What has happened has happened - you can’t change the past. But this is a good one to talk about after the book comes out. I’ll stop now and come back after publication date (13th April). I’m so glad you are interested in this topic as I think the debate around sailing with children has (somewhat oddly!) missed the perspective of the child, particularly the perspective of older children and those taken on very extended voyages.
Suzanne Heywood and her Epically Misguided 70's Cruising Parents
- Thread starter Foiling Optimist
- Start date
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
I'll say your experience is quite unique, I am not sure there ARE any families doing anything like that to compare it to. I would guess that about 99% of cruising families are doing the usual cruising routes that involve a lot of other cruisers and some of them have kids too.
Yours is also the only southern ocean with kids trip I ever heard of.
Jud - s/v Sputnik
Super Anarchist
Europe to Oz and back via Cape Horn. At some point, babies were born. (I believe this was the first catamaran sailed around the world.) Early 1970s. I haven’t read the book, but I’m not sure if it was like Wavewalker’s full-on Southern Ocean passage, but I think I remember reading somewhere that it was, right across the SO, around the Horn, then north. (Incidentally, Rosie Swale-Pope also literally ran around the world to raise money/awareness for prostrate cancer (of which her husband died), so she is an outlier of the human race…)
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Not everybody writes about their cruising. This was particularly true before the days of social media or readily-available (or even any) internet access. We take it for granted today. If you do it, you are likely to share it with others.
Even though my own extended offshore cruising is now 20 years in the rear-view mirror, I wrote about it for publication every month, because it was part of my job, and my company was paying me to do it.
As you say, a very small percentage of cruisers go to high latitudes, either south or north. The Southern Ocean has a unique appeal to a very small percentage of cruisers, whether they have children with them or not.
Incidentally, from the book excerpt earlier in this thread, the severe storm that so badly damaged their schooner was in the Indian Ocean between South America and the W coast of Australia, probably at a latitude of about 40-45S. In other words, on the edge of the Roaring 40s, and roughly the latitude of Hobart, Tasmania, or Dunedin, NZ.
There are not an awful lot of cruising boats that sail in that apart of the ocean.
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
The only really sad story I ever ran into with kids on boats involved what were really floating homeless people. They were on an unheated wreck of a boat over the winter and attracted a lot of negative attention and visits from the authorities. The kids were very rarely going to school, since step 1 involved paddling ashore on an old windsurfer in freezing weather.
About the time the kids were going to get hauled off they tried to sail away and ended up wrecking the boat within about 30 miles IIRC.
About the time the kids were going to get hauled off they tried to sail away and ended up wrecking the boat within about 30 miles IIRC.
Clove Hitch
Halyard licker
I feel bad enough if I go out for the weekend with my wife on the boat and she is not having a good time. I could not imagine being enough of a narcissist to just say f*** it and drag miserable kids around with some sort of Stepford go along wife
Fah Kiew Tu
Curmudgeon, First Rank
Not a bad read - I have a copy. She wrote at least one other book as well, IIRC. Maybe 2.
FKT
Fah Kiew Tu
Curmudgeon, First Rank
Huh? South AFRICA and the west coast of Australia I can believe. Not South America because that's not the Indian Ocean.
Having been deep into the Indian Ocean halfway to Africa and back on a number of occasions it's nowhere I want to be in a small boat, that's for sure.
FKT
CriticalPath
Anarchist
I have fond memories of this book...
It was in my father's (or step-father's?) nautical library, along with another titled Rosie Darling. Good reads and I recall at least one of them had some risque pictures. In my early teen years and long before internet or skin mags, I believe it was my first glimpse of nudity in media outside National Geographic!
Even back then she presented as a fun and larger-than-life personality with incredible real-life experiences.
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My mistake. It was between South Africa and Australia.
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
Somewhat similar story played out here. It was a guy with a disability payment who had roped a young woman into the romantic life afloat and then (of course) they had kids. It seemed to me the guy was just an idiot who didn't care about anything but having a fuck-toy; no particularly malicious motives. The woman was more or less trapped but did not seem to make much effort to change her & her kids situation for the better.
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
I try not to be a privileged wanker, but the "homeless people that find a boat squad" are what leads to rules that effect me too, so I tend to dislike them. In this case it doesn't look much different than if they were living in a van or old Winnebago except for who the negative attention falls onto.
The family I referenced did not have malicious motives as far as anyone could tell, they were just poor, not too bright about how to live on a boat, and were paranoid about "authorities" finding them.
Russell Brown
Super Anarchist
I'm looking forward to reading the book. It's an interesting topic for me as I was cruising as a kid and there were some negatives.
I hope you get to read the book I was referring to, "The Boy Who Fell To Shore".
It's an extreme example, but very interesting.
kent_island_sailor
Super Anarchist
The only real negative I had was it kind of ruined me for office life for a long time.
I just hated sitting inside. Still do, but boats don't pay for themselves
Also between that and flying, it permanently reset my scale of things to worry about. Coming on watch to find out the triple-reef main and storm jib is too much sail is concerning, being late for a movie or running low on milk not so much.
Jud - s/v Sputnik
Super Anarchist
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Rasputin22
Rasputin22
- 14,587
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I met Peter Tangvald and his son and daughter in Culebra just after Hurricane Hugo. What a story of his lost wives and turns out the the son eventually got lost at sea too!
wavetrain.net
More of the sons story with some of the history of his Dad. The acorn didn't fall very far from the tree...
wavetrain.net
wavetrain.net
THOMAS TANGVALD: Declared Lost At Sea - Wave Train
Crossing my fingers he may yet be found!
wavetrain.net
More of the sons story with some of the history of his Dad. The acorn didn't fall very far from the tree...
THE BOY WHO FELL TO SHORE: Thomas Tangvald and Melody (More Extra Pix!) - Wave Train
"An engrossing account of this remarkable and ultimately doomed young man," writes Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down." This non-fiction biography of Thomas Tangvald is much more than just a sailing story. It is an unusually dramatic tale of childhood trauma and its consequences.
wavetrain.net
A PRINCE IN HIS REALM: The Amazing Life of Thomas Thor Tangvald - Wave Train
So says Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down: "an engrossing account of this remarkable and ultimately doomed young man" and "a sprawling portrait of a remarkable community of bluewater sailors, a tribe of humans who prefer ocean to land."
wavetrain.net
Priscilla
Super Anarchist
- 4,670
- 3,510
After Peter and his sister perished Thomas went to live with Edward Allcard who was the first to cross the Atlantic both ways solo
Edward arrived in New Zealand in Sea Wanderer which he circumnavigated a year before the Hiscocks did
My father replaced her keel bolts all of which he snapped by hand after removal.
Sea Wanderer far right on the hard at Westhaven Auckland.
Edward arrived in New Zealand in Sea Wanderer which he circumnavigated a year before the Hiscocks did
My father replaced her keel bolts all of which he snapped by hand after removal.
Sea Wanderer far right on the hard at Westhaven Auckland.
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That looks like a Roller or Bentley parked on the hard on the far left. They allowed those in New Zillund?
he b gb
Anarchist
Wow, both amazing stories ^^ can’t wait to read the books!
