Cruising notes
What’s it like to take your kids out of school and sail across an ocean? Ali Wood speaks to ARC participant Gemma Simmonds at the rally finish in St Lucia
Ed and I had been talking about doing the ARC for five years, but with Eva’s time at junior school running out, we knew that it was now or never. We decided to go for it.
Over time we’ve moved bits of our lives around so we could make this work. Ed has taken a sabbatical and Eva (10) and Henry (seven) have taken a year off school. We left behind our lives in Hong Kong – where we’d lived for four years – and flew to the UK to pick up Aurora B, our Hallberg-Rassy 42. We’d bought her the year before from liveaboards who’d circumnavigated the globe. She’d already racked up 50,000 miles!
We left Falmouth without the kids – our sailing experience in Aurora B wasn’t enough to warrant them crossing Biscay in unpredictable weather – but their grandparents brought them to us in A Coruña.
The first month, we found our groove then the second and third we asked: ‘What are we doing? Is this right – should we be doing more schooling?’ But then we realised that what we’re doing is living on a boat. Let’s stop thinking about the future and enjoy the present. We’d get to a port and Ed would say, ‘who wants to play football?’ Suddenly an empty beach would be full of fishermen and kids, it’s like the ball has a bell. It’s bizzare! Schooling has taken a sideline. I’m not a tiger mum, and if
you get too regimented you feel like you’re behind and that’s not positive for anyone. Instead the kids made friends with other boat families and nationalities. They loved Christopher Columbus’s replica of Pinto in Baiona, and in Porto they learned about the port trade.
Our five-day passage from Lagos to Lanzarote was the longest we’d sailed as a family. We really enjoyed it. After the first 24 hours we got into a routine and almost didn’t want to see land. It was a real ‘we can do this!’ moment. It made the prospect of an Atlantic crossing less daunting.
When we reached Gran Canaria, Ed’s school friend Dave joined us and brought his ukulele with him. They’d always agreed one of them would cross the Atlantic and the other would crew for them. For those two weeks in Las Palmas – while we were doing seminars and preparations – the kids had constant play-dates on other boats. It was like speed-dating for kids. They made deep friendships so quickly. If they weren’t on our boat I had no idea where they were but I knew they couldn’t get out of the marina.
Leaving Las Palmas
The day we set sail on the ARC we crossed the start line with a genoa and a second headsail – and we didn’t change them for two and half weeks!
Not long into the crossing I had a panic moment. I pulled Ed aside and said ‘we’re in the middle of nowhere.’ We’d heard over the radio about a MOB who hadn’t been recovered – not an ARC boat, but it was a real sobering moment. You feel emotional and exhausted at the end of Las Palmas with all the socialising, and then suddenly you’re thrown straight into night watches. You’re on your own thinking: I’m on a boat with two kids and what’s ahead of us is a
lot of sea! You look up at the sky and realise how small you are, and how vulnerable. We talked it through – you’ve got to talk about these things – and afterwards I was fine.
Eva always gets seasick. It took three or four days for her to get over it. It was much harder in the Atlantic because you’re being thrown around a bit, but eventually you find your feet, anticipate the roll back and your body counter-balances. It’s as though your inner ear has recalibrated.
The crossing was brilliant. We had some squalls, but only 15 minutes of rain the entire voyage. Eva was scared of squalls at first, but seeing them on the radar helped her prepare. It was fun trying to dodge them but they seemed to follow us.
At one point the oven fell off its gimbal. It had been soldered on rather than attached with a nut and bolt. Ed was having a turn for the worse, so Dave helmed to keep the boat flat while I went below to fix it. I noticed the sides could be reversed and I reattached the panel with a nut and bolt. There’s nothing like the prospect of living off cold pasta and sandwiches to spur you on. We wouldn’t have starved but it would have been miserable.
With three adults on board, we split the watches into four hours each: six till 10, 10 till two and two till six. Each day we moved this forward an hour so over the course of the voyage everyone would get to see the sunset and sunrise. The last hour was really tiring, but even if you shorten the watch to three hours, it’s still tiring; you can’t just shorten it to solve the problem.
We never sat down with a lesson plan, but the kids learned a lot. Henry learnt about binary and how to play the ukulele; Eva was working out our speed and projected time of arrival each day. The many conversations we had were lessons, too. Not just with us, but with others on the SSB radio. Eva and Henry would spend a lot of time calling kids on other boats. They’d switch to a private channel to chat… only it wasn’t private. All the adults were listening in! It was really funny and broke up the monotony.
I was an SSB controller. It was a bit daunting at first but then I loved it. There were five of us on the rota, and 39 boats using SSB. We’d share our positions each day and make sure everyone was OK. We’d compare fishing stories, share a thought for the day and finish with a riddle!
Beating boredom
The reality of an Atlantic crossing is that the kids are going to spend a lot of time doing nothing. They had iPads and a USB stick full of downloaded films (Eva’s a big Strictly fan) but they still got bored. Kids need to learn how to deal with boredom and entertain themselves. Each of them had a lockable box full of toys they’d packed themselves – colouring books, art and craft stuff. Henry had Matchbox cars and had to cope with the frustration of them moving each time he lined them up.
Eva struggled with not being able to run around, so we lay on our backs sometimes and cycled with our legs. On a voyage like this it’s easy to fall out, but we all got on well. We tried to do more than our fair share knowing there would be times when we weren’t up to it. Noise cancelling headphones helped too – they meant everyone could have a quiet space.
Routine is really important, especially for the kids. We had a family dinner each night, with the sea rolling the whole time and us holding our bowls so they didn’t land on our laps. I wrote a chart detailing every day of the passage; we knew who was on night watch, who was cooking, who was tidying up. The kids had the responsibility of putting themselves to bed and getting their own breakfast. It was a system that worked well for us.
When we arrived in St Lucia the atmosphere was amazing. Although it was 11pm and we were in the middle of a squall there were a dozen people cheering and clapping us in. Eva’s friends came running over to hug her, and we finally met some of the boats we’d spoken to on the SSB. ‘So you’re the face behind the voice,’ they said! The ARC was a really meaningful experience, and it was great to have shared it with so many other boats.
‘After the first 24 hours we got into a routine and almost didn’t want to see land’