A book about sailing away… as a family. This is a story about being a family in the twenty-first century. It is written from the author’s perspective, that of a father - a role as ill defined and wanting today as it has ever been. Still, fathers can help shape the course their families take, so just before the second millennium, the author quit his corporate job and took his family of four on a voyage. For two and a half years they lived and traveled on the Caribbean Sea aboard a catamaran sailboat. Their experiences on the water, good and bad, and the connections they made as a family are the reasons they sailed away. The connections made the author write this story. They are the gifts all families can share. This book might be called a memoir or armchair travel piece, but it is also a how-to and can-do story about choosing alternative family lifestyles. It is a new look at being a family in the twenty-first century. Excerpts: Today when kids get home from school, nobody is there. Both parents are working. Chances are they’re divorced. I’m not saying this explains everything, but it’s somewhere near the heart of the problem.
Just how many meals was the average American family sharing these days? Two? One? None? Or, as a mother later suggested to me, perhaps the question should have been phrased: ‘How many meals do parents share with their children each week, or worse, each month?’
When it comes to your kids, it’s not the quality time that counts; it’s the quantity time.
[Liveaboard sailors] with character will reach into themselves and find exactly what it is they need to do. They will, in fact, gravitate toward the things they should have been doing back home all along. They might end up painting. They might write an honest book. Heck, they might even develop the unifying theory of physics or cure cancer. They might even learn how to live with and enjoy their families. And, of course, PIRATES… If the fellows on the boat behind us meant us harm, a skinny papa and three girls in bathing suits were not going to give them second thoughts.
