Leaving land life behind to go cruising can seem like a big step, but coming home afterwards can be just as challenging.

We’ve completed two extended “seabatticals,” and the emotional process of transitioning back was very different each time. The physical process, on the other hand, ...Read more]]> This article was first published on YachtPals.com.

Leaving land life behind to go cruising can seem like a big step, but coming home afterwards can be just as challenging.

We’ve completed two extended “seabatticals,” and the emotional process of transitioning back was very different each time. The physical process, on the other hand, was similar: in each case, we came back to the same town in the same part of the world (Bavaria) and in my case, to the same job.

With those experiences in mind, I’ll look at how each of us transitioned back and what factors helped ease that process.

First trip: In the Caribbean

• Our first trip (2007-2008) was a year-long cruise which took us from the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, around the eastern Caribbean, and up to US East Coast to Maine.

Our son went from being 3 to 4 years old during that time, and my husband and I both had a leave of absence from work so we could return to the same jobs. We had given up our rented home and sold the car, so when we came home, we had those things to sort out.

For me, coming home from the first trip proved to be a surprisingly difficult transition and it took months to get out of the slump.

• Our second trip (2011-2014) was a three-year trip that took us from Maine to Australia on the same boat.

Second trip: Back in our apartment in Bavaria

Our son completed grades 2, 3, and 4 during that trip, an upon our return, he went back to the same school he left after grade 1. I had a leave of absence from work while my husband resigned from his position.

We were able to sublet our rental apartment and loan out our car, so when we came home, we had both waiting for us.

For me, the transition back from that trip was very smooth due to factors beyond those conveniences.

We also lucked in to a very long, easy-going transition time: after we sold the boat in Australia, we enjoyed land travel for six weeks before going to Maine for another six weeks. In Maine, we were land-bound but right on the edge of the ocean, and we weren’t working yet.

We returned to our home in Germany with two weeks before “real life” started up in earnest with the start of a new school year.

In Maine. New challenges and new forms of fun are one good way
to fight post-cruising blues

Each trip, therefore, was followed by a very different experience.

Although our first trip was shorter, it took me a much longer time to transition back afterwards.

Why?

The biggest factor, I believe, is that we finished the first trip wishing for more sailing time. Although we accomplished everything we intended from the outset, it still felt too short. We had just tasted the sailing life and it was time to go home.

During that trip, we also met several sailing families who continued in to the Pacific and seeing them carry on while we headed home had me regretting that I hadn’t dared to dream an even bigger dream.

The transition back, at least for me, was hard, because my heart and soul were still out cruising. Compounding that was the fact that the apartment we did find wasn’t available for nearly two months, so we had a long period of temporary housing to deal with as well.

To my surprise, coming back from the three-year trip was much easier. I thought it would be harder, but that didn’t prove to be the case.

The two main reasons for this were that

1. We had planned for a two-year trip and were able to extend it into three full years, so it already felt we’d won a lottery,
2. Though I could have continued cruising forever, we had a greater sense of completion than after the first trip.
   Much as we would have loved another three years in the Pacific, we felt like we had seen and done more than we ever wished for.
   In addition, most of the dear friends we made along the way wrapped up their sailing adventures at around the same time, so there wasn’t so much of that feeling of watching the rest of the kids enjoying the playground while we were stuck indoors.

Germany: Meeting our fellow sailors who have also returned home
has helped the transition back.

Finally, we were also able to come home to the very same apartment – a home we love in a town we love in a gorgeous part of the world. Part of the latter was true the first time around, in that we also came home to the same town, though dealing with temporary housing was a significant issue for me.

My main frustrations on coming home the second time were small things, like the shock of coming home from a beautifully simple, off-the-grid life to a world that is even more absorbed in electronic devices and multimedia entertainment.

After the second trip, I slipped easily back into the same job, though it took a while to adjust to the idea that I would be doing it for years and not just as a short stint. Six months down the line, I’ve digested that fact at last!

And what about my husband and my son?

• With our son, it’s hard to judge because he had a smooth transition each time.

He was only four years old after the first trip and would have just been starting in a new school anyway. His kindergarten teacher did comment that he seemed a little overwhelmed by being surrounded by twenty other children all the time. (He had been in day care previously with the same number of children, but during our year at sea he got accustomed to having no more than two or three playmates at a time.)

After the second trip, he re-entered the same school. We were very lucky that a number of the students he knew from grade 1 were in his new grade 5 class – including his closest school buddy, with whom he’d been in email contact throughout the cruise.

The boat kids of Suwarrow, Cook Islands

So for our son, the transition was quite easy, too. He had enjoyed the company of several other kids while cruising (as well as attending a few local schools and a summer camp in New Zealand), so the group social situation of school wasn’t as much of a shock to him.

The main observations his teacher made was that he was so used to home schooling alone that he had a hard time working in pairs – in the sense that he’d do his half and let his partner do the other half without realizing that it ought to be a collaborative process.

I was surprised, because while sailing, he collaborated beautifully with kids of different ages, backgrounds, and even languages. However, those were all informal situations and it seems that it took some time to transfer the skill to a school setting.

• My husband reports that transitioning back home after the second trip was slightly more difficult than after the first, though not by a great deal. He had no trouble finding a new job after the second trip, and although it was at a different company, he was familiar with the setting since he had consulted for that company while in his previous employer.

How broadly applicable are our experiences?

It’s hard to say. The sailors we know who’ve done the same kinds of sailing trip have a range of experiences to report. Some came back to their previous homes and immediately thrived, while others floundered. Others settled in entire different places (even different countries) and again, some are full of cheery news while others sing the blues. The question is, is there a single secret to success?

One sailor I spoke with observed that there are so many books that help you go cruising, but none that help with the transition back. It may well be that the variables range over such a wide spectrum that it’s hard to establish a pattern.

I’m no expert, but I will mention two things that helped ease both transitions back for us (aside from the obvious: having jobs to pay the bills and alleviate that stress).

1. One was maintaining contact with sailing friends – both those still out there and those who like us are back to more humdrum lives. They’re the ones who understand us best and with whom we laugh the deepest laughs, smile the widest smiles.
   
   

   Two families who last met in the Cook Islands reunite on a weekend hike

2. The second factor was having a new goal that I could be passionate about working toward to replace the “loss” of the sailing lifestyle.

For me, that goal was writing Lesson Plans Ahoy after I returned from the first trip, as well as writing magazine articles for the sailing press. These gave me a chance to relive parts of my trip while producing something valuable for others, which is rewarding.

My goal now that we’re back from the second trip is to not only write more non-fiction (like Pacific Crossing Notes and Cruising the Caribbean with Kids), but to branch into fiction writing as well. This includes my two sea adventure novels (The Silver Spider and Rum for Neptune) as well as other projects in the works.

In many ways, these fiction-writing goals give me the new horizons I crave, and that’s another reason that this second transition was a smoother one. If I had come home with the feeling that the grand adventure was over and had nothing to look forward to, I would be telling a very different story right now.

We count our blessings every day – those that allowed us to go sailing in the first place, and those that give us new aspirations now that we’re back. We’re thankful for our health, luck, and the family members who let us go, then welcomed us back, not to mention friends and employers who generously did the same.

Are we done with sailing?

Not by a long shot! But we’re content to pay our dues and pursue other goals until we earn a third chance to live the sailing life we so enjoy. Someday!

About Nadine Slavinski

caption.

Nadine Slavinski is a parent, sailor, and Harvard-educated teacher.

She lived aboard her 1981 Dufour 35 for four years and cruised from Europe to the Caribbean, North America, and on to Australia together with her husband and young son.

She is the author of three sailing guides:

• Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor’s Guide to the Coconut Milk Run,
• Cruising the Caribbean with Kids: Fun, Facts, and Educational Activities,
• Lesson Plans Ahoy: Hands-on Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors Paperback.

Her next project is The Silver Spider, a novel of sailing and suspense.

Her articles and links to all her books are available on her website: www.nslavinski.com

Read more on this website:

• Nadine Slavinski Answers 12 Questions on Sailing as a Family
• Sailing Families Revisited: The NAMANI Sailing Family update
• Back to land: Choking on the anchor, by Clare Collins

Seeing their enthusiasm for this, we parents agreed to assign the kids a group project as part of their ...Read more]]>
During our stay in Tauranga, New Zealand, the kids from two boats (Namani and Alouette) really hit it off. One activity they particularly enjoyed was learning to program computer graphics using a program called KTurtle.

Seeing their enthusiasm for this, we parents agreed to assign the kids a group project as part of their home schooling: to create a video documentary about life on a sailboat. The idea was for our children to learn new computer skills while producing an informative and interesting video, not to mention having fun.

We thought it might take them one to two days, and they ended up taking four to produce quite a good five minute video. The video met all the requirements we set, which included a minimum length, use of different scenes / transitions / titles, as well as including a musical clip and credits. They decided that their audience would be kids who were familiar with sailing but hadn’t been cruising. The project also called on the organizational framework they usually call on for written reports: brainstorming, planning, outlining, drafting, editing, and finally, presenting their work.

As so often happens with boat kids, the three worked very well together despite only having recently met and an age range of 9-14. They worked very independently of outside guidance, taking advantage of a lounge room and power supply in the marina we were staying in while completing projects on our boat.

The assignment also met another important requirement: giving the kids something fun and interesting to do while we parents were occupied with repairs! Markus of Namani acted as tech support, but for the most part, the kids were able to figure out the home video-making program (“kdenlive”) through logic, trial, and error, and the resulting video is entirely their own work.

To follow up the assignment, each of the kids wrote a reflection on the project (what worked well, what we could have done differently, what was difficult, etc). Katie, Nicky, and William are quite proud of their work and justifiably so.

It’s great to let kids speak their own minds about cruising, and we hope that others will find their work interesting and informative.

• Watch the video on NAMANI’s website and read Nicky’s reflection on the movie-making assignment:
Boat life – the kid’s perspective
A video documentary about what it is like to live on a sailboat by Katie, William and Nicky

•  Watch the video on Vimeo:
vimeo.com/58241254

More:

• Nicky’s school projects (Nicky’s webpage on Namani’s website)

About Nadine Slavinski

Nadine Slavinski is the author of Lesson Plans Ahoy: Hands-On Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors.

Nadine is a sailor, teacher, and parent. She  holds a Master’s Degree in Education from Harvard University. She has been teaching in international schools since 1996.

A  lifelong sailor, she has taken two extensive sailing sabbaticals with  her husband and young son. Living aboard their 35 foot sloop Namani  for three years, the family sailed from the Mediterranean to Maine, and later,  from Maine to the Caribbean and across the Pacific.

Articles by Nadine Slavinski have appeared in various sailing magazines and websites, including Cruising World, Blue Water Sailing, Caribbean Compass, and YachtPals. Her website, www.sailkidsed.net lists many free resources for home schooling sailors.

Lesson Plans Ahoy (Second Edition) is available from:
- amazon.com (Printand Kindleedition)
- and CreateSpace.com 
For details check www.sailkidsed.net.

More from this website

• Cruising children speak: Cruising children tell us about their experiences growing up aboard
• 6 Tips for home-schooling sailors, by Nadine Slavinski
• Nadine Slavinski answers 12 questions on sailing as a family aboard NAMANI

With careful decision-making and sensible preparations – just what you need for going cruising in general – you can let your children profit from an incredible learning opportunity.

Just ...Read more]]> Taking your children’s education to sea is not always simple, but neither is it a deeply complicated mystery.

Once you capture a child’s interest, learning can be inspiring and fun.

With careful decision-making and sensible preparations – just what you need for going cruising in general – you can let your children profit from an incredible learning opportunity.

Just look at any of the inspiring stories of families interviewed by Women and Cruising!

Yes, it does add an extra task to the cycle of watches, meal preparation, and boat maintenance, but home schooling in such a unique situation can also be rewarding for parents and children alike.

You don’t have to be setting off on a circumnavigation to think about educating afloat. A summer cruise has endless possibilities, too! Often we think of education as something that happens in a school building, but education should be everywhere, every day.

In the words of Mark Twain: “I never let my schooling interfere with my education!”

The tips below will get you on your way. Take a breath, then take the plunge!

1. Keep it connected

The beauty of education on board is the opportunity for authentic, hands-on learning experiences. Snorkel on a reef, or study dolphins! Go to a history museum, then sail in the wake of explorers and settlers.

A field trip to tidal pools can be educational AND fun!

Even if you choose to follow a packaged home-schooling program (see below), make sure your children are connected to the world around them.

• What phase is the moon in?
• When is the next high tide?
• What causes these phenomena?

A child’s natural curiosity can be kindled with only a small hint, and you’re off on an interesting lesson!

If your line lands a fish, take the time for a biology session before cooking it up. Later, link the experience to a lesson in animal adaptations or human physiology. This might be a more traditional lesson, but the student will be much more engaged now that he or she has had the fish dissection as a lead-in.

Fish dissection

These are just a few examples.

As a parent-teacher, you will quickly learn to identify and make the most of teachable moments. Underway and at exotic landfalls, you will find endless opportunities.

It does, however, require some finesse to shape a general interest lesson into one that also develops critical skills (more on this below).

2. Choose carefully

Early on, carefully consider what type of learning program will suit your family best.

Home schooling packages such as that offered by the Calvert School are one convenient option.

The advantages of these are the learning-by-numbers security they offer parent-teachers; all the planning is done, all the materials provided, and some degree of professional support is often included.

Just by going to sea, however, you are taking yourself out of a cookie-cutter mold, so consider whether you want to use cookie-cutter learning for your kids.

Packaged programs often include irrelevant or impractical lessons, such as complicated science experiments unsuited to a rocking platform, or topics like the Industrial Revolution. Try getting your kids excited about that in, say, the Bahamas!

Other families create their own curriculum to suit their realities.

Visiting a plantation such as Marie Galante’s Chateau de Murat can be the centerpiece of an interdisciplinary unit on the Atlantic slave trade.

Colonization and slavery are chapters of history that can be covered well in the Caribbean, and physics lessons can be found all over the boat.

Learning can be completely student-centered, but you will be on your own in terms of materials, a problem that can be overcome with thorough research.

The greatest pitfall of independent design is the danger of leaving out difficult or inconvenient topics that are nevertheless critical to developing literacy and numeracy skills.

I met one sailing family whose incredibly intelligent boys could quote extensive passages from Homer but not write a full sentence at age ten. This is an extreme example, but the danger is there for well-meaning, loving parents who subtly transfer their own passions to their children while sweeping their weaknesses under the carpet.

You can avoid this trap by following the standards from your home school district and refer to them periodically: have we covered the depth and breadth of this curriculum? Did we practice all the required math and science skills?

Families with two or more children should consider what their choice of program means in practical terms.

If you use packaged programs, your children will be following unrelated strands of work. That creates quite the juggling act for the parent-teacher.

With a more independent approach, you can create a one-room schoolhouse in which everyone tackles the same topics but at different levels. While the youngest tracks his or her own water consumption and learns to make simple pictographs, the oldest can track overall water consumption on board and learn about graphic displays such as line graphs or pie charts. You will still be managing a circus, but at least all the action is in one ring!

A number of useful resources exist for those who take home schooling to sea. I have compiled many on a website, www.sailkidsed.net, including links to curriculum documents and a list of useful books and educational websites.

3. Do Your Homework

Whatever type of learning program you decide upon, you will have to prepare well, just as you must prepare your boat well for your cruise.

One important consideration will be your eventual plans:

• Will you come back home or do you plan to settle elsewhere?
• What are the curricula of those school systems?
• Will they demand to see an official transcript to place your child?

Most school districts provide full curricular documents online, and you will be able to download a list of standards, benchmarks and/or learning outcomes for every subject area and grade (these detail what your child should be able to do at the end of each unit in each grade level).

I am firm believer that parents who home school their children must conscientiously use such standards to guide their work. This requires some finesse, as the following examples demonstrate, but you will develop a knack for it.

Let’s say the kids are excited about volcanoes. In many prime sailing destinations, you will be among active, inactive, or extinct volcanoes, so conducting a basic lesson in volcanoes and geology will be easy. Approaching Martinique’s extinct volcano, Mt Pelé, under sail. This is just one of many Caribbean volcanoes with a fascinating story. Now check your list of standards for literacy and mathematics. How can you pull those in? - Take Virginia’s Grade 2 literacy standards, which include: “The student will write stories, letters, and simple explanations.” That means step two is writing an explanation of how volcanoes work, including self-editing and details like: “Use correct spelling for high-frequency sight words, including compound words and regular plurals.” - Now check the math standards, where you will find: “The student, given grid paper, will estimate and then count the number of square units needed to cover a given surface in order to determine area.”Adapt this by using a map and estimating the area your local volcano occupies. In this way, you encourage your child’s interests and keep learning real while developing subject-specific skills.

Print out complete curriculum documents and stock up on books and materials before setting off. You might be able to purchase textbooks used by the relevant school system and use them either in a traditional approach or within your own tailor-made program.

The difficulty here is in knowing what is useful and what is not before you actually set sail. Sorry, there is no easy answer here!

4. Keep it Fun

The world is your classroom! By using clear learning goals, you can ensure that field trips are valuable learning experiences that spark ongoing interest.

Learning can be fun!

If you find yourself locked below decks slaving over dull exercises on a regular basis, something is wrong.

It’s time to take a field trip – a proper field trip, armed with field guides, notebooks, and clear learning goals. Move your classroom to the foredeck or the beach occasionally. Spice up your child’s learning with fun exercises in a context your child can relate to.

If your learning program calls for writing a fictional story, great! Challenge your child to write a pirate story based on your sailing area with him or herself as one of the characters. Linking subjects is another way to make learning fun.

The pirate story could be set against the backdrop of a certain period in history, and it could sneak in a little math with a problem leading to the location of the hidden treasure chest.

Another example is to collect and identify shells, and then incorporate them in an art project. The list can go on and on.

If you treat learning as a heavy chore, your children will echo this attitude and everyone will suffer.

On the other hand, if you can establish a playful yet disciplined spirit and stimulate natural curiosity, learning will become an accepted part of your day and one of the richest points of the cruising experience.

5. Share the Load

Too often, Dad is the captain with Mom doing everything else: childcare, cooking, and, last but not least, teaching. A certain degree of division of labor is natural, but too much can put unfair strain on either partner.

With both parents sharing the teaching load to at least some degree, children can benefit from the strengths of each and from two different teaching styles. Not only that, they are more likely to accept education as a whole-family endeavor, just as the cruise should be a whole-family adventure.

6. Stop Worrying!

Another inspirational way to kick off a learning unit: the author and her son race in ancient Delphi’s stadium, Greece.

Just thinking about taking over your children’s schooling can be intimidating, much like sailing away to unfamiliar waters. Don’t get put off by doubts or by land-bound naysayers.

Countless families report that cruising with children is the best thing they have ever done, emphasizing the family time and eye-opening experiences their children benefit from.

Many also report that their children successfully streamline back into schools when the time comes, often academically ahead of their peers.

The truth is that cruising on a well-maintained boat can be safer and healthier than staying on land. Consider highway safety, or the germ breeding ground that schools can be.

Similarly, home schooling that is based on sound research and focused on clear goals can supersede what any walled classroom could ever offer.

The hardest thing is making the decision to go in the first place; after that, you will find that everything falls into place. Your children will enjoy the experience of a lifetime with the people who count most: their parents. And the lessons learned will guide them for a lifetime.

About Nadine Slavinski

Nadine Slavinski is the author of Lesson Plans Ahoy: Hands-On Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors.

A teacher, parent, and a lifelong sailor, she holds a Master’s of Education from Harvard University. In 2007-2008, Nadine took a year-long sabbatical on her 35-foot sloop with her husband and four-year-old son, crossing the Atlantic and cruising the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and eastern U.S. seaboard. She is the author of four books and has written for numerous publications.

Her website, www.sailkidsed.net lists many free resources for home schooling sailors.

LESSON PLANS AHOY!

Lesson Plans Ahoy! is a resource for sailors heading out on a short cruise, an ocean crossing, or a year of home schooling.

The book includes detailed instructions for six units in Science, Mathematics, the Humanities, and Physical Education; all are designed to be fun, practical, and relevant.

Lesson Plans Ahoy! is highly recommended to any parent considering cruising with school-aged children and available at major booksellers including Amazon.com.

Each unit includes information on:

- Materials required (selected for practicality on a boat)

- Age-appropriate adaptations (ages 4-12 in detail)

- Activities and assignments children will enjoy doing

- Tips for cross-curricular links and enrichment

- Suggested resources to support learning

An appendix links science and mathematics units to national and state curricula for ages 4-12 from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK so that home schooling students can keep pace with expectations in their home systems.

Read also on this website

• Nadine SLAVINSKI answers 12 questions on sailing as a family aboard NAMANI
• 12 questions to 12 sailing families
• What does it cost to cruise as a family? One family’s first-year expenses, by Meri Faulkner

More information (external links)

• Nadine’s book: Lesson Plans Ahoy (Second Edition): Hands-On Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors is available at Amazon.com
• Nadine’s educational website for sailing families: www.sailkidsed.net

How do you handle home schooling aboard your boat? Do you have advice or tips for other families?

Let us know.

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.