Family of 9 Wanting to Cruise

[Mozzie]

I'm a wannabee cruisier, so I won't offer advice, rather some anecdotes.

There is a family of 6 on an engineless 40 ft racing boat: search for Coconuts Sailing. Someone has done some really good interviews on them that are on Youtube. The big difference with them is that the Husband was a very experienced sailor cruising on his own cheap boat, so he knew what to do. He then met his future wife with two kids and introduced them to sailing. They loved it so they upgraded. So they had experience and a gentle introduction on their side. One of their younger children was born on the boat and another was born in a house in Iceland because the boat was too cold or something.

A friend told me of an old wooden boat that sails up the east coast of Australia with, I guess you could say hippie family aboard. I think they had 8 kids. It is a large number. When they have to retrieve the anchor, the kids line up in order of age and haul away. I guess they save money on stuff like anchor winches. But that family had grown up on their boat, so they had the experience. They also stick to coastal cruising from what I understand, so the weather dangers are less than if they were doing long ocean passages.

[Mozzie]

Another interesting one I just thought of is

Mads Bo Falk on the sailboat Mathilde

. He cruises on a very small boat with his wife and two sons. He has a freedom formula, something like:

freedom = opportunities - time spent getting opportunities - time earning money to get opportunities

The idea is to get the smallest, cheapest boat possible and spend as much time cruising around in it. Any bigger a boat, and you have to spend more time earning money for it and that means less time cruising. The more time you need to spend fixing up a boat, the less time you have for sailing.

So maybe look for the smallest boat that your family can fit into. I'd imagine you could squeeze them into a boat just over 40 ft if they would get along. Such boats can have a double berth and 3-4 singles which could be converted into doubles.