when we lived in the Motherlode region and it has been a few years... We both are signing up for the Wilderness First Responder training to take this summer. The kids will all take a basic first aid course. The school district I teach for provides training over the summer in the areas of basic first aid and CPR. Those courses will also go on our summer list.

~Stef