It must be hard sailing on a boat with young children?

You would think so, but we find it is not necessarily any worse than doing life with young children anywhere.

I am not saying sailing and especially extended cruising with young children is always sandcastles, ice cream and dolphins. It’s not. There are challenges for sure,  we have certainly had our days, but that is no different to life on land.

Things do take longer cruising on a boat but having two parents available working together as a team most of the time for us made it easier than our busy shore lives which had involved juggling work, life commitments and parenting.

The way we cruise is also pretty relaxed.  We don’t set unrealistic goals, our plans are always fluid and both weather and baby dependent.

How did you prepare for this?

We have been sailing on and off for 15 years. I (Craig) initially was the sailor but after meeting Josie and introducing her to the sport she then took a series of lessons and began racing on her own.

We have both completed RYA courses to Day skipper level. We have also have our radio licenses and first aid certificates.

We believe more importantly that we have now clocked many miles firstly in local waters on weekends and then cruising the coast of Australia with our daughter onboard.

 

How do you afford extended cruising at this stage of life?

We are very much middle income, middle class, middle everything.

So we bought a mid priced boat that we worked steadily towards. We ate happy to do this in a modest boat and on a modest budget. We have had to learn to save (which for us was hard at the time). We have had to learn( and continue to learn) to be handy and mechanical.

We also didn’t aim for the sky, we started off with a ‘sabbatical’ cruise up the Australian coast and this continues to be our strategy (work for a bit then cruise for a bit).

We haven’t done any detailed financial posts here yet, but there are several other blogs that do this topic a lot of justice complete with accompanying facts and figures.