Category Archives: boat teen

A new year…will Shawnigan ever leave the harbor again?!?!

We haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been SLOWLY working on our second half of Tonga post (which will be over a year past the time that we were there.) For some reason, once I’ve uploaded photos to a hard drive, I find I have a hard time fishing them out to add to our posts. That’s neither here nor there… what this short post is about is how we’ve been in New Zealand over a year now, and as of today, January 1st, 2020 S/V Shawnigan has officially not budged an inch while at her new home in Mana Marina.

“What?!”, you say, “Shawnigan has not been out sailing for a whole year! A family that has done so much sailing, has not taken their boat out for a year?!” Yes, it’s true. Although we are still happily living aboard S/V Shawnigan, we have not taken her as much as a few inches here and there adjusting the dock lines. As the year comes to and end and to a new beginning, we hope to start taking her out more often, but who knows what this new year will bring.

When we left for “sailing the world”, we left with an open ended plan. Not really sure with what we’ll do, where we’ll go, where we’ll stay. As we made way towards New Zealand, thoughts of setting some shallow roots came to mind. Find jobs, put the kids in school, and see how it goes. Not long into our time here in the Wellington area, with my work as a nurse at the hospital and the kids’ involvement and enjoyment in the local schools, we decided to apply for residency. That whole process is still pending and we still don’t know where it is heading, but as it goes when we’re sailing, we go where the wind takes us. Well, I guess that’s not completely spot on for this situation, is it. Our time here and what we do next in this case is always being re-evaluated based on what we desire for the now and the future, financial status, and overall family happiness. Right now, we’ve come to the conclusion of staying put, waiting for our New Zealand residency, having fun and being productive at work and school, meeting new friends and building stronger relationships with them, and exploring New Zealand via our newly (not so) purchased camper van and hopefully by boat one of these days.

Honestly, after so much sailing, Captain Christian has quite enjoyed the break from moving place to place all if the time. I get that. Also, its been quite nice not o worry about dragging anchor, running aground, hurricane seasons etc. Don’t get me wrong, we love sailing and we’ll get back out there, but for now we are going with the flow here in New Zealand.

This is not a “year in review” post as one might think this post would be. My apologies if you were hoping for that. Knowing myself, if I was to go down that road, I’d never get the post out, because I’d be looking for all of the “right” pictures to post and things to say. For a glimpse of what we’ve been up to in New Zealand over the last year, its probably best to head over to our Instagram or Facebook page, where we are mostly up to date with pictures.

Here are a few pictures mostly in chronological order, just because..

9d0c7a9e-9dfd-4c1e-ac83-52579b38c81b 905182b8-5b9c-4669-b747-57f2fb2d20c1 ea2bc0ac-973e-4412-9774-7911222eb3d3 ee10af0e-bcf2-4977-ad8d-28f70b94598d 8c456d5a-305a-4778-957e-18c7268d0f43 2c4fc18d-fe99-40de-ac8f-1a64fd707686 8ff321a2-f6fe-4b25-8559-6535a21b3e55 3a7dc5ab-41f5-4894-a961-5644dab264dc 841c8a56-fdd8-4962-9bc9-03d12cc0f8bb 242e3900-05bc-43c0-be3f-daba42c685fb c7eb183b-d796-4b38-98af-80fde4a7eb49 0b6d5773-8496-4898-ba86-49e88fa04686 1dd58e63-3279-497b-840a-3a1acff55058 defa2578-624a-4b59-b237-edd05d8b9bc4 330c709c-c12d-4310-86a8-75d813335ea2

Happy New Year and we hope 2020 brings you many adventures!

~ @afamilyafloat

Drama on the way to Tonga…

2 Replies

Is posting a blog like sending a thank you card>>> you have a year to do it and it’s still acceptable? We’ll just say it is and better late than never!

After we left French Polynesia we did a quick stop at one of the northern Cook Islands called Suwarrow. Read about it here. The quick stop was due to weather planning. We could either go then and now or possibly end up waiting 3 weeks on a very deserted island before our next weather window. As inviting as that was, A: we didn’t have enough fresh produce for that and B: we wanted to get to Tonga just in case Christian’s staph infected foot wound took a turn for the worst. I would post a picture, but afraid the content would be too graphic for most.

The passage from Suwarrow to Tonga was quite lovely, but not without a hitch. Christian was not able to put any weight on his wounded foot, so we left with all the sail and galley work up to me. The passage from Suwarrow to Tonga would take about 5 days, roughly 600 miles, the time was right, the date was August 23rd, 2018. Mid-day we weighed anchor and motored down the channel. Upon leaving the pass out of Suwarrow the main sail was already hoisted and the 120 head-sail was out. The wind was perfect, the motor was no longer needed. As we exited the pass the wind was solid. Yes! It was going to be a great sail out, but first I needing to furl in the jib a bit with the wind direction and speed picking up. We were all very excited to be heading to Tonga. Along with the excitement came a bit of overzealous manoeuvring…. I went to the furling line to pull in a bit of sail. I questioned whether or not I should let out the sheets (letting the lines on the jib slack) in order for me to make it easier on myself, but felt my need to use muscles take over… as I pulled on the furling line with what I thought was good form, that’s when it happened, I felt the “pop” in my back.

Although I didn’t feel pain immediately, I could tell I was done for. I finished what I needed to very carefully and pretty much was immobile for the next 3 days as the pain set in minutes after the initial event and held on without relief. Thankfully the sails didn’t need much in the way of changing. There was one or two times that I had to go up and raise and lower the whisker pole (the pole that holds the jib out for shape with a down-wind direction). I’ve now experienced those moments where the pain seems to subside when there is something that must be done, and then the pain returns as soon as your done. What a strange phenomenon. As I was laid up in the cockpit for 3 days, I tried to move as little as possible with the one time below per day to cook dinner. Nina helped with breakfast and lunches, thankfully. And she continued her 8pm-11pm watches. The only difference was that on her watch, I was the one out helping instead of Christian, who normally helps her during her watches. Again, not much needed to be done on this passage, so that was good. During those days, I realised how much core muscle you actually use when you’re sailing. Every jerk and jolt of the boat, my core would activate and my back would spasm. It took everything possible to relax through the normal movements of the boat.

On the bright side… we did catch two Yellowfin Tuna! Christian has his moment of putting the pain aside, keeping his foot elevated while hand reeling in the fish… I wasn’t about to.

There was lots of reading going on.

Chatting with Ellamae on the Satellite phone. And S/V La Cigale on the radio.

Making a flag for Tonga.

Playing with toys.

By the time the weather got a little bit rougher, around middle day 4, I was able to move more and do all the things needed. We had a great 3.5 days downwind and another 2 that were upwind, but not too bad. On day 6 (5 and 3/4) , August 24th, 2018, arriving into Tonga’s, Neiafu came with so much relief. Christian was still pretty immobile… but he could help us dock to the, worst yet, port captains/immigration dock, hobble to the port captain’s office and back, and help us get onto the mooring ball later on. I was moving like an old lady, but much better. During the check in process, I grabbed some Tongan money (called Pa’anga) from an ATM and loaded us up with fresh produce from the farmers market. A good way to start our time in Tonga.

Tonga, we’re sort of ready for you, and please without drama.

~A Family Afloat

See our boat tracks on Farkwar!

Next up: 6 weeks in Tonga: part 1

How we make it work… as a long term sailing family.

6 Replies

I know its been a while since we’ve put out an actual sailing post. I think I’m almost a year behind!!! Our last sailing post was about Suwarrow. Hopefully soon, a post about sailing in Tonga (Sept-Oct, 2018) will explode from my brain and onto the blog. It will come. For now, however, I do want to share a write up that I did for another blog/podcast. Sometimes having someone give a prompt helps the writers block and motivation. It is sailing related, but not limited to any particular location within our sailing journey. Hope you enjoy.

That’s a great question, HOW DO WE WANT TO LIVE EVERY DAY?! And how do we make that possible?!

HOW DO WE STRATEGIZE? This question was brought up by a dear friend, Whitney Archibald, writer and podcast extraordinaire of How She Moms regarding how we strategize with parenting on the boat. (Click the link above to see our response and listen to the podcast with a few on my answers along with a few other Mum inputs). But this question wasn’t just about parenting style, when a fellow boat parent on S/V Mahi approached me with the question of how we manage to do this long term cruising thing from a financial standpoint for the Kids4sail June 2019 Newsletter, I realised that this “parenting strategizing” extended beyond parenting on a day to day basis. The bigger picture was how do we strategize to live the life we want to offer our kids. How do we go cruising in order to raise our kids the way we would like them to be raised? For most people, including us, the biggest challenge of cruising was figuring out how we would manage it financially.

When we first were thinking about sailing the world with our children, not necessarily around, we were faced with a few big questions. The biggest, “HOW DO WE MAKE CRUISING WORK LONG TERM?” Many factors play into that, but the primary one people get caught up in when thinking about leaving their “current life” is figuring out how they can afford to do it financially. There are some blogs that write about cruising budgets, but its hard to grasp the idea that cruising really is affordable when not many people are willing to share their financial information and the people that do might not have the same budget you would have. Their are a few other topics are worthy of their own post, such as questions centred around education/boat-schooling, and how do you cruise and co-parent, with a blended his, hers, and ours like we have on our boat. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll leave those aspects out of this write-up and stick to finances.

Along our journey, we have met many others who have shared their very different ways of making cruising work from a financial standpoint. Like myself, there are a few nurses, but only a few. There are some teachers, computer tech related fields and other various professions. Most families out there cruising long term are still working in some way or form. Not many have been able to free themselves from the full work load completely. With an open mind to various possibilities, we, A FAMILY AFLOAT, have found ways to make it work up to this point and plan to continuing doing so. I could not imagine our life any other way than as a cruising family.

Lets first start by defining what a “cruiser” is. Someone who has left their “home” to sail around afar (this could be in the same country or foreign) for an extended period of time. There are all sorts of different sub-species of cruisers. Those who sail seasonally, meaning they do a few months of sailing away from home, and the other months back at home. There are those who just take a year (or just a season) or two off and squeeze in what they can and then go back to “home”. Those who leave for longer periods, and those who leave with an open ended plan. We left with an open ended plan of “we’ll make it work along the way and keep going as long as it’s working”. We left San Francisco in August, 2015 and slowly (over 3.5 years) made our way to New Zealand so far.

When Christian and I got married in 2010, we had already agreed that we would one day go cruising with the kids. Originally we were thinking of leaving around 2019, but in 2014, when we assessed our lives and our finances, we came to the conclusion that the opportunity to leave would open up for us for mid 2015. I was the primary income source with my nursing career in San Francisco. We were very fortunate to have a good steady income while Christian prepped the boat, raised the children and helped with schooling. He is trained and skilled in carpentry (ground to finish work), but when we blended our family and had another kid, it made the most sense for him to leave that job to take care of the “boatstead”. I worked three 12 hour shifts a week and focused any extra money toward the cruising kitty. We had already been living on our current boat (S/V Shawnigan) since 2012 and paid it off by 2014, so it was just a matter of putting enough savings into our “cruising kitty” account for at least one year’s worth of sailing.

Our costs were already relatively low, but there were a few changes we new we had to make in order to save enough in that next year. Six months prior to leaving, we pulled the kids out of private school to acclimate them to home-school life and in turn saved $$$. If you have the means to do this before you leave, we highly recommend it. 4 months prior to leaving, we moved Shawnigan out of the harbor we had been living in for the past 4.5 years and “anchored out” in the free anchorage. This options isn’t for everybody, but worth it if you can. Not only did we save quite a bit of $ by being anchored out, it allowed us to get use to what life was like not being able to just step off onto the dock or dry land whenever one wanted to. It was hard work. I would wake up at 4:45 am, kayak to shore in clothes that could get wet, then ride my bike 13 miles to work to do a 12 hour shift at the hospital. I wouldn’t get home until 9:30pm at the earliest on those days. But the hard work paid off. Don’t forget, the extra little things add up. We ate out less and started getting rid of our extra stuff, including cars and bikes. By August, 2015 we had $20,000 in our cruising kitty and the same amount in an “emergency found”. It allowed us to leave to go cruising with our kids and experience the world!

We kept a budget in mind while out cruising. Its easy to get into “vacation mode” and spend spend spend. Based on experience and hearing about it from others, we knew we wouldn’t be going out to dinner much and spending $ on extra sightseeing activities like some cruisers do. A sacrifice worth making and was a challenge at time. We seemed to start out great, especially in Mexico. But as we met more people with an extended budget and as we sailed through more expensive countries it proved to be more of a challenge. There were many times where we opted out of the group dinner out or the group sight seeing tour simply because we couldn’t afford to be spending money like that. Trips like the Galapagos, I intentionally worked a few extra shifts on the previous travel nurse assignment in order for us to go there and enjoy a few dinners out and a tour or two their.

Assessing funds and making them along the way: As our first year neared its marker, we knew it was time to refill the kitty. As a nurse, I’ve always kept it a possibility to pick up travel nursing assignments throughout our sailing journey. These are usually 13 week contracts that you agree upon with a travel nurse company. We figured hurricane season would be a good time for me to hop off the boat and work back in the U.S.. The family stayed on the boat a bit longer, but also took this time to come back to the States. As life tends to always change, just like the wind and the seas, that work stent ended up being 6 months, 4 of which we were all together in the States. Our boat was safe and secure during that time, in San Carlos, Mexico. The next year, was similar. We cruised for 9 months and then I returned back up to the States for another Travel Nurse assignment. This one lasted 4 months, in which during that time the family stayed on the boat, explored the Sea of Cortez, and visited the States for 1 month. The next year, we made it 10 1/2 months before returning to work. The Shawnigan crew sailed from Mexico to Panama, to the Galapagos, and crossed the Pacific Ocean, explored French Polynesia, a blip in the Cook Islands, and 6 weeks in Tonga. From Tonga I flew out for my last Travel Nurse assignment… for now.

Upon arriving to Tonga, we assessed our kitty and decided that even though the plan was to work in New Zealand, I should fly back to the States for one more assignment. This was by far the hardest choice to make and to actually do. I would be away from the family to work for 13 weeks, but the payoff was great. Sometime, mid Tonga, I had a phone interview with the hospital in Wellington. I was offered the job, given the info I needed for a work visa, and given permission to delay my start date until mid January while I waited for my work visa to go through and completed my travel assignment in the U.S. In the meantime Christian and the kids sailed, with the help of our friend Nick, from Tonga down to New Zealand. He then took the next few months, sailing solo with the kids, down to Wellington, where we are all at now…on the boat, in a marina…schooling… working… refilling the kitty…. for the next leg of our sailing journey.

At this point we are uncertain how long we will stay in New Zealand… we just want to keep everyone on their toes.

Group shot (minus Ellamae, who was already back in the US with her biological father) of the family taking me to airport in Tonga to fly out for a travel nursing assignment in California.