With enough wind the boat will heel a little bit, but it should never lift a hull.  She weighs about 14 tons and if we did experience enough wind pressure to lift a hull, I expect (and hope) that the mast would break first.  I have no interest in pushing Take Two that hard.  Interestingly, the boat is on her second mast.  I haven't yet determined what happend to the first one.

The kids wear life jackets if they want to come out of the boat when we’re underway.  I only require they go below during docking or anchoring or other stressful situations.  Otherwise they can be in the cockpit or go on deck with permission.  They aren’t much into the joy of sailing and usually spend most of their time below reading or playing.  We could be having a glorious sail and they’d be pestering me to stop at a beach so they could swim and catch crabs.

We like the term “free range kids” and take it to mean letting them have a larger degree of freedom than most parents are comfortable with.  I was a free range kid and could be gone from the house all day without my mother giving a thought to the trouble I might be getting into.  And I did get into trouble.  Unfortunately times are different and we have to worry about things our parents didn’t, so we try to create the feeling of freedom without actually letting them too far off the leash.  My seven-year-old can’t operate a computer mouse, but he can free climb our 65-foot mast, is learning to operate the dinghy, and has caught what my information indicates is a record-setting seahorse.

I preface that to say that the kids do occasionally fall in the water.  None have gone off the moving boat, thank God.  Instead they fall off of the stationary dock.  Usually reaching too far for a crab or some other specimen for their observation bucket.  The aforementioned 7-year-old has been in three times (not counting the time I knocked him in on purpose).  The docks float so they don’t fall far, and somebody is always near enough to hear the splash and fish them out if they don’t climb out on their own. 

I estimate the interior living space is about 900 square feet.  If it were a house it would probably feel cramped.  I don’t have headroom over the kitchen sink (dang!) and a few other places, and I frequently have to ask small people to move out of my way in narrow passages.  But it isn’t a house, and by boat standards it has an immense amount of space.  As Tanya has written elsewhere, we have far less "stuff" aboard which is necessary for weight consideration and also helps alot for preserving the spaciousness.

Strangely, we feel more cramped in our house than we do on the boat.  On the boat we can usually see for miles in at least three directions.  Even when we’re tied up at the dock we have an unobstructed view of the sun setting over the water, and we’re constantly aware of the sky, the breeze, and the tide.  At the house when we look out the window we can’t even see a 100 yards before our vision is blocked by houses, trees, or fences, and can only see the sky by walking outside and looking up.