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

It is even more distressing to find that it is not an easy adjustment. For many reasons cruisers find themselves landlocked, whether by choice, or by ...Read more]]> When all your adult life you have dreamed of and planned for a life aboard and cruising, it is a disorientating stumble to face a turn-around back to land.

It is even more distressing to find that it is not an easy adjustment. For many reasons cruisers find themselves landlocked, whether by choice, or by need, and it can be harder than you imagine.

While slipping away and sloughing the cares of land is an attractive lure, complete independence from terra firma is hard to achieve. Cruising as a family with four children ranging from tot to teens, we frequently faced the need to be near land for both medical and educational reasons.

We and many other cruising families have also found the need to be stationery while the breadwinner flies off from some accessible airport to earn the money needed to maintain a young and growing family and their bobbing home.

Recently, the need for major surgery for one child and the serious pursuit of a musical career of another, combined with the ever increasing toll of long distance commuting to support it all, has meant that we have temporarily become landlubbers, living a long way from our boat.

Hot and cold running showers a few steps from our beds, an upright fridge and freezer that is not accessed from under a bunk, a dishwasher and washing machine, all within centrally heated or cooled comfort are delightful luxuries.

Not having to don a raincoat to walk up to the showers is a novelty I will always appreciate, but there are many aspects of the transition that have been very hard.

We have all suffered mourning and depression. While this has not been a forced situation born of a crisis, such as losing the boat altogether – ours is still safely awaiting our return- we were not prepared for the emotional toll that the change would bring.

It is not surprising that so many metaphors for life apply sailing terminology. ‘Rudderless’ is an entirely apt term to describe the experience of having to make such a significant change to a life plan.

It has also been ironic that the classic perceived negatives of the cruising life have been truer of life on land.

Loneliness has been hard to bear.

While an arrival into a new anchorage or marina is the signal for instant meet-ups and friendships, moving into a house, especially one where there has already been a long stretch of often anti-social prior renters, one is not necessarily met with any sort of welcome.

The children were highly disappointed not to receive the ring of the door-bell and the classic plate of cookies.

Being buried in snow for the next few months meant the entire neighborhood was housebound and isolated.

We had sufficient family heirlooms to make storage of some essential furniture, books, photographs, and sentimental items logical when we sold everything else. We were offered so little for our furniture that it made sense to store rather than sell it, especially as we could face just such circumstances that would require us to stock up all over again.

While the cost of storage has made the saving on repurchasing a bit questionable, it certainly helped our transition to have the familiarity and comfort of our own things in the alien context of a completely new town.

It was like Christmas for our youngest, surrounded by hand-me-down toys and much beloved books, but it was disconcerting for our daughter as a teenager to come face to face with her much younger pink and doll-loving self.

Some aspects of sailing have been hard to shake. My family jokes that you can take the woman off the boat but you cannot take the boat out of the woman, when I provision madly before every snow storm as if preparing for a three-week passage.

We are also hyper-aware of every approaching storm, and anxiously watch the skies and weather reports. Our poor son, studying in New York and hoping to be there to watch the 4th of July fireworks, rushed home early at our request, so nervous were we at the approach of Hurricane Arthur!

Our rental home has skylights so we have kept the sensation of hatches and the sound of rain beating on them, and still can’t quite believe we do not to have to rush around shutting and checking to make sure there are no leaks.

While I do enjoy the convenience of an attached garage, by not having to walk outside, we have not only lost the sea, but the sky as well.

The myriad changes that become the backdrop of your daily existence on the water and on foot are all but lost when surrounded by buildings and the roof of a car.

We keep finding we forget to go out in time to see the blood moon or the super moon or a meteor shower that would have been unavoidable at sea.

While medical and educational needs were part of the anchor chain, and we have been so glad to have been able to achieve those goals, they also come with the stress of ferrying and co-ordinating multiple family schedules.

Ironically, we had a far better and more economical meal schedule while cruising because the whole family was on the same single schedule.

Maintaining a boat and an entirely separate home make it all but impossible to actually save any money for the next cruise, despite attempts to live frugally.

I truly believe that all life is an adventure and an opportunity to learn.

Just as we take our children to sea in order to see the world and learn life skills, there are many things to see and learn in the midst of unexotic, unromantic urban life, not least of which is that sometimes that is how life is.

There were unexpected skills that needed to be learned or relearned, like the handling of glassware in combination with granite counter-tops.

The kids are all acquiring seasonal skills, like the most efficient ways to rake leaves, shovel snow, and mow lawns. For the first time, they are needing to and learning how to iron!

There are driving lessons and money to be earned from gardening and catering ; there is berry picking and there are museums and bus rides to Boston and New York, and there are always the friends you would never have met otherwise.

Moving everything off the boat has given us the opportunity to give the tired and shabby interior of the boat a thorough sprucing of sanding, painting and varnishing that would have been so much harder while also trying to cook, eat, sleep and school. Multiple grades of schooling had led to the accumulation of numerous weighty books and equipment that filled storage space all over the boat.

I am very much looking forward to returning to the boat with a different approach to life aboard. It is as if the first time period served as a shakedown for our return, enabling us to make changes and improvements in every aspect of our lives aboard. We will also have to adjust to the loss of two very able-bodied crew men (now university students in far-off Australia) and the changed roles and competencies of our two youngest.

Keeping in touch with cruising friends has been a vital emotional lifeline for me, and I have enjoyed being able to provide them with land based support by mailing them things they need.

Disentangling ourselves again from the kelp of land life and possessions will be the next challenge as we work out how to get ourselves all the way back across to the other side of the continent to return to the only home we own.

Whatever we do, it will continue to be on the road less travelled.

About Clare Collins

Clare and her family have been choking on the anchor amid leaf piles and snow drifts in New Hampshire USA. 

Her husband, brother, and a crew will be bringing their 72 foot steel ex-BT Challenger, Ironbarque, around the big “U” in the fall, and the family will move back on in the spring of 2016 in Maine. 

In the mean time she is working on provisioning lists and recipes to equip novice galley chefs with basic skills.

More from Clare Collins, on this website

• Fighting Fears: Taking the Plunge (Feature article)
  The account of Clare family’s quest to fulfill their dream of sailing
• Staying pink in a blue world (Blog)
• First cruising adventure: Our best and worst moments (Blog)