Family named their boat ‘Jay’s Nest’
They had an ambitious plan: buy a boat and spend the year sailing from Florida to the Caribbean, giving the kids an experience unlike anything they’d get in a classroom.
Benn had sailed as a teen but not much as an adult, and neither he nor Charlotte had any experience homeschooling, and no one in the family knew much about the Caribbean, so they relied on the internet for advice.
“It wasn’t like we blazed a trail or completely broke the mould doing it,” Benn said. “We just copied what a niche of people out there are doing because we figured it was worth a go.”
There were sentimental reasons for the trip, too.
“A year or so before, we lost Benn’s dad. He was 53 and fit and well, but he had a massive heart attack,” Charlotte said. “That really brought the perspective that ... we have no control over how long we have. We really started to think about if we wait until we retire or until the kids leave home, we could be waiting for nothing.”
Their search for a boat began around November 2016, but dragged on after they sold their house and headed to Florida in January 2017. Eventually, time on their U.S. visas began to run out, so they nabbed a boat but had to sail away in March 2017, before any training.
They did, however, muster time for a ceremony to celebrate the boat’s new name, “Jay’s Nest,” a nod to the family’s diehard love of the Toronto Blue Jays.
“We got all dressed up in our Blue Jays gear, took a bunch of pictures and had a big old Blue Jays flag fly off the back of it, too,” Benn recalled.
It was a fitting start to the trip for a family with a reputation for “harebrained schemes,” as Benn calls them. The Wood family moved to Canada from England 10 years ago without knowing a soul.
In Canada, they kept up their daring streak by once pulling the kids out of school to trek down to Dunedin, Fla., for the Jays’ spring training camp.
It took no convincing to get Charlotte and the kids to journey to the Caribbean, though Oscar admits there was one downfall.
“Whenever we got internet, if there was a Blue Jays game on, we tried to watch it, but we didn’t get to see much,” he said.
He was, however, ecstatic to fish, and Bella and Jasper were equally happy exploring the coral reefs.
But before they donned snorkeling gear or cast a rod, there was work to be done. Charlotte and Benn put the kids on a strict school schedule that was even tougher than what they might have faced if they stayed home.
The kids didn’t get any time off for summer vacations, weekends or Christmas break. Every morning started with hours of lessons, cobbled together from resources they found from around the world and advice from teachers.
“Road-schooling” or “world-schooling” often involves adapting to a new location while figuring out how to juggle parenting and teaching.
Boating adds extra struggles. Wi-Fi can be difficult to get on open waters, sometimes seasickness wreaks havoc on plans or, in the case of the Wood family, you run into big trouble like Hurricane Irma.
When the family learned Hurricane Irma was headed their way in August 2017, they parked the boat in a Turks and Caicos shipyard and departed for Benn’s mother’s home in the U.K.
It was good thinking. Irma became the fifth-costliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland and caused an estimated $50 billion in damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.
“We didn’t expect the boat to be knocked down and destroyed,” Benn said. “It wasn’t completely turned to matchsticks, but it was ... busted up inside.”
Meanwhile, the adventure continued in England.
“I kind of felt bad,” Bella said. “We were meant to be staying for only a month, but we ended up staying for six.”
That meant sightseeing at more than 30 castles, renting an RV for exploring and spending plenty of time with grandma.
The family returned to Ontario in March 2018, found another Thornton home and the kids re-enrolled in school.
But their wanderlust wasn’t gone. They started toying with taking a European road trip or journeying across Australia and New Zealand.
Then, in July, they edged toward a plan. Benn headed to Florida to look at another boat, telling the Star, “We will be less naive and starry-eyed, but have a proper crack at it again.”