We met a couple of Americans at the Sint Maarten Yacht Club yesterday (yes we are in Sint Maarten now, we sailed here 3 weeks ago from Grenada) who were on the last day of their vacation (they were NOT looking forward to going back that’s for sure)…they had already received their negative PCR test results so they could board their flight back and they were so fascinated to chat with us. It’s kinda funny but in this conversation I realized that due to COVID we’ve not spent much time (like seriously, hardly any time) with tourists who are not sailors in the last 10 months. As such, we haven’t spent much time talking with people about our ‘lifestyle’ because the people we see and talk too are mostly sailors (who spend most of their time talking about the various boat jobs they are all busy with or their insurance carriers hahaha).

Among many questions, they asked us “what is the best thing about this life?”

I honestly don’t know what people expect when they ask this question…but the answers don’t really have much to do with actual sailing :P Here are the highlights:

*****

Homeschooling.

I’m not kidding. Yes we argue with them over why the days of the week don’t matter and if we took 3 days off of school for adventures that might mean we knock out some math on a Saturday….but honestly even with the odd argument, homeschooling is one of the deepest joys of this life. To be clear, we chose this, unlike the parents in Ontario right now who are homeschooling their kids by logging them on and off zoom every 35 minutes, managing their independent work and keeping them active on dictated breaks while somehow also working jobs…

No, we chose the freedom of schooling our kids outside of the standard curriculum and the standard tests and the standard…standards. It’s pure freedom for the kids. They aren’t missing out on anything (still have friends, still have socialization) except the bad stuff (no bullying, no shaming, no set timeline for various achievements regardless of individual ability or inclination) and they have gained so much more (freedom to pursue what interests them, freedom to progress at a pace that is natural for them)…we have zero regrets as do they (we check in often with them). I strongly suspect the kids will choose this style of learning for the remainder of their childhood and I strongly suspect they will be we set up to be happy, confident, compassionate humans.

Closeness.

We are intimately involved in every detail of each others lives and we all love it. Seriously even my now 13 year old (13! gulp!) loves all the family ‘togetherness’…I frequently as him if he would like more space and he looks at me and says “why would I?” And then gives me a big kiss and hug. Sure they have some privacy and we demand it sometimes too but the physical closeness of the space and the emotional closeness of constantly discovering new things together has created such a tight bond between the 5 of us we feel like we can conquer anything as a family. I sometime marvel at how much time we spend together compared to our previous life (which was still a lot since we both worked from home!) and can’t believe we all still like each other.

As most moms might attest, there’s a lot of touching in my life. Kids who love to hug every hour x 3 plus a husband that still thinks I’m cute means that sometimes I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round and each revolution results in some physical contact of some kind. Sure there are times when I need some space…but literally all I need is a bubble of 2 ft around me for about an hour every now and then and then I’m good to mash it up again :P

Slowness.

It’s the time we have, or feel we didn’t have before, to just move slowly and take deep breaths. We aren’t rushing to school, rushing back for work, rushing back to school, rushing to make dinner, rushing to get the kids to bed, rushing to relax, and then rushing ourselves to sleep to do it again…on the weekends trying to fit in everything else we had to do into 2 days and hopefully something fun too. And that was when both Greg and I already had careers that were very autonomous and were based out of our home offices.

Here and now, if we want to take 30 minutes to drink a cup of coffee, no problem. Pancakes this morning? Sure! Is the weather beautiful? Well let’s do chores later and go for a swim. Is the weather shit? We’ll lets quietly read books and then maybe watch a movie. Of course there is a ton of work to do too..so much more work than living in our house in Canada…but it doesn’t feel as oppressive. Or at least there are more moments, many more moments, when it feels not oppressive at all. It is fair to say when critical systems fail it can be stressful and all consuming but thankfully those moments aren’t too often and almost always generator related (eye roll). Though today, we are mixing it up by repairing a leaky seal on the forward toilet.

For Greg, living more slowly includes watching, no, admiring the sunsets literally every single day. He absolutely loves watching the sun go down and the colours change. Again at home this would only be noticed if the sky lit up so brightly you couldn’t ignore it above the other rooftops in the suburb we lived in. That was ok then, and sometimes a nice surprise, we were focused on other things that were important then. But now the important things we focus on still allow us to pause and watch the sun sink slowly to the sea and feel gratitude that we could bear witness again that day.

Walking.

Aaaahhh life without a car. Or public transit for the most part. Yes it takes much much longer to do stuff, and yes that stuff requires more planning to do, but walking through the villages or towns we visit, is such a pleasurable way to get to know a new place. Feeling the freedom to pop into shops or stop at stands and talk with people to find out the best place to get bread, or who might have ripe plantains or if anyone is making golden apple juice today…it’s so lovely and relaxing and still productive (also important since we do need to eat and buy the odd thing now and then).

Walking everywhere also has us constantly outside. Constant fresh air. Like CONSTANT ALL THE TIME AIR COMING INTO MY NOSE FROM OUTSIDE fresh air. It might not always smell fresh (burning trash, flushing head) but it’s never stale recycled air. Between living on the boat which is basically outside (even when it’s all closed up there are vents all over where fresh air flows in) and walking all over the place we are inside maybe 0.01% of our lives when we are in a big grocery store (rare over the last 10 months until we got here in Sint Maarten). We LOVED the outdoors before this life but being outside all the time has forged an even deeper appreciation in us for the weather, proper attire for comfort and safety and the importance of carrying water everywhere. If we ever move back to land we will need to be very close to nature, and have the space to enjoy it easily and everyday, think small cabin in the woods with mountain and water views…

Sleeping.

As I draft this paragraph at 9:26pm Greg is only a bit awake because I keep telling him what I’m writing as I write it (hahah poor guy). Sailors always joke that 9:30pm is ‘cruisers midnight’ and there is truth in that. So many nights, maybe 19/20 nights we are asleep by 9:30, and sometimes much earlier. And no, we aren’t up at the butt-crack of dawn either. Many mornings we wake up around 6 and still doze until 7…we have never in our entire lives (except possibly when we were babies) gotten this much sleep before. And we love it. LOVE IT. Not every sleep is perfect that’s for sure…there are tons of water and wind noises that wake us up at night, and times we need to check on things, and very very rare times when we need to stay up and do something safety related (like that one time at 3am when a catamaran in a crowded anchorage fouled our anchor and we dragged very close to another anchored boat…that night sucked). But when you go to sleep at 9 and get up at 7 there is room for a few hours of restlessness.

I honestly believe that the amount of sleep that Greg and I get now is the #1 healthiest thing we have done for ourselves. And I’m hoping it offsets how much more we drink ;)

Complicated Simplicity.

I don’t mean this in a pretentious minimalist way (barf), I mean this in a we work hard to keep things simple and we love it kind of way. Is it complicated to make water, yes, but the simplicity of having water everywhere we go is so amazing. Same goes with solar. And battery power. And the propane (though could maybe be even more simple with an inverter upgrade, more battery capacity and more solar so we could go all renewables…see what I mean?) It’s complicated to be simple but for us it’s worth it because once it’s all set up it’s so rewarding. We can fee so free and self-reliant. Not that relying on people is bad…it’s totally not. But when living on a boat and travelling, relying on others for your basics can be…disruptive to say the least…

Learning and working to create and maintain autonomy for ourselves is intoxicating and addictive. There is always a system to improve, always a way we can cut out a layer of complication (the process of course is complicated in itself)…there is always something to learn. It is satisfying for us.

(LOL though right now as I edit this paragraph Greg said “ARRGGGG nothing is easy on a boat!” because he is looking for a specific screw we need in the head and can’t get a good view of the original.)

Freedom.

I think, especially in COVID times, all of the above amounts to “freedom” for us…we all have our own definitions of freedom of course but for us this life has offered us an independence that is unparellelled. Beyond the financial independence we were seeking before, we know are so much more autonomous…capable of travelling where we want for months at a time without needed to reconnect with the modern world (for more food)…more than Canadians at home, we have choices, so many choices before us and that feels like freedom more than ever before. So many things are up to us to decide, how to teach our kids, how to spend our afternoons, where to drop the anchor, where to get food…other than the weather and the ever-changing immigration policies we can do what we want. Sure, sometimes the decision fatigue is really hard to deal with…we sometimes spend hours having circular conversations about “what do do next” and sometimes even deciding how to spend the afternoon can be hard (we sometimes feel a pressure to explore because we are travelling rather than to just relax because we are also just living) but I wouldn’t trade that frustration for anything.

*****

One could rename this to “what are you most grateful for in this boat life?” and it would maybe be more accurate. These are all things we’ve been able to cultivate by way of living on a boat; however, now that we’ve been doing so for a year and a half I am so confident we could do the same living anywhere small and remote. Sometimes all five of us together talk about life when we are back on land and what our priorities are…the answers so far are all the same across the board….a place were we can ski, mountain bike, sail and have a small / tiny home in the forest but not too far away from a town with good food (it’s a tall order but possible in a few places in Canada for sure). I know that we can achieve the same familial closeness, homeschooling, opportunities for breathing / sleeping / walking, appreciation of the weather and simplicity in that future land-life too. And that knowledge makes me feel so secure and content.

So if I was to sum it all up in one sentence I would say the best thing about this life is having so much choice, so many opportunities that it becomes overwhelming.

We are free.

And we are so GD grateful for it, now more than ever.

Much love,

MH

P.S. Please excuse the asynchronous references to Greg in this post…I wrote it and edited it in different times and didn’t feel like making up a timeline that wasn’t real :P

P.P.S. Greg read through this before I posted and said “Ya this is a good one, it made me feel better about life” HA!