Many cruisers start part-timing when commitments to career and family tie them to a home base. It’s either squeeze in cruising in drips and drabs or not go at all. “Part timing was our way of cruising for our first twenty-three years,” say Bev of Cloverleaf. “We had five children, so cruising was limited to school vacations, sometimes with slight extensions on our part, when we preceded the kids and stayed on after they went home. This all required good help at home and in Dave’s business, as well as good communication capabilities.” Knowing they could be reached in an emergency allowed Bev to “extend the leash,” and when time ran out, they left the boat wherever they were and then resumed their cruise at the next opportunity.

These days – thanks to email, sat phones, and in some places Internet and Skype via WiFi or cellular broadband – onboard communications has advanced sufficiently to let would-be cruisers lengthen that leash even further, particularly from work. After all, in an era when so many people are working from home, why shouldn’t home be a boat?

“Do the math, though, in terms of how much you must use the boat to justify the expense,” advises Bev. “We figured we had to use the boat three months minimum or it was cheaper to charter. With chartering, you don’t waste time prepping to go or putting the boat away, both of which are a lot a of work, and, although there are restrictions on where you can sail and maybe not so homey a boat, you do get to jump around to different cruising grounds.”

Of course, many people come to part-timing at the other end of their cruising career. Suzanne and John of Zeelander found that after their circumnavigation, they were ready for ‘home comforts’ but unwilling to totally give up the cruising lifestyle. “So, we turned ourselves into ‘snowbirds’, cruising the Caribbean seven months, then enjoying all the modern conveniences, culture and family visits of shore life during the five months of hurricane season. It works out beautifully. Just when the constant boat chores, stuff breaking yet again and small spaces threaten to close in on us, in mid-May we fly home using frequent flyer miles earned by buying all that expensive boat stuff and eating local dinners out. In mid-October, when the air starts getting nippy and modern USA life starts to feel too frantic, we’re more than ready to fly back to warm climes and a simpler lifestyle.”

Some cruisers make part-timing part of their long-term cruising plan. “One reason I love cruising,” says Kathy of Hale Kai, “is the flexibility and variety it gives my life, and for me that includes taking time off the boat each year.” Kathy uses her time off for inland travel – such as hiking the Inca Trail and back-packing South America, or visiting places she’s not likely to sail herself – like the canals of France, trips often made in the company of cruising friends! She also takes time off be with family when they need her. “People worry that cruising away will make them unavailable to their families, but I’ve found it to be the opposite. As a cruiser, I am actually more able to drop what I’m doing and respond to a protracted call home than most people would be.”

Like many cruisers, Don and I started part-timing when we took a season off to be on hand for our grandson’s birth, something we’d promised Don’s daughter before we left. She and I did have a heart-to-heart before we headed across the Pacific about when a “convenient window of opportunity” might be! I can’t tell you how many cruisers in the Pacific we’ve encountered who’ve had to fly back to the US for weddings and births smack in the middle of the short cruising season. How inconsiderate! It may be unrealistic to expect landlubbers ever to accommodate us, but it certainly won’t happen if we don’t educate them.

Of course, many cruisers part time, because they must work to replenish the cruising kitty. Jane of Lionheart, for example, and her husband, after two seasons out from New Zealand, have slipped the boat in Mooloolaba and taken full-time jobs they hope will fund their round-the-world ambitions. Robin of Whisper and her husband – fortunate to have skills that eased them through visa obstacles – worked three years in New Zealand, for both the income and the experience of working overseas.

When you come “home” to work or visit regularly, as we chose to do with our growing grandson, there are a variety of complications that you encounter. Not only must you find a secure and affordable place to leave the boat for an extended time, but on the home end, it’s hard to avoid acquiring a place to live, a car, phones, etc. and the recurring payments that come with them. This virtually doubles your living expenses. If you don’t have your own shore base and stay with family and friends, you’re limited to what stuff you can schlep around in a suitcase and sleeping in strange beds.

Part-timing also adds complications to your strategic planning. “Now that we have a house,” says Mary of I Wanda, “we plan our cruises based on when we DON’T want to be at it.” For cruisers with homes in America’s south, that means cruising elsewhere during hurricane season, while for those from the north, it usually means getting out of winter’s cold. Full-time cruisers have to plan around seasons, too, of course, just without as much of the storage, insurance and travel costs and without, as Kathy of Sangaris notes, “the significant time and effort each commissioning and decommissioning cycle takes.”

Part-timing can also leave you feeling “less connected to the cruising community,” as Debbie of Illusions notes, when full-time friends move on without you. SSCA (Seven Seas Cruising Association) dubs members who live ashore part-time “Rear Commodores”, which is surely meant to be respectful to retiring cruisers, but somehow rubs the wrong way. As Mary of Camryka, whose husband is approaching 80, says of part-timing at their new house in Bocas del Toro, “The transition is difficult, maybe because it makes us know the years are adding up far too fast.” Staying within a cruising ground they know and love, Mary and Carl alternate between the house and boat in shorter stints.

Practically speaking, the best cruising destinations for part-timers are ones that afford realistic travel home – Maine, the Bahamas or the Caribbean for East Coast sailors and the Pacific Northwest and Mexico for West Coast sailors. Although some do it, the South Pacific is not a great choice because of the distances involved, the paucity of storage options, customs limitations, and the fact that off-seasons in New Zealand or the Marshalls offer attractive cruising in their own right. On the other hand, after several seasons each, both Mary of I Wanda and Katherine of Sangaris would recommend the Med as made-to-order for part-timing. “You simply haul out your boat at the end of the season, return to the US, and in doing so avoid the annoying alternative of spending a significant part of the year wintering at dock on a sailboat in the cold.”

Contributing Admirals: ; Beverly Feiges, Cloverleaf, Kathy Parsons, Hale Kai; Debbie Leisure, Illusions; Sheri Schneider, Procyon; Mary Heckrotte, Camryka; Mary Verlaque, I Wanda; Jane Kilburn, Lionheart; Robin Owen, Whisper; Katherine Briggs, Sangaris.

This article was published in the September 2009 issue of Latitudes and Attitudes.

Related articles (on this website)

• Home for the Holidays (Admiral’s Angle column #16)
• Keeping a Home Back Home (Admiral’s Angle column #13)

Unfortunately the holiday season is not the most convenient time for cruisers to get home. Airfares are at their priciest and space is often unavailable unless reservations are made far ahead, especially since the places we are trying to get home from are often popular vacation destinations. Plus, when home is in the northern hemisphere, the climatic change from the tropics to snow is often a shock. Relatives have to meet you at Arrivals with parkas and socks just to get your to the car. And if the climate change doesn’t get you, the culture shock might. Every year, it seems the commercialism and materialism of First World holiday seasons goes up another notch. For cruisers used to a simpler lifestyle, this onslaught can undermine the joy of family reunions. It doesn’t take too much of this for cruisers who can afford to get home, to consider doing so at another, less stressful time of year.

And then they will discover what all the other cruisers already know: That the holiday season can be the cruising experience at its best. “Most countries have their own Christmas traditions, and it’s fun to experience the Christmas music and the food of the countries we sail to,” says Kathy of Hale Kai. “In Trinidad we enjoyed the parang music, and in the Bahamas we attended the junkanoo parades on Boxing Day.” Judy and her husband Bryan of Ursa Minor will spend this Christmas in the Marshall Islands. “If it’s anything like it was 20 years ago, we’ll go around to the churches in the morning where different dance groups circulate, performing at each one and throwing candy and money into the crowd.” One of the special Christmases we spent on Tackless II was in beautifully decorated La Paz, Mexico, where we partook of a house tour to see all the home decorations. It was a neat way to get an inside look at how Mexican families live and celebrate the season.

The first time you spend Christmas onboard your boat, you may feel a little glum that you are missing out on the traditional trimmings: the scent of evergreens, the family feast, the mounds of wrapping paper… snow. But with a little advance planning you can bring the spirit with you. Decorations are the first step: Santa hats, stockings, special holiday flags. “We allotted three plastic shoe boxes to Christmas decorations,” says Donna of Exit Only of their family’s circumnavigation. “We looked for things that fold flat, or roll out…paper nativity scenes, covers of favorite Christmas cards to string on a colorful rope, a woven Guatemalan Christmas tree, miniature balls, shiny garlands and lots of tinsel and plastic candy canes.” On Tackless II we have a half tree that squashes into the bilge when it’s not against the mast in the salon, and we’ve collected ornaments from the places we have visited. Just like home, my favorites are ones with special associations: my Rasta Santa and angel pair of quilled paper from Grenada and snowmen made by a friend from sea urchin skeletons.

“And lights,” says Kathy, “We have several sets of lights that we string up in the rigging. Last year we had so much wind and solar power we could turn on our lights for several hours each night as we sat in Bequia Harbor. Each small town in Bequia participates in an island-wide decoration contest, so the island and the harbor were magical at night twinkling with lights.” In the Southern Hemisphere, however, lights don’t quite work out, as Robin of the catamaran Endangered Species found out. “I’m from Florida where lighted boat parades are a big deal, so last year in New Zealand we brought out all our lights only to realize after the fact that it doesn’t get dark down there until late!”

Music is an important element of bringing Christmas aboard. Favorite holiday CDs, although they may sit idle fifty weeks a year, will be worth their weight in gold when with the flick of a button they set the mood. On our first Christmas Eve away from the US, the lonely evening in the San Blas Islands was saved when someone broadcast Christmas music over the VHF…even if it was Andy Williams.

One of the best aspects of the holidays for cruisers —and not just Christmas, but Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and New Year’s– is celebrating with cruisers from other countries. “Twice in Trinidad we had a big holiday dinner with friends from the US, Canada, the UK, France, Australia and Denmark,” says Kathy. “Everyone brought their favorite traditional dish.” Even in the US, cruisers can have this experience. “I have a wonderful memory of a Thanksgiving in an anchorage with five other boats at St. Simon’s Island, Georgia,” remembers Debbie of Illusions. “We all joined together making what we each considered “traditional” Thanksgiving food. My chicken and dumplings that MUST be made in my family was a total surprise to the boats from the New England States.”

Sometimes it’s the out-of-the-way Christmases that are the best. Don and I spent one Christmas in an uninhabited bay hunkered under the Papagallo winds between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. We thought we’d have the anchorage to ourselves, until on Christmas Eve a family on a small boat sailed in from the north. Although we’d not met before, we had them over Christmas Eve for eggnog and they had us to Christmas day dinner, complete with – surprise – bluegrass music by every member of the family.

Christmas with kids on board takes some special planning. Little kids are worried about Santa finding them (Oh, they of little faith!) Older kids like familiar things. “While I was more than willing to allow the hectic, frantic Christmas preparations of our land life to just disappear,” reminisces Mary of I Wanda, “our teenaged daughter Andrea was not. She wanted as much of the old Christmas as we could squeeze onto the boat, and she focused her wrath on what I had thought was the very best decoration I had found: a live, potted 18-inch high rosemary tree. Her judgment was swift and unequivocal. That ‘WEED’ no matter how well disguised could not play the role of a Christmas tree!”

Donna adds that with her family baking and decorating sugar cookies has been an important part of their holiday. ‘Everyone participates, and we end up with plenty to share. Just make sure you have the essential icing sugar and colorful sprinkles aboard months ahead!”

As for holiday cards and presents, clue the folks back home about what gifts are suitable on the boat, and be very careful about where and when you have packages sent as duties can knock the joy right out of the gift, as can waiting for delivery in January! Christmas cards, especially between cruisers, are often done via email, but avoid bulk mailing to radio email addresses…I’ve stressed a few friendships that way. And when separation from family threatens to make the holiday blue, the indulgence of a phone call or radio patch can banish the distance between in a snap, often the best and simplest gift of all.

So, have a very merry holiday afloat, and when old Bing comes on the stereo singing I’ll Be Home for Christmas, don’t feel sad. If you’ve done things right on your boat, you ARE home.

Contributing Admirals: Debbie Leisure, Illusions; Jean Service, Jean Marie; Donna Abbott, Exit Only; Judy Knape, Ursa Minor; Kathy Parsons, Hale Kai; Mary Verlaque, I Wanda; Robin Willstein, Endangered Species; Pam Wall, Kandarik; and others.

This article was published in the November 2007 issue of Latitudes and Attitudes.