“The lobster in this place are wondrously large and virile. The natives hath given us a number of them, and my men are most excited to learn the ways of catching them.”  So wrote Christopher Columbus in 1492, during his sojourn in the Bahamas, or so he would have written if he had known what a lobster was, and if the natives had given him any. The lobster in the Bahamas, at least in my experience, certainly are large and virile, if scarce near populated areas. Lobster season lasts until the end of March, and we plan to make the most of it.

We do not have the traditional lobster hunting implements (hand net, tickle stick), but we do have pole spears. And, fortunately, you are allowed to spear lobster in the Bahamas. This adds the complication of having to kill the lobster before measuring it (its carapace must be at least three inches), but I haven’t had too much trouble. All the lobster I’ve seen were well over the size limit. Many of you no doubt think spearing lobster is cheating. While I agree in principle, the pole spear gives us the advantage of flexibility. With a net and tickle stick, you can only hunt lobster. With a spear, you can hunt anything. At least we’re not fishing with hand grenades!

Lion fish are also excellent for spear fishing, for a number of reasons. First, they’re instantly identifiable. Second, they’re slow moving–an easy target. Third, there is no minimum length; you don’t have to worry about shooting one that’s too small. Fourth, they’re delicious. Just remove the venomous spines before eating. And fifth, there is no bag limit. Fire away!  The Lion Fish Epidemic started when people set their pet lion fish free in the Atlantic Ocean, far from their natural Pacific predators. The invasive lion fish thrived in their new environment, gobbling up baby reef fish, and multiplying like crazy. Eating them does everyone a favor.

The Exumas Land and Sea Park is a large tract of islands stretching from Shroud Cay to Rocky Dundas. It contains a number of pristine beaches, coral reefs, and, except for a few movie-star-owned islands and the park headquarters, is uninhabited. You are not allowed to take anything out of the park, but this is mostly left to the discretion of the visitors. You’re also not permitted to fish, hunt, or lobster in the park, although enforcement is difficult because of the park’s large boundaries. However, it must be working, because while snorkeling at Warderick Wells, I saw at least six huge lobster hiding under coral heads. I also saw just as many lion fish, more than I’ve ever seen on one reef. This may be another result of the no fishing policy. You would think that killing lion fish, even in the park, would be a public service, right? At least people are respecting the no-take policy. The park is doing something about the lion fish. When I reported sighting a lion fish in a creek to one of the rangers, he said he would take care of it.  When we moved out of the park, I noticed a severe lack of edible sea life, evidence of fishing. I hope that visitors to the Exumas are supplementing their diet of lobster with lion fish!

Bread is emblematic of our way of life. It is simple and self-sufficing, but not easy. It is flexible, can be made in many different ways, and is affected by environmental changes, more art than science. It is warm and welcoming, and, broken together, forms the center of a table of friends. In short, it is good for the body and the soul.

I love eating bread, kneading bread, baking bread, buttering the hot-from-the-oven heel of the bread. People sometimes ask how we feed this large family of ours. The truth is that we bake a lot of bread. Banana bread, pumpkin bread, whole wheat bread, multi-grain bread, raisin bread, zucchini bread, coconut bread, apple-oatmeal bread, pita bread, pizza crust, pancakes, biscuits, muffins, waffles, tortillas—you name it and we have probably made it. I have spent a lot of time reading both sides of the bread debate (about whether it’s good or bad for you) and I have decided that home-made, from-scratch breads are fine for our family.

In order to do this kind of baking, you have to have the right ingredients and the right tools. We carry about 200 pounds of grain under the starboard aft berth (either in vacuum-sealed THRIVE containers or in 5-gallon pails with Gamma-Seal lids to keep moisture out). About once a month, I go rummaging under the bed and refill my quart-size mason jars with red and white hard wheat (for yeast breads), spelt (for quick breads/pastries), 9-grain mix (for cereal or multi-grain bread), and oat groats (for cereal, oatmeal bread, and pancakes). I then use my Vita-mix dry pitcher to grind the desired amount of grain into flour. It takes about a minute, and produces a fine flour with some texture left—not the super-fine you get in store-bought varieties. If you run it for less than a minute, you get a coarser grind, which I might want for porridge, for example. For pizza dough or burger buns, I usually go with a half-and-half dough, using white and wheat flour in equal amounts to get a fluffier, lighter bread. So I carry some white flour, as well. I use honey to lightly sweeten, and sea salt, as well as yeast, buttermilk or yogurt (which I can culture from fresh or powdered milk), and butter or olive oil. And that’s it. No long lists of ingredients with dough conditioners and preservatives to keep the bread from molding. I hand-knead, and bake in cast-iron pans which are non-toxic and non-stick and produce a great crust.

Note for those interested in milling their own flour: we have both a Vita-Mix (2 hp blender) and a Family Grain Mill from Pleasant Hill Grain (hand grinder). The Whisper Mill is another good brand. Whole grains can be ordered from online purveyors (I use THRIVE or Tropical Traditions) or co-ops like Wheat Montana or Bread Beckers, and purchased or ordered in bulk from health food stores. Grinding, then soaking the grain in an acidic solution (like yogurt or buttermilk) increases the availability of nutrients in the bread, and also gives whole-wheat bread a really good texture. I order yeast by the pound online. My recipe follows, with the quick version following the slow one!

Tanya’s Whole-Wheat Yogurt Bread
Prep time: 24+ hours*     Makes: 2 8” loaves

Ingredients:
2 cups hard red wheat berries + 2 cups hard white wheat berries OR 5 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup yogurt OR buttermilk OR kefir
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon yeast
2 teaspoons sea salt

Instructions:
Grind 2 cups of hard red and 2 cups of hard white wheat berries and combine in a glass bowl, setting aside about a cup of flour (4 cups of berries should make about 5 cups of flour). Melt butter and add to flours. Add yogurt and water and mix until a soft dough forms. Cover the bowl and leave on the counter (at room temperature) overnight, or for 6-8 hours. After soaking, add yeast and honey to warm water in a glass measuring cup and stir. Add salt and 1/2 cup of reserved flour to dough. Add yeast mixture and knead on floured surface until smooth ball forms, about 10 minutes, adding water or flour as necessary until the texture is “right” (not too wet, not too dry, tacky but not sticky). Place dough in covered bowl to rise. Rise until doubled, about an hour. Knead again, briefly, and divide dough in half. Shape each half into a loaf and sprinkle with/roll in flour and place in oiled 8×4” loaf pan (ceramic, glass, or cast iron work well). Rise, covered lightly with a towel, until loaves reach top of pans, about 30 minutes, then bake side by side for 35 minutes in a 350˚ oven. Remove from pans immediately and cool on cooling racks, covering loaves with a towel. Use within 3 days (or use one loaf and freeze the other).

Hints and tricks:
Brick-like bread results from a dough that is too dry, from under-kneading, and from old yeast. Yeast should be stored in the fridge, and not for more than six months. Dough should be soft enough to stick to your hands, but not so sticky that it leaves residue on your fingers. Knead the dough until it is stretchy—one test is to take a small ball of dough and stretch it into a “window” of dough. If you can stretch it thin enough to see light through, without it tearing, then you have kneaded enough. Bread that is done baking will sound hollow when thumped.

*If you’re short on time: If you don’t have time for an overnight soak, you can do this in a few hours. You can also use a combination of commercial whole wheat and white flour (I recommend Bob’s Red Mill or King Arthur Organic flours). Mix all dry ingredients and then add wet ingredients. Stir together until a ball forms and then knead, rise, and bake according to the instructions.
 

Highborne Cay is a big H-shaped island in the northern Exumas. It is also entirely owned by the Highborne Cay Resort and Marina, meaning you can’t land there without permission. We anchored there last Monday. Dad needed the internet for work, and we wanted to explore, as we had never been ashore there. And for good reason too, as we found out when Mom dinghied over to the marina. The landing fee for non-marina patrons was $25 per person (that’s $150 for the six of us)! However, if you pay the fee, you get access to all the resort facilities (bikes, Hobie cats, beaches, kayaks, bathrooms, etc.).

Despite the cost, we all (dad excluded) decided to land. After paying the (exorbitant) landing fee at the Ship’s Store, we headed out to get some bikes. The bike rack looked like someone had gone into the bike section at Walmart, bought six or seven bikes at random, and let them sit for several months in a humid environment. In spite of appearances, they were in good working order.

I opted not to ride, and instead walked with Mom and short-legs (Rachel), while the others biked on ahead. I soon tired of walking at Rachel’s slow pace, and went exploring. Before long, I saw a side road named “The Spring”. Interested, I decided to follow it. I knew there was some fresh water in the Bahamas (otherwise, how would the Taino Indians have survived?), but I didn’t know about Highborne. The road led down the hill to the beach off of which our boat was anchored. I followed the periodically-spaced signs advertising “SPRING” into the woods. And there it was. The Spring of Highborne Cay: a three-foot-long metal spring hanging from a tree. Disappointed, but not surprised, I returned to the beach. After carving my name in BIG letters in the sand, I went to find the others.

We spent the rest of the day climbing on the rocks on the shoreline, picnicking, biking on the trails, playing basketball at the “basketball court”–a post with a board and hoop nailed to it–and eating over-priced ice cream from the Ship’s Store. Late that afternoon, we went back to the boat, feeling like we had gotten our money’s worth.

Rachel on the swing at Highborne Cay

Yesterday we came to Highborne Cay in the Exumas. On the way, my mom and I rigged up a dead flying fish we had found on deck after our Gulf Stream passage with a hook and leader and threw it in the water. Later, it started to whiz. We reeled it in until the fish got away and the line went slack. It bit off the body of the fish, leaving the head to cut loose and throw back. Then we fished with a plain fake squid and we got to reel in a barracuda until it got away. Luckily we kept the lure!

I bought a little red ukulele with my birthday fun money two months ago. I had wanted one for a long time, most recently being inspired by a boatful of fearless twenty-somethings getting ready to sail the seven seas. They would stay up late into the night, talking and laughing and singing ballads to ukulele accompaniment. These tunes would drift into my hatch and set me to dreaming of palm tree-fringed lagoons on Pacific atolls.

Now the merits of this instrument are many. It is small and portable, making it perfect for life on a sailboat. It has a mellow, sweet sound; even when played inexpertly it sounds nice. It is easy to learn—figuring out a few chords on its four strings sets you up to play dozens of songs from the beginning, a reward that I find addictive. Its recent growth in popularity, probably due to the ubiquitous Iz rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” means that is easy to find chord diagrams and songs and Youtube lessons online. At $30-50, an entry-level soprano ukulele is inexpensive and easy to acquire. And they’re so cute. I know you’re not supposed to select an instrument based on its appearance, but when I saw that little red ukulele with the shark-shaped bridge, I couldn’t resist.

And it has not disappointed me. My constant companion, it has transformed the tedious dinghy rides to and from shore into practice sessions. Hours at the park with kids who play basketball or ride skateboards are now opportunities to learn a new song. And the quiet hour after everyone has gone to bed and the dishes are done is my equivalent to singing in the shower. Granted, the time I spend playing the ukulele is time I used to spend doing other things, some of them arguably more productive. The novelty may wear off and I’ll go back to doing those things, but the gift of music is one you get to keep. Long passages when we’re just sitting in the cockpit, starlit night watches when my eyes tire of reading, beach days under an umbrella: these are idle hours transformed by music into entertainment, creativity, and hopefully, beauty.

Recently, I gathered a group of friends at Dockside Tropical Café for the monthly Ukulele Night sponsored by the Florida Ukulele Society. A ukulele band with a bass, tenor, and soprano ukulele plays onstage and the audience plays along on their own instruments. At our table, ukuleles appeared out of nowhere. In addition to my red one, we produced a yellow, green, blue and natural wood ukulele. In that setting, it doesn’t matter that no one plays well. That sound system can drown out any mistake! The band does covers of classic rock to pop hits, from the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Chuck Berry, and Bob Dylan to Gnarles Barkley. Anything seems possible with this adorable, versatile little instrument.

After so many years of homeschooling and with its relative popularity, I didn’t think I would need to address this question. Evidently, our special situation “boatschooling” the children, or the fact that we now have high-school-age kids, arouses curiosity (and sometimes criticism) in people who have misconceptions about our life.

Some might think that being on a boat means that we are raising our children in an isolated, remote environment, with limited outside interaction, but they would be mistaken. At our current rate of offshore travel, we spend mere days each year out of sight of land, enjoying that peaceful state of solitude one only finds when crossing an ocean or a desert, far from human habitation, under a sky lit only with heavenly bodies. The rest of the time, we are living in a marina, cruising along the coast, or island hopping, where we run into lots and lots of interesting people, many of them with children of various ages. We are not trapped at home, but out and about in stores, museums, parks, and libraries.

Perhaps a clarification of terms is necessary. If what they mean by “socialization” is the process by which children learn to be sociable, carry on a conversation, make eye contact, resolve conflict, and enjoy the company of other humans, then we have no problem. Our kids have opportunities to mix and mingle with people of all ages and from all walks of life. Some of our kids are outgoing, and others shy, but all of them are expected to be polite, cordial, and respectful. And when we are out on our own, traveling with just the seven of us, they are forced to deal with people in close proximity, to get along with people that are sometimes difficult, and to form strong and lasting family bonds. What more could we want for their social lives?

If by “socialization” they mean the process by which children are placed in a homogeneous group like you find only in schools, prisons, and the military, and induced to suppress their individuality and reduce their performance to the lowest common denominator, becoming “normal” like their peers, then perhaps we should examine this paradigm, and maybe even question it. What has become the accepted norm in the average public school is not acceptable to us. Here are some uncomfortable truths about these norms: it is accepted practice to drug small, wiggly boys so that they can focus on academic tasks instead of sending them outside (where there is arguably lots to learn), to have armed police officers and “lockdowns” in schools where there is a perceived threat so that even parents are denied access to their children, to test children as young as six and to teach nothing but the test, and to have “zero tolerance policies” that flout common sense and yet fail to prevent bullying.

If kids are average, they’ll probably learn what is necessary to pass the tests and have a “normal” life, but if they are special or gifted, God help them! They will never receive the individualized attention they need to either catch up or to excel, and will receive plenty of social pressure to hide their exceptional traits (or be the victim of bullying). To become socialized is to learn to hide who you really are and imitate the others. And what are the others like? Look around: kids of all ages are staring at screens instead of socializing with people in their physical vicinity, politeness and common courtesy are things of the past, and good character has been replaced by the pecking order of popularity. Who would want this kind of “normal?”

There is one remaining question. How will our children integrate into society as adults? They may be non-conformists like their parents, people who don’t just follow without question the mandates of others, people who are unhappy “plugged in” to a system, square pegs that can’t be put in round holes. Our children may turn out to be quirky, odd, different, or exceptional; they might not be like everyone else, and that’s a risk we’re willing to take. Of course, the opposite may be true as well; since they’re being raised by non-conformists, the only way to rebel will be to become normal—to go into debt, live in a neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses, and drop their kids off at school on their way to an office where they work in a cubicle! I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

We all know what a dysfunctional family looks like. Most of us come from one. In my college psychology textbook, the composite dysfunctional family looks like this: the dad (or mom) is an alcoholic, the mom (or dad) tries to hide it and becomes co-dependent, the oldest child tries heroically to compensate for the parents’ weaknesses and becomes neurotic as a result, the middle child rebels or runs away and becomes the black sheep, and the youngest child tries to win affection by becoming the family jester. Sound familiar? Problems in this family are not resolved but are hidden, avoided, passed off and/or fought loudly about. The parents’ baggage is handed dutifully over to the children, so they can carry it guiltily into their own marriages and families, merging it with the baggage of a spouse, and passing the combined load onto the children, and so forth and so on, time without end.

But what is the alternative? What is a functional family? Maybe it’s so rare or so boring the psychology textbook didn’t see the need to illustrate it, or maybe I didn’t identify with it and can’t remember. One of the reasons we unplugged from the “regular” life was because we don’t like the way our culture defines and undermines the family unit. It’s “normal” for parents to be running busily on separate hamster wheels, growing apart until they can no longer stay married, then spinning off as singles, or re-pairing to repeat the cycle. Kids are often collateral damage, dropped off for most of their childhoods at overcrowded day-care centers, government schools, friends’ houses, and sports practice where they’re forced to find their own way while their parents try to earn a living and pick up the pieces. I pass no judgment—forging a healthy family in our time and place is near-impossible and it requires a superhuman (or even supernatural) effort to change the familial patterns established from childhood.

I do not discount the ability of love to overcome these challenges, and the desire of all parents everywhere to do what’s best for their children, but merely propose that the norm is dysfunction. Jay and I are incredibly grateful to our parents, who, despite their own difficult childhoods, raised us to the best of their abilities, helping to give us the confidence and discipline we needed to pursue the lifestyle we’ve chosen. Even so, our childhoods were relatively “normal” and we went to public schools and followed the proscribed path until we found ourselves in the suburbs living “the American Dream” (complete with its hamster wheels) and wondered, “Is this it?”

One of the books that inspired us to leave our normal life and try something new was Tom Neale’s All In the Same Boat, in which he states some of the reasons he took his family cruising on a sailboat:

We do it because it’s fun. We do it because it’s beautiful. We do it because we love nature and the sea and the winds and the sky. We do it because it allows us to raise a family the way a family should be raised—and to know our children. We do it because it gives us more control over the way our family lives and survives, over the education and nurturing of our children, over the air we breathe. It gives us more control over our lives…

We didn’t even know what that meant when we started out. Seven years later, we are still figuring it out. What we know is this: despite some bad habits we carried with us from previous generations, we have a functional family. It is, by no means, a well-oiled machine, but it does function. When there is a problem or a conflict, and there are many, we don’t drown it in alcohol, we don’t run away from it, we don’t fight loudly about it, and we don’t ignore it or try to hide it. We have “family meetings” and when bad things happen, we pull together. Jay and I do marriage maintenance, and we try to spend individual time with each of the kids. By God’s grace, we do the hard work of loving each other in a small space. And it is hard work—there are fights, hurt feelings, harsh words, a constant need for conflict resolution skills and forgiveness. But there are also fun times: excellent dinner discussions over good food, games, music, and laughter. Sometimes I feel like we are failing to love each other adequately, but when I take a step back and look at the big picture or someone gives me an outsider’s perspective, I recognize that even in our struggles, we are a functional family, and that is one of the best gifts of a cruising lifestyle.

I’m married to an incredibly conscientious, hard-working man. When we sailed up the East coast last year, he flew to clients from every coastal city at which we stopped. He took conference calls while we motored up the Potomac. He worked while I took kids to the sights in our nation’s capital.  When we went skiing in February, he worked in the cozy comfort of the condo while we braved the elements and played in the snow.

Don’t get me wrong, the man does know how to have fun. It’s just hard to get him out of his zone. He never takes a sick day, works on vacation, and rarely turns down work.  I appreciate this work ethic (it enables me to stay home with the kids, after all), but how do you get this poor man to take a break?

1. Guilt. Ask him questions like, “If you were on your death bed, would you say, ‘Too bad I didn’t work more’ or ‘Too bad I never took my kids out to Dry Tortugas National Park when I had the chance’?”

2. Take away his internet. Nothing like a remote location with no cell phone service and no internet to make a man look up from his computer and notice the natural world and play with his kids.

3. Clean water and cool sea creatures. Since being spoiled by Bahamian gin-clear water, the man cannot enjoy the water. Swimming pools? Yuck. Keys beaches? No way. But take him out where the water is clean and turquoise and filled with fish, and he’ll grab his fins and mask and new Go Pro and away he goes. I can’t keep up with him, and that’s saying something.

4. Make a commitment. Jay is a man of his word; if he makes a promise, he keeps it. In fact, if I make a promise, he keeps it. I invited our friends Ken and Amy and their three kids to go cruising with us to the Dry Tortugas, fully expecting them to find some reason they couldn’t do it, and to my surprise, they accepted! Do the math: that would be our family of 7 + their family of 5 on a boat with 4 cabins for 7 days 70 miles from civilization. As it turned out, we took their oldest two kids, Max and Mia, on the overnight passage to Garden Key, and Amy and Kai met us on day four by ferry. Ken missed out on the trip entirely because the ferry was full and he had to get back to work. We returned on day seven with four extra passengers—tired, but happy. Everyone got along and we were able to share a cool experience with good friends who might not otherwise have experienced the park in that way.

5. Remind him what the boat is for. We did not buy Take Two to sit at a dock. We recognize that it takes a lot of work to keep her in good condition, and a lot of money. With only one of us bringing home the bacon, it’s hard to break away. But occasionally, we have to stop what we’re doing and get the boat out so we can enjoy all the things for which we work so hard. All work and no play makes Jay a very dull boy.

We’re bad about digital media, which should be evident by the lack of it in this space. Pictures aren’t often taken, and then they rarely get offloaded and organized. Videos are even worse.

It’s a tedious process and I don’t have the patience for it. Every once in a while Tanya will stay up late and wade through our backlog, usually when she’s looking for something specific, but she’s years behind and not keeping up.

I know the lack of pictures reduces the interest level for the average reader, but that isn’t what motivates me. I worry that someday we’ll want to relive our memories, but can’t because they didn’t get recorded.

My hope is to get the kids to take some ownership in the saving of these memories, and we have cameras that they are specifically invited to use. So far all I’ve gotten back are a couple hundred blurry close-ups of the cat.

So I was extremely pleased that they thought to take the GoPro with them this week when they went to shoot the culverts. These are concrete tunnels under a road where the tide rushes back and forth in pursuit of the moon and adventurous types allow themselves to be sucked in one side and flushed out the other. It’s great fun and not very safe, which makes it exactly the right kind of activity for a GoPro.

I stitched the clips together, but the footage is all theirs.

We live on the water, but we don’t really live in it. Sure, we go swimming and snorkeling. We go to the beach. The older kids surf, Tanya kayaks, and Sam likes to fish. We sail from place to place.

But we rarely take the boat out just for fun. We rarely go fishing. The kids don’t really like to surf. Snorkeling and swimming trips are usually brief, and then only when you can see the bottom in 20 feet. Tanya and I are certified to dive, but haven’t done a recreational dive in 20 years.

It isn’t because we don’t have the gear. Oh, we have the gear. Six fishing poles, three spears, hand lines, and tackle out the wazoo. A hookah with five hoses. Two air tanks. Fins, and masks, and snorkels to outfit a platoon. Two dinghies, two kayaks, two surf boards, and two body boards.

The only reasonable conclusion is that we don’t like the water. Which isn’t true. I’m not really sure what the problem is. We like the water, but we lack a passion for it.

We’ve seen the passion in others. Roy, Pierre, and Camden are boat kids we’ve met (three different boats) with fishing in their blood. With them, it was all-fishing all-the-time. Sam has that gene too, but it needs to be cultivated. Eli doesn’t care about fish, but he’s a natural hunter and could probably feed the whole family. I want that for both of them, but I don’t know how to give it to them.

Ken and Amy live here in Marathon with their three kids. The whole family is absolutely crazy about the water. Okay, Ken is the crazy one and everyone else is happy to go along. He is constantly fishing, spearfishing, crabbing, or lobstering. He spends far more time on the water than I do, and I live there. He has the passion I need.

So while we’re in Marathon for the next couple months, we’re making a concerted effort to become water lovers. And Ken is my mentor. Seven-hour spearfishing marathon? I’m in. All-night bullynetting for lobster? You bet. Offshore trip for Mahi? I’ll buy the fuel. Eli and Sam are my companions in this quest.

There is hope for us yet. Eli and Aaron are getting certified to dive. They’ve done three days of pool work, but then came down with head colds, so have yet to complete the open water part.

Sam is fishing almost constantly here. We have a little aquarium right off the back of our boat with snappers, grunts, parrot fish, lobster, and even a resident moray eel. Sam will sit out there for hours. Tanya buys him bait at the grocery store.

We’ve had the boat out twice in the three weeks that we’ve been here, which is probably a record, especially since it means turning off the air conditioning and backing out a narrow channel. We even braved the craziness and took the boat out on the 4th of July, a first for us.

Summer in Marathon is the right time and place for this kind of transformation. The weather is calm, the water is warm, and the local culture is all about the salt life. It’s not just a bumper sticker down here.