“Where do you get food?” ...and other common questions we get.
I get it - what we are doing is a bit weird. Def not the usual thing to do. Homeschool, leaving comfort, ditching our friends and family for sand and strangers. So naturally you have questions. I love the funny questions we get asked in the grocery store, over dinner with friends, by our kids teachers, our doctor, and so on. Here is a slice, in order of frequency asked:
Is it a sailboat? Yes. Wind is free, and last time I checked, not being sucked out of the ground or squeezed out of sand. Common follow-up to this is: Do you know how to sail? Yes. (usually with a half grin and one eyebrow raised). Greg grew up sailing and while I grew up on power boats, I’ve been sailing for 10+ years and we’ve been racing together for several seasons on Lake Ontario. We’ve owned 3 boats and have raised all 3 kids on them including breastfeeding, diapers, potty training and so on. (Sounds fun right?). We’ve sailed end to end on Lake Ontario with our kids, through the night and a few storms ;) And we’ve chartered the usual bumper boats in the BVIs for fun too. Does this make us experts? Hell no! But that’s no reason to not go. We love sailing, so do the kids. And we know that over time we will just accrue miles and experience. We are confident that the actual sailing will be the easiest part. We’ve taken lots of courses to top up where we feel we lack experience until we get the real thing (however I am A-OK if we NEVER have to put the Offshore Personal Survival / Saftey-At-Sea course content into practice).
Where will you get food? We will get food generally where people get food…we all have to eat…and poop. Fortunately I LOVE cooking and my family LOVES eating. No picky eaters here. One of Liam’s sweet friends saw a picture of Matriarch and must have said 4 times in a wondering voice “you are really going to have to bring a lot of food with you when you leave here”. Sorry to worry you Alvin but no, the boarder guards don’t love that…”ma’am, hand over those bananas”.
Are you going to homeschool the kids? Yes. Welcome to the school of hard knocks suckas!!!!! We look forward to helping the kids learn some real-world stuff in addition to keeping up with the Canadian curriculum. Hello spreadsheets and cap tables (Greg); project management and facilitation (Megan).
How do you stop for the night in the ocean? You don’t. Too deep to anchor and we will be going slowly enough already. As our future crew (BIL Andrew and SIL Heidi) can attest, sailing at night is beautiful, quiet and zen. Except when it’s not.
Does everyone have their own room? Ahem. Cabin? Yes. Sorta. Girls in V-berth, Liam in bunks, Greg and I in aft cabin. Until we have guests and it’s all up for grabs. Cockpit is a bit tight for sleeping but hey, we’ve got a hammock so bring a friend ;)
Where will you go when you want space? Ummm…dingy? Good thing we are a super close family. Like really nerdy close. We grocery shop together, hike together, read together and Minecraft together. This works for us…probably has something to do with Greg and I being together since we were 13. Like peanut butter + jelly (or pb + honey in my case and pb + chocolate in Greg’s).
Are you going to work? Several jobs, yes. Including teacher, chef, co-captian, event planner, navigator, helmsperson…oh ya and my day job with Ms. Liz who is the most understanding biz partner in the world. Our hope is that Liz and her little guy will be joining us for a month or so onboard and we’ll create some new material for our business that will make us MILLIONS while we travel. haha. No, but we are hoping to have some mental space to be creative and take on some fun projects. Greg and Liz tend to gang up on me and my lack of wanting to do anything different or learn anything new (yes I am saying this as I blog about going on a sailing trip) but the three of us make a good, weird little team and we might make some cool sh*t together.
Are you going to make YouTube vids? Not looking for another full-time job so no. But we’ll share about our adventures here and on Instagram for those of you who like my dad humour…you know you do ;) We actually really thought hard about the YT thing before deciding no. We love watching the work of the Delos crew and Gone with the Wynns especially. But these guys have been doing this for YEARS and spend hours and hours and hours producing amazing content. We were worried that a commitment like that might really take us away from what we want (time with kids, time with each other…just freaking time before it slips by) so rather than try and squeeze into a niche space with (likely) lame content, we opted out. We’ll post some raw videos here from time to time as we get going for sure but they will be on the other end of the editing spectrum from the aforementioned YouTubers…that is to say, zero editing.
Ok this post is long enough…next week I will see some more random people and will likely get a whole new set of funny questions to report on. I appreciate everyone’s energy, even if it’s got a serious nervous edge to it, so much interest and love…I know you are worried we will be eaten by sharks but I promise you we won’t swim next to the chum bucket.
Much love.
