Boat Schooling Aboard Searcher

This article first appeared in the March issue of AllAtSea, a Caribbean boating Magazine

So here we are, six months into a two year cruise on our Bowman 57 ketch Searcher, boat schooling out two kids, daughter, Renaissance, age 11 and son Havana age 9. It’s not been easy, and from what other cruising parents tell is about boat schooling, isn’t easy for them either. But the rewards out weight the negatives.

The good times are very good and mostly revolve around fields trips ashore, visiting island markets, exploring mountain valleys, splashing under water falls, visiting a chocolate factory, a spice plantation, or sailing through the dust cloud of a volcano. These are the shared adventures we all remember years from now. The difficult part of boat schooling is the book work, the math and reading. This on-board classroom work is the toughest. We aim for a three hour block of boat schooling 5 days a week, 9 to 12. I fear we fall short.

Boat schooling eats up time we could be cruising. Underway, there is little time, or desire to focus on book work, so we park the boat for a few weeks behind a nice island and the kids and Mom get to work each morning. Dad can help out too, when one child needs Mom’s attention more, the other comes to Dad, who can often be found buried in the engine compartment. We get to spend a month in Bequia, than another month in Grenada where we get to meet other families who are cruising with kids. But, we’ve experienced a language barrier. Very few American families are sailing with kids these days. It’s a cultural thing. The vast majority of boats with kids are from the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. They too are boat schooling their kids. Families are easy to spot, in a dinghy on the dock or on deck. and are always eager to “gam,” to share information, experiences and tell stories. Despite the language differences, kids have the universal language of “play,”

What to Teach

When we made the commitment to “get off the grid” and take the kids on an extensive cruise, boat schooling options was one of our prime research projects. Luckily, we lived in Maine, where home schooling is an alternative to public and private school. A home schooling book store was a few miles away in Hope, with work books, resources, teachers guides and lesson plans readily available.

Next, a chat with our kids’ two teachers about what to being along and where to place the emphasis was invaluable. We learned there are legal requirements in many states if you wish to home school your kids, permissions to obtain, tests to be given, lesson plans to be filed, all to ensure the kids are keeping up with their classmates back home.

The internet provided a wealth of links dealing with home schooling (nothing on Boat Schooling), but perhaps too much information. The most valuable sources of advise and information came from other moms and dads we met along the way who were, like us, inventing as they went along.

From the beginning it appeared that buying a home schooling package from Culvert or one of other suppliers, would not work for us. Everyone we met agreed. Boat schooling is different than home schooling. In home schooling, the family is in one place, at home. Family living on and traveling on boats have embraced an alternative lifestyle that required more flexibility. They can also make use of the experiences and places through which they pass as they explore the world. Why be studying Roman History, when you’re sailing through Colonial America, or the Caribbean. So, no packaged curriculum for us. We have been using the workbooks from BrainQuest and Spectrum. We stocked the boat with lots of reference books like The American Museum of Natural History’s mammoth book “Oceans” along with “Animals” and other books on geography, geology and of course the cruising guides. We have books on tape, a French language program on DVD. The kids have been encouraged to create their own books, to include drawings, photos and sketches of the things they’ve collected, seen and experienced. There are journal entries to make, and podcasts, recordings of their verbal stories to tape. We have lots of “chapter books” for them to read. Havana, our 9 year old son is just beginning to read the Cat In The Hat series, while Ren, age 11, can be found tucked up forward, buried in the jib bag, or in her cabin, following the adventures of three girls her age in a novel.

What have we learned from our experience with boat schooling?

Good teachers are priceless. Not everyone is a born teacher. Teaching is hard work, not only the material that has to be digested and taught, but the emotional management of the kids, and one’s self places demands on one’s patience. Teaching is tough enough work, ever for the pros, and I’m a former college president, but teaching your own kids stuff they don’t want to learn (math) only heightens the emotional stress that is already prevalent in an overly compressed family environment on board a small boat.

But, this is a special time for this family afloat. It is a gift we can give our two kids, an experience they will have with them the rest of their lives. They will learn things from this voyage they would only read about in a classroom ashore. They are experiencing the world first hand, leaning about the oceans, geology, weather systems, navigation, and about themselves, what they like and do not like. Already, our daughter is ready to go home. She misses ski racing. Here in the Caribbean, all there is is swimming, snorkeling and hiking through rain forests to water falls to swim in fresh water pools.

Kids learn best while on field trips, where the learning is interactive and real. That’s what this family cruise is . . . an extended field trip.

You can follow the Lyman Family from Rockport, Maine on their ketch Searcher on their website www.KidsOnBoats.net.

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Teaching Your Kids While Cruising The Caribbean

Boat Schooling happens in many ways and in many place while cruising:

Searcher’s cabin ias but one of the many classrooms out kids used.

Marketing day on St. Lucia is an opportunity to use armithtic to calculate exchange between the US dollar and the Easter Currency (EC).

Traditional boat building skills are alive and well in Carraciou as Havana observes.

A class in lofting skills with one of the model boat builders on the island of Bequia.

Havana chews on a eshly cut stalk of sugar cane on Granada.

Off for some underwater exploration in the Tabago Cays, north of Grenada.

Sailing down Buzzards Bay, Julie and Ren go over the morning’s workbook assignment.

Havana and Ren caught samples of jellyfish in Vineyard Haven harbor, part of their biology class.

Ren and South African friend Keelan share homework assignments on Ren’s iPod.

As we sail past Montsurrat Island, the active volcano sends up a cloud of ash through which we steer. The kids and I don diver masks to keep the ash out of our eyes, but we are eating and tasting the volcano. Julie we apprach the volcanic island Julie takes the opportunity to hold a class in geology in the cockpit.

Havana and Renaissance inspect the relief map of the Island of St. John in the National Park Information Center in Cruse Bay.