My 4-year-old squealed with delight, the sound muffled by his snorkel. He pointed to the majestic turtle not more than 6 feet away, and I could sense his excitement. I held his tiny hand as we kicked in unison through the gin-clear water, the turtle now within our reach. Gliding past effortlessly, the turtle was completely unperturbed by our presence. Farther on, we noticed two larger turtles peacefully eating seagrass from the ocean bed. We watched from above as my two older sons moved through the water like fish. Diving down several meters, they found themselves almost face-to-face with the impressive creatures. With their mottled shells, leathery skin and kind eyes, these gentle giants were humbling. We felt fortunate to be swimming with them in their natural environment.

Having only just researched the green turtle that morning, it became clear, at that very moment, we had made the best decision of our lives. We were right where we were meant to be. Our home bobbed peacefully at anchor barely 100 meters away, a Moody 47 yacht we had aptly named Roam. The tiny claim we had staked in the beautiful Tobago Cays was perfect. My husband, Dave, was collecting firewood on a nearby deserted beach, his skin tanned and his body toned. That evening we were planning to toast marshmallows under the starry sky. Earlier that day, we had hiked to the small island’s highest peak in bare feet, the rocky ground warm below our still-fragile soles. The view left us almost breathless. Before us was a patchwork of blues: aqua, turquoise, sapphire and azure. We stood there for a long time, taking it all in. There was nowhere else we needed to be. How life had changed from the pandemonium we were used to in the rat race!

Back in Christmas 2015, we were gathered around the dining table in Adelaide, Australia, enjoying lunch with our families. Having recently watched a sailing documentary, it struck us—we were wasting our prime years working jobs we didn’t enjoy and missing out on precious time with our children. It was the wakeup call we’d needed to make a ­crazy decision, and it felt like that moment was the perfect time to share the news. Buzzing with excitement, we cleared our throats in preparation for the announcement, feeling far more nervous than we’d anticipated.

“We have something to tell you guys,” I announced anxiously.

The table fell silent, and my ­sister-in-law joked, “You’re pregnant?”

We laughed, assuring them that we were definitely not having any more children. Taking a deep breath, Dave took the lead. “We’re going to buy a yacht and go sailing around the world,” he said, our faces bright with excitement and anticipation.

Silence fell over the table. Seconds later, the entire family burst into fits of laughter. My sister almost spat out her drink, exclaiming that it was the dumbest idea she had ever heard. “You can’t do that with kids,” one family member said. “You know nothing about sailing,” said another. They stared in disbelief, their eyes as wide as their dinner plates. Feeling deflated, we tried, unsuccessfully, to convince them of our plan.

Two years and two months later, we waved our families goodbye and boarded the plane on a one-way ticket to Grenada. We had purchased our boat, sight unseen, and rented out our Australian home. We had both been fortunate enough to negotiate two years’ leave without pay from our jobs, and we’d saved more money than we ever thought possible. In almost every way, the universe had conspired to help us achieve our dream. We had packed our belongings, painstakingly mulling over every item. Stashed below us in the plane were 10 bags full of boat parts and swimsuits, boardshorts and schoolbooks. The previous two years had flashed by in a blur. Fastening myself into the plane, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was the physical barrier I needed to not only stop me from running in fear, but also to remind me to hold on, sit back, and enjoy the ride. Closing my eyes, I laid my head back, trying to steal a moment to take it all in. The hum of the engine increased, and I braced myself for takeoff, flashing a quick smile across the aisle to my husband and sons as we began our incline.

Our arrival in Grenada, the tropical Caribbean island 100 miles north of South America, will remain one of my fondest memories. Almost instantly, we began to fall in love. This sleepy island was a far cry from Adelaide, where the boys had been raised, yet it felt so familiar; it felt like home. With its friendly people and vibrant social scene, Grenada was the perfect introduction to both the Caribbean and cruising life. We spent two and a half months there until we were finally ready to untie the lines and set sail into the great unknown. We were sad to leave our Caribbean dreamland yet excited to discover a new and exhilarating world. Learning as we went, with myriad people willing to help, we soon learned the ropes. Navigating from island to island was like nothing we had ever experienced before. The freedom was intoxicating, our thirst for exploration never quite quenched. Mistakes were made and lessons learned; however, despite the many challenging moments we faced, we never gave up.

Thriving in their new environment, the children flourished in every possible way. We witnessed their mousy-brown hair change into sun-bleached long locks; they barely resembled the militant-looking children they’d left behind. Rarely going more than a week without the company of others, their social skills improved, forming meaningful friendships with other like-minded souls, despite knowing them for only days. Exploring new places together, hand in hand, we would see our family’s bond strengthen and our minds expand. Reveling in each newfound country’s uniqueness, we savored the sights, sounds and smells of these exotic places. We made friends with the locals and experienced their way of life firsthand.

Eighteen months passed by in a blur of sandy feet and salty kisses. Before we knew it, we were leaving the Caribbean and sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. We spent 17 magical days at sea, sailing across the vast blue expanse without a care in the world. Those weeks alone on Roam were blissfully peaceful. The simplicity of life brought everything into focus, away from the distractions of the modern-day world. With absolutely nowhere else to be, we were free to spend our days in a guilt-free utopia, never once feeling bored or scared.

Our safe arrival into the Azores, an archipelago of nine subtropical islands located 900 miles west of Portugal, will remain one of our greatest achievements. We felt unstoppable; if we could cross an ocean as a family, what else were we capable of? Eager to continue living in our bubble, we found ourselves effortlessly falling in love with the laid-back villages, green rolling hills and cobbled streets, the friendly locals, and the affordable cost of living. Weeks turned into months, and the picture-perfect islands wooed us with their charm and sophistication.

However, with the budget dwindling, thoughts soon turned toward home. We left Roam on the hard in Praia da Vitoria, on the island of Terceira, in the Azores. The time had come for us to return to the “real world,” but what was real, and would we still belong?

RELATED: Learning to Sail in the Caribbean

Upon returning to Australia, the anxiety hit almost immediately. Having never suffered from it before, we were now overwhelmed by the lifestyle we had left behind only two years prior. We felt like caged animals, trapped in a life where we had little control over what we could do and when we could do it. We were awakened by alarms and told when to eat. Our feet ached from wearing shoes, and we felt exhausted from the endless time spent rushing and racing from one place to the next. Thankfully, the kids slipped effortlessly back into their routines, and their teachers remarked about their maturity and worldliness.

While I enjoyed the conveniences of everyday life—the washing machine and dishwasher, the bathtub and hot ­water—I was now more acutely aware of the environment and the meaning of money. I couldn’t help but find everything to feel wasteful and unnecessary. Our spacious home seemed almost indulgent. I missed the close confines of the boat, the togetherness, and the conversations that flowed because of that. We’d gone from being together 24/7 to seeing each other in fits and spurts between work commitments and obligatory events. Instead of spending our days around ­people living their dreams, we were surrounded by those who didn’t seem to have any dreams at all. Illness and disaster became topics of discussion, and the next tropical island or a storm on the horizon soon became a distant memory.

We don’t for one minute regret our decision to cut the ties and sail away with our children. Our family has grown in more ways than we can ever measure. We are far more resilient, and working toward a common goal as a family has shown us our strength. We’ve learned the importance of teamwork, so imperative to the cruising life. While our boys still fight and argue, as all kids do, they also play for hours together in the old-fashioned sense, building forts or shelters, pretending they are still on deserted islands or frolicking in the sea. They pretend to captain their own ships, and indulge in imaginations unleashed since living aboard. They fiercely protect and defend one another, and their bonds are stronger because of the trials and tribulations we encountered together at sea.

Life on the water was challenging in so many ways, yet the benefits far outweighed the struggles. Life was exciting; we felt truly alive, thriving instead of merely surviving, the latter of which so many do. We taught our children the joy of adventure, the rewards of hard work and the benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone. This will forever be a part of their story, of our story, and for that we feel blessed. So, what does the future hold for this family who now find themselves wondering if it was all just a dream? In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.”

We’ve set a date to return to the Azores and continue what we started, to finish crossing the Atlantic Ocean and meander through the Med. Twelve months can’t pass soon enough!

Hailing from the land Down Under, Erin Carey and her family quit the rat race and moved aboard a vessel they bought, sight unseen, on the opposite side of the world. The family returned to Roam in March 2021 and are currently cruising the Med. Follow Erin’s journey on Facebook and Instagram, at Sailing to Roam.

The post The Magic of Sailing with a Young Family appeared first on Cruising World.

I’d never leave the Sunshine Coast. All there is up there are bears and bad weather.”

Having sailed Keala, our Jeanneau 44i, from her birthplace, La Rochelle, France, across the Atlantic, we found ourselves talking to a gregarious fellow sailor at a yacht club in the warm, protected confines of Sidney, British Columbia, in the lee of Vancouver Island. I told him of our intended voyage, up the inside of Vancouver Island with my sister and her family to Port McNeill, where we’d meet my father, now 94 years old, and his lady friend, Christine, for a cruise north to the next island chain, Haida Gwaii. I’d make the return trip doublehanded along the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island with a surfing friend from Hawaii.

“Lots of fog up there too,” replied our new friend.

In a life of sailing around the world, my father, Donald, has wrung more salt water out of his socks than most of us will ever see. He dislikes sitting in the harbor. The world is full of “harbor-sitters,” as he calls them, trading “horror stories” of deadly gales over drinks while waiting for perfect weather conditions to leave the dock. Although he has been called adventurous, or even reckless, over the years, depending on the observer, I’ve always known him to be a very cautious captain who took my brother, sister, mother and me safely across two major oceans to places as varied as Norway, Turkey, the Philippines and Vanuatu. In all those miles, I can’t recall ever being in a dangerous sea. As kids we missed a lot of school, but we came back with skills such as celestial navigation, and the experience of standing a night watch with the safety of everyone aboard in our young hands.

Among the many places we visited together, one of my father’s all-time favorites was the First Nations reserve of Gwaii Haanas on Moresby Island, part of the Haida Gwaii archipelago, where ancient totem poles still stand sentinel over majestic Haida village sites. When my father told me he wanted to make one more trip out there with Christine, I pulled out the charts. Vancouver Island’s system of ferries, roads and air service would allow me to rotate my crew among three generations, as well as several old friends from voyages past.

My father may well be right about not listening to those dire dockside warnings about bears and bad weather, but our fellow sailor actually did have a point: Why leave the safety and comfort of the inside route? There are cruising grounds enough in the Inside Passage to keep a cruiser busy for a lifetime. Most of the thousands of mariners in places such as Seattle, Washington, and Sidney, don’t leave protected waters, because they don’t have to. With a few notable exceptions, it’s possible to sail through the intricate network of islands and fjords of the Inside Passage from Tacoma, just south of Seattle, to Alaska’s panhandle, without encountering much open sea. And the weather really is better. Summer temperatures in places like the protected Sunshine Coast, to which our friend referred, range in the 60s and 70s, and water temperatures get up to the 70s in long, fjordlike inlets. Swimming is actually a thing.

This is not to say that cruising the inside route isn’t without its challenges. First among these are strong tidal currents. The more-constricted passages turn into turbulent rapids with currents in double digits. Since it’s impossible for sailboats and other low-powered vessels to negotiate these rapids, it is essential to arrive at slack water. When possible, we also try to plan for slack ebb or flood so as to carry a favorable current as far along our course as possible. Another challenge is an astounding number of logs. Logging is a major industry in British Columbia, and loose logs, some barely submerged, can disable a small boat, so a constant lookout is required. Tugs towing thousands of logs in huge “booms” may require the entire channel to maneuver, as we found when forced into an impromptu jibing drill first thing in the morning on our way out of port. Common practice is to keep a watch on VHF 16 in narrow channels, and wait your turn after the last oncoming vessel uses the end of the tide to get through. Large car ferries also commonly cross the channels at oblique angles, traveling at high speeds. They always have the right of way, a fact of which they seem well aware.

As our friend forecast, fog became a challenge the moment we emerged into Queen Charlotte Strait, north of the protection of Vancouver Island. It was often very thick in the mornings, which meant keeping an eye on the AIS, radar, nearby fishermen, ferries and logs all at the same time. Most days saw the fog mercifully burn off by midafternoon.

The highlight of the entire route inside Vancouver Island for my sister was sailing into nearby Broughton Archipelago. For once we had favorable wind, and we had sailed 25 miles inland up the Tribune Channel, which became like a fjord between immense rock cliffs. Suddenly a gray whale blew to starboard, while a pod of hundreds of fast, agile Pacific white-sided dolphins reached nearly across the entire channel, surfacing in quick succession. They raced past as a group, so in rhythm that they looked like a breaking wave, much to the delight of my 16-year-old niece, Molly. Furling our sails at the head of the channel, we found the friendly little floating dock at Kwatsi Bay Marina nestled in a steep bowl of mountains. A group of veteran cruisers were surrounded by food and drink, well into the local happy-hour tradition.

Tracy Dixon, a surfing friend I’d met as kid while cruising in the Philippines, met the boat near the old fishing town and First Nations community of Alert Bay, at the north end of the Vancouver Island. After a distinguished career defusing bombs for the Navy, Tracy had just completed a degree in anthropology at the University of Hawaii. He’d already learned about Alert Bay’s famous U’mista Cultural Center, a cutting-edge modern museum that houses a treasure of elaborate and wondrous dance masks of the local First Nations group with the nearly unpronounceable name of Kwakwaka’wakw.

Many of these ancient masks have made epic journeys, only recently making their way back home to this museum. The giving of gifts at great “potlatch” ceremonies was a cultural tradition during which chiefs gained status through their ability to give offerings to the people. This of course put the Kwakwaka’wakw directly at odds with their new capitalist masters. The potlatch was outlawed in 1884, and many irreplaceable works of art were confiscated by the government. Some were sold to private collectors and museums overseas. For the locals, bringing these treasures home to their own land is akin to the return of a long-lost relative, and for us it provides a great opportunity to see masks that hold tremendous power and embody the imagination, artistry, and beliefs of the past and also the living native people. We were also fortunate to see an impressive dance performance by the local Tsasatla group, in which local youths take on the character of traditional masks and costumes of animals and fantastic creatures.

The southern section of Haida Gwaii, on Moresby Island, is a Haida Heritage site called Gwaii Haanas. Home to the Haida for over 1,500 years, the area was abruptly abandoned when smallpox decimated the population. Today there are village sites with large communal houses gradually returning to the forest, and elaborately carved totem poles are still standing. Haida guides called Watchmen, many of them descendants of those who first lived in the villages, now live in cabins at the sites, working as historical interpreters. These are fascinating people, living links to the past. While it’s a privilege to see such archaeological treasures, talking with someone whose ancestors lived here is even better.

The Watchmen appear to enjoy having visitors, and thanks to a permit system, the number of guests is regulated, so they aren’t too swamped by arrivals. We had some great interactions with the Watchmen. An old friend of mine from Santa Cruz, whom I’ve known since my days teaching sailing there during college, Burke Murphy, flew all the way from France to join us. Burke is a shipwright who lives and works in the south of France, where he does fine woodwork on classic sailing yachts. He was astounded to learn that the Haida use Sitka spruce—in his world a prized boatbuilding material—mainly for firewood. The Watchman casually offered to sell him a few ancient trees from the protected reserve, something so ridiculous that we burst out laughing. Like many island cultures, the Haida appear to value a good joke.

Read More from Tor Johnson: Chartering is Raiatea

For us, the old whaling station at Rose Harbor was particularly interesting. On the southern tip of Gwaii Haanas, Rose Harbor is actually the only privately owned area in the reserve. A small group of young people provide home cooking from a rustic cabin to the hungry kayakers and sailors who pass through. One of the people working there told us of a Haida war canoe in the forest, which we found after some searching through the huge cedar trees. It appeared as though the canoe was under construction when it was abandoned, possibly with the arrival of smallpox. The tree had been expertly felled to allow access from below and above so that carvers could shape the hull. The inside of the canoe had been only partially hollowed out, leaving the middle section as solid wood. We later learned that it was common to leave much of the inside intact to retain as much strength in the hull as possible for the precarious task of moving it to the sea. Finding a piece of history like this in its native setting was somehow moving, and in the quiet of the trees we could imagine what this canoe might have been, with a full complement of proud Haida warriors.

My father enjoyed the solitude of the remote anchorages we visited, surrounded by immense trees, sea otters and soaring eagles, while Christine, an accomplished artist, made amazing drawings of the scenes. My father has always been the captain who did it all, the first one to tackle any job, easy or hard, so it bothers him that at 94, he isn’t able to do the heavier work of sailhandling. I try to remind him that after all, that’s what he trained me for. I’m just lucky to still have the chance to sail with him.

British Columbia has large numbers of black bears, and the impressive grizzly (Ursus arctos horribilis, or simply “brown bear”) can be found up several inlets, such as Knight, Rivers and Bute. We knew we were in bear territory when we stopped at the friendly, family-run North Island Marina in Port McNeill, the preferred reprovisioning stop for the Broughton Archipelago and environs. The marina’s garbage drop had been literally ripped apart, great gashes in the plywood siding attesting to the formidable power of the bears’ claws. That said, we found most bears to be shy of us humans, the most dangerous of all predators by a long shot.

My shipwright friend Burke was an excellent lookout, and he was keen to see a bear. He picked up the binoculars whenever he sighted anything even remotely bearlike on shore. It wasn’t until we were motoring in to Rose Harbor that he finally sighted a large black bear on the beach. It was a nice sunny day, and we watched as the husky bear ambled down to the water, waded in for a cool bath, shook off, and ambled casually back up the beach and into the forest. We felt as though we’d been shown a little slice of bear life.

Generally, we had fantastic weather. That said, it would be unusual not to experience at least a few powerful North Pacific low-pressure systems during the course of a summer as far as 50 degrees north latitude, and our trip was no exception. Having crossed the notorious Hecate Strait to Haida Gwaii from the British Columbia mainland, we heard gale warnings forecast on the VHF, and headed for narrow Sac Bay, which is almost completely surrounded by steep hillsides, close in to mountainous Moresby Island. Thankfully, both the Canadian and US coast guards regularly broadcast a fairly accurate forecast via VHF, which is updated several times daily. Unfortunately, our perfectly sheltered anchorage turned out to be subject to powerful downdrafts and torrents of rain that created new waterfalls as we watched. Beginning to feel a bit trapped in the prison of our own choosing, we spent our time visiting other boats also hiding from the weather, and ended up making friends with “sailing royalty,” an experienced sailing couple aboard Kinetic, their Beneteau First 47.7, on which David Sutcliffe has skippered no less than five Victoria-Maui races, as well as the Sydney-Hobart. We chatted in their diesel-heated cabin while munching on cake that his wife, Gaylean, had just baked, and listened to buoy reports of steep seas in Hecate Strait. Because it is so shallow—less than 30 feet in places—and open to the south, open-ocean swells tend to pile on top of themselves in chaotic seas. As we listened, reports came in of 15-foot seas at 4.5 seconds. In these conditions, the Hecate would be mostly white water.

As the gale passed with more torrents of rain, I began to wonder if perhaps the surrounding mountains weren’t creating their own foul weather, so we left without waiting for the rain and wind to abate. We found much milder conditions farther off the mountains, just offshore near Hotspring Island. We soaked in the divine hot springs while looking back at Sac Bay, still covered in a hard rain surrounding the mountains, and congratulated ourselves on such a good anchorage choice.

One thing the Pacific Northwest is not famous for is great sailing. Winds are often light and variable, especially in the more-protected areas popular with cruisers. The running joke is that most sailboats here sail with their sail covers on, which actually seems kind of true, or that a sailboat is just a powerboat with funny sticks. It’s really not by chance that the power trawler is the boat of choice for the Northwest. That said, when the wind actually is right, the sailing among rugged peaks covered in evergreens can be utterly magical, somewhat like sailing in an endless mountain lake. We try to get the sails up whenever we can, even if that often means furling them after a few minutes.

British Columbia has such a complex coastline and so many potential anchorages that a good cruising guide is essential. We had the Waggoner Cruising Guide in hand at almost all times, and having Active Captain—Garmin’s crowdsourced, up-to-date electronic guide—on our chart plotter was also a huge help, with many firsthand recent accounts to read. Don Douglass’ several guide books of the area also come recommended.

The anchorages were spectacular, some tucked into the mountains and trees with an inlet only a few feet wider than the boat, with the feel of a serene lake. Others were protected within groups of small islands sheltering them from the open ocean. The Waggoner guide was accurate about one group in particular: the spectacular Bunsby Islands, where we had perfect swimming weather. Waggoner advises that it is essential to stop because other sailors who had done so would inevitably ask if you’d visited, “and you don’t want to disappoint them.”

That said, the British Columbia coast is also a great place to ignore the cruising guides. There are thousands of potential anchorages available, with reasonable depths and good holding. And we found that our Navionics charts were quite accurate but, of course, not infallible. So it’s feasible to find one’s own anchorage, based on the current and expected conditions. My favorite anchorages were those that we chose simply because they looked interesting on the chart, and many turned out to be magical. There is something special about finding your own place, without knowing exactly what you might find there—a little like the first explorers but with a plush yacht.

Our descent of Vancouver Island’s west coast was late in the season (September), so most of the fishing lodges had emptied, and the few cruising boats that travel the west coast had mostly moved on. Our first stop on the outside was Guise Bay, on the extreme northwestern tip of the island, just inside notorious Cape Scott. Although untenable in southerly winds, it’s a paradise in northerlies. As proved the rule on the west coast, we found ourselves the only boat anchored off an immense crescent of white sand beach. In fact, we rarely saw another boat.

Yuquot—or Friendly Cove, as Capt. James Cook nicknamed it—was fascinating as a place where First Nations and Europeans have long collided. An old church represents this long struggle, with stained-glass representations of treaties between Spain and England asserting their influence over the area.

At Hot Springs Cove, a half-hour hike along a boardwalk paved with treads carved with the names of visiting yachts from all over the world, brings you to a small and magical hot spring with a hot waterfall you can stand under. It’s essential to catch it before hordes of tourists arrive from Tofino via high-speed boats around 8 a.m., or after they all leave at 6 p.m. Tofino is BC’s surf mecca, and while it is a quaint town with amazing beaches, it’s so full of marinas, high-speed RIBs and seaplane traffic that it feels more like Miami than the secluded west coast of Vancouver Island.

We encountered rough seas a few times on our trip down the outside coast, usually when we put to sea a bit hastily at the tail end of a gale. The thousands of off-lying rocks necessitated careful navigation, even with the excellent digital charts for the area. Being bluewater sailors, we didn’t have a problem with the near-constant Pacific swell, which conversely helps the navigator by marking shallow rocks with plumes of spray.

Keala hosted several generations on this voyage around Vancouver Island—my sister and her family, several sailing friends from around the world and, of course, my dad and artistic Christine, in some of the world’s most pristine cruising grounds. It looks like the years have failed to dull my father’s enthusiasm for cruising. He still feels the same about sitting in the harbor and could barely sit still for a day, even during gale warnings. He prefers to carry on, despite the bears and bad weather.

Tor Johnson is a marine photographer based in Hawaii. You can view more of his work on his website (tjhawaii.com).

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