Monthly Archives: August 2021

Leaving the Safe Harbor

My memoir, Leaving the Safe Harbor: the Risks and Rewards of Raising a Family on a Boat will be released at the end of October by Ingenium Books (in paperback and e-book wherever books are sold), but you can pre-order the digital copy from Amazon now! It is not merely a re-write of this blog, but rather a narrative that weaves together life lessons, nautical idioms, and our adventures as we go from teenage dreamers to suburbanites to barefoot sailors raising five kids on our 48′ catamaran, Take Two. Find the book here.

From the back cover:

Seafaring stories inspire us to do great things, help us laugh at our mistakes, and create a sense of wonder about the wild world we live in. We need these stories to shake us out of our complacency and give us the courage to chase new horizons.

Two high-school sweethearts from middle-class America go off to college, get married, follow all the rules, play it safe, and pursue the American dream. And promptly find themselves boxed in. Looking for adventure, they turn the shared dreams of their youth into reality. They leave the safety of suburbia to buy and live aboard a sailboat, s/v Take Two—while raising five children.

The sailboat becomes a classroom for the whole family. From the first overnight sail with small children to island-hopping in the Caribbean with teenagers, the ocean teaches life lessons and develops character traits like teamwork, discipline, hope, flexibility, and perseverance.

Returning to the United States after voyaging, their children on the cusp of adulthood, the couple discovers they’re not the same people who left the house with the white picket fence.