Feb 28, 2005--Setting Sail with Children
by Kate and Hamish Laird

George Town, Exumas, Bahamas

	Helen and Anna meet their first iguana, Allan's Cay, Exuma, Bahamas.

In retrospect, it was an ideal time to move the girls aboard and set sail, but that didn't keep me from envying friends who'd had the sense to build their boat before having children. We were setting out with a new boat on a sea trial, with Helen (4) and Anna (2 1/2). Because we didn't finish building the boat until the beginning of December, we didn't have the chance for a gentle acclimation. Helen and Anna had spent up to a week on board at a stretch, but they hadn't "moved" aboard.

We'd been talking about Seal and heading off sailing as long as they could remember, but Seal had been a great aluminum shape in the garden for the past year, the place where Mummy and Daddy went off to work. Helen had been cruising with us when she was 11 months old, but she didn't remember, and Anna had never sailed in anything longer than 13'.

On one of our first overnights (at the dock), Anna stared at me one morning while I made porridge. "This is a home!" she suddenly announced, shocked. We'd shown them where their cabin would be from the time it was nothing but a metal framework, but it didn't mean much to them.

We were in a magic window--post-diapers, pre-school--and the girls had learned to play together quite well. We'd deliberately kept them out of daycare during the boat build so they would learn to play together, and they'd never watched television. (In the last months of the build, when my parents took the biggest share of childcare, they did watch La Traviata with my father every night before supper. They do miss that, but we brought along the CD for them. Neither Hamish nor I know anything about opera; it is startling to have the basics explained by one's two-year-old.)

The weather window looked good for leaving from Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Christmas Day. It had been windy and cold, with danger of icing the rig, and we'd watched a freighter come past one morning completely pasted with ice just from freezing sea. But Helen was just of an age to be wild about Christmas. She was very concerned that Father Christmas would look for her at my parents' house, so she dictated a note to be left by the hearth: "Dear Santa Claus, Helen and Anna are onboard Seal at the Prescott Park dock."

Anna and Helen, Long Island Sound (we've now gone to lifejackets under the harness, because without a lot of layers, the harnesses don't stay on well).

Fortunately, we have a chimney--a huge "H" coming out of the raised saloon. Seal is built for high latitude sailing (but in the summer, when it is seldom as cold as New Hampshire in December), with a big Refleks drip diesel heater and hot water radiators. Helen hung my grandfather's socks around the Refleks guard and set out a glass of whiskey for Santa Claus and a hard boiled egg for the reindeer.

We had the full Christmas morning on Christmas Eve, with the girls none the wiser. On Christmas morning, we were up in the pitch black, gulping down porridge and pouring hot water over the winches to get the grease moving. At the first glimmer of light, we motored away from the dock and out onto the flat Atlantic. The mainsail was up, but there wasn't a breath of wind. Not the way we like to travel, but at least there was no danger of icing.

For the first week, it was so cold out that the girls stayed in their pajamas and played in the raised saloon, watching the grownups work outside. Hamish, Jason, and I took turns running the boat and amusing the girls. Jason had been living with us for six months, trading boat building for the promise of a voyage south this winter and to Greenland in the summer. He has a much-missed niece who is just between Helen and Anna in age, so he was unusually patient with our girls. It would have been hard work without him. Seal is set up for two-handing with one on deck and one asleep, and Hamish and I had no problem running a similar sized boat two-handed, but it is not as easy when the one "off watch" is the "on parent." Helen and Anna can go for hours on their own, playing games and telling each other stories, and suddenly (usually when we are trying to listen to the weather forecast) they need our whole attention. Jason has been troubled by seasickness offshore; that's given us a taste for what it would be like without him: hard work. Hamish and I look forward to the day the girls can deal with the head themselves and can understand that we need to sleep during the day.

They have discovered one delight of passages: nocturnal parents. No matter what hour of the day or night they awake, Hamish and I are around. On our first longish passage from South Carolina to the Bahamas, they woke up at about two on my watch. I managed to hide my midwatch weakness for chocolate from them, this time. They did discover that gingersnaps are more readily available at night, and that a mother distracted by navigating into a tricky harbor in the dark is likely to forget to close the box.

Occasionally, Helen and Anna whine, "I want to go back to New Hampshire," but on the whole, they have adapted very well to life on board. Helen has mastered the top bunk, and they invent fantastic stories by the hour. Helen is the only one on board (including me, who designed the electrical system) who can turn on the correct lights every time (we have red and white circuits).

Here are some of the things we brought for them:

• A ridiculous quantity of clothing. Most of it is in garbage bags under Anna's bunk.
• Four "Get Real" dolls and a GI Joe. They're not so fond of Joe (his gloves don't come off and it makes it hard to dress and undress him), but the girls are a big hit. (I found the "Get Real" dolls on eBay--they're a sporty version of Barbie with more natural human proportions. Of course the company making them went out of business almost immediately.)
• "A Victorian Farm House" (St. Martin's Press)--this was a gift from sailor friends--a doll house that folds up into a book. It is brilliant. Armed with a collection of small plastic farm animals (another gift) they can play for hours at a time without squabbling. And it fits on a bookshelf when they're done.
• Two baby dolls, stuffed animals and assorted clothing. These are popular too, especially since my sister-in-law just had a baby.
• Legos--These may come into their own later; other cruisers swear by them. For the most part they've stayed in the box, which is just as well, because there's nothing more painful underfoot at 2 in the morning.
• Books--Lots. We should have brought more collections. We have one, but I wish I'd picked up a few more. The most popular one is the Children's Encyclopedia. Hamish reads a section with them every night before bed.
• Markers--Lots. They aren't at an age to put the tops on, so we go through a lot. No pencils on Seal--she has an unpainted aluminum bilge, and we don't want pencil points eating the boat.
• Paper & construction paper, glue, scissors. I brought paints, thinking it would be great, but it was a stupid idea: I couldn't stand painting projects at home because it made such a mess and required such close supervision, so why did I think I could stand it on the boat? A friend gave us some Color Wonder paint (it only marks on special paper), but unfortunately it comes in very small pots and didn't last long.
• A Leap Pad--this was a gift from the girls' babysitter. They adore it. The "cartoon music" drives the grownups nuts. We try to limit it to when we are at sea and really need to sleep. I wouldn't have bought them one, but now that we have it, I use it.
• Foul weather gear--pvc gear from Campmor. It is waterproof and almost comfortable. They don't wear it much, but it did get a lot of use in cold-weather dinghy rides.
• Life jackets/harnesses--We haven't solved this one yet. Neither girl can swim. (We're working on it.) They have Mustang Lil Legend lifejackets that they wear when they are out of the cockpit, and they have harnesses to wear over the lifejackets when we are under sail. I don't completely trust the harnesses to stay on; I am trying to find or make a new system before we go up north and get into dangerously cold water. The ideal solution would be an inflatable pfd with a harness, but there isn't a model that comes in small enough sizes. (I also don't trust them not to unclip their harnesses, even though we use locking climbing caribiners, not traditional sailing quick release caribiners.) I'd be interested to know what other parents do.

You can learn more about the Lairds and Seal at their website www.expeditionsail.com.