By Kevin

Naming a boat is hard. You remember what you went through when you named each of your newborns? Well, it is sort of like that. Except, you have more options available. You can be very creative. And, options mean choices.

A boat name traditionally has some significant meaning for the owner. And, for recreational boats at least, a double entendre thrown in earns some street cred during dockside happy hours.

For naming our new-to-us Brewer 12.8, formerly Fantasy island, we wanted to find something that conveyed a taste of why we were purchasing it; what this one year family sabbatical means to Jen and me.

This trip is a sabbatical for us, meaning we are purposefully taking a break from the normal lives we have been living in order to recharge and reevaluate.

Particularly for our trip, we want to not only take a break from our everyday routines. We want to get away from the electronic tethers and trivial activities to which we’ve become so accustomed.

But, this trip is also a transition for us, not just a break or an escape. We are trying out a new lifestyle. A lifestyle where all significant decisions are intentional and lead to greater integration of our family, our work, our play and our marriage.

With these themes in mind, after weeks of soul searching, and moments of whimsy, here was our short list:

• Committed
• La Vida Real
• Incommunicado
• Family Sabbatical
• Endless Sabbatical
• Captured Moments
• Henceforth
• Off the Grid
• Cheese Farm
• Real Life

Each of these names reflects some flavor of why we bought the boat to be our home for a year. As you can see, we were light on the double entendres but we are willing to live with that at happy hour.

Our top choices ended up being:

• Henceforth
• Cheese Farm
• Real Life

We all know how it ended, of course. We chose Real Life because it directly reflects our desire that this change of lifestyle, this new way of being intentional and integrated, is not just a fantasy or a break or an escape. We want this to be our reality moving forward.

It was only weeks after choosing the name that it dawned on us that the boat had gone from being one couple’s Fantasy Island to another’s Real Life.

By Kevin

We’ve read many how-to-sail-around-the-world handbooks and manuals in the past 6 monnths as we’ve been getting ready to move aboard Real Life. One of the to-do items on our master checklist was “Pack personal items.”

Ok, then. So, what exactly does one pack when planning to be away from home for a year? The sailing manuals had lots to say on the topic, beside telling hopeful cruisers which spare parts to carry to the Bahamas (surely a future blog post here) or how to preserve your fresh eggs for months (slather them in petroleum jelly!).

Here is what I’ve packed. (Each of us had slight variations of this list.)

• sturdy flip-flops (they’ve been across the Atlantic with me)
• Sperry boat shoes
• foul weather boots
• boat-friendly sneakers
• foul weather full-hand sailing gloves
• 4 pair of athletic socks
• 1 belt
• 7 pair of underwear
• 3 undershirts
• 5 t-shirts
• 3 button-down, short-sleeve shirts (dinner shirts!)
• 1 pair of cotton trousers
• 1 pair of jeans
• 5 pair of shorts
• 2 pair of swim trunks (I may buy 1 more pair, as this will be a daily item)
• 2 swim shirts/rash guards
• 1 pair of long pajama pants
• 1 pair of pajama shorts
• 1 track suit
• 1 light wind breaker
• 1 light fleece jacket
• 1 rain jacket
• 1 pair of rain over-pants
• 1 set of foulies (lined jacket and trousers)
• 1 baseball cap
• 1 broad-rimmed hat
• 1 fleece cap
• 2 pair of prescription glasses
• 1 pair of prescription sunglasses
• 1 pair of non-prescription, wraparound sunglasses (polarized)
• 90 pairs of disposable contacts (enough for a year)
• toiletries for a few months (we’ll really stock up before leaving Fort Lauderdale)
• 15+ books (no technology or startup books allowed on this trip)
• Chess board and clock (you never know where you’ll find an opponent)
• Digital gear, including cameras, iPod, laptop, chargers, cables, etc.
• Automatic inflation PFD (Personal Inflation Device)

By Jennifer

The day we left was crazy. We had a very long list to get through that revolved around closing up the house. We completed most everything. Mixed in was a call to the Wheaton Police Department to report a neighbor girl’s brand new bike stolen from our driveway by a suspected wayward teenager. We filed the police report, wiped tears and, unbelieveably, the bike was found ditched in a Wheaton subdivision several hours later by the girl’s mom. Thank God! We were on the road by 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 20. Enjoy this photo gallery from Departure Day.

By Jennifer

What a hard, heart-warming week it has been. I can’t begin to say how touched we are by the people in our lives. Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. We’ll be thinking of you always. (Now, only if my camera’s battery didn’t die, I’d have a few more pics.)

By Kevin

In the fall of 2011, Jennifer and I read A Real Life by prolific author, winemaker, home and ship builder, and renowned sailor Ferenc Máté. The book is a potpourri of topics that revolve around how to reduce the clutter, noise, and distractions in your life and focus on what is really important. It is long-winded advice on how to get a life.

Over the following winter months, we extensively researched the idea of a family sabbatical. Who, what, when, where, why (and, how). We finally made the decision to proceed on March 1st, 2012. We decided to move out of our comfortable 3800 square foot home in the suburbs, move our family onto a sailing yacht and travel the Caribbean islands, all while homeschooling our children. Within five months. Ok…decision made.

So, now what do we do?

We created a spreadsheet, of course. Technically, we created this sacred spreadsheet well before making our final go/no-go decision. In fact, the go/no-go decision was just one of many early checklist items it contained.

The spreadsheet became the central planning tool for what needed to be done vs what we wanted to have done, by when, by whom and any notes on the particular to-do items. We named it our “Cruising Dashboard” because that truly is what it has become to us. (We used a Google Docs spreadsheet because it is one of the best collaboration tools on the planet, but you could use any spreadsheet software.)

We set up the following tabs:

• Checklist – Our master to-do list with columns for Completed?, Due Date, Priority, Task, Owner, Notes.
• Purchase List – What do we need to purchase, where we’ve found it, what prices.
• Projects – What boat projects are outstanding. It has the same columns as Checklist with the addition of Vendor, Estimate and Actual for tracking costs.
• Home School – Information from our research on different curriculum options.
• Medical Insurance – Ditto for medical insurance options.
• Boats – The short list of boat models and how they measure against our criteria for a good sailing yacht for our trip. Columns include: Make, Model, Length, Year, Priority, Price, Rig, Displacement, Ballast, LWL, LOA, Beam, B/D Ratio, D/L Ratio, S/D Ratio, MCD, Capsize Ratio, URL, Location, City/Marina, Appointment, Phone, Email, Notes. Each row on this tab represented a specific boat that is for sale.

From early March, when the Cruising Dashboard was created, to today, we’ve been using it successfully to manage all our tasks and links to the important research we’ve compiled.

By Jennifer

Kevin and I were taking our ritual walk around our neighborhood last night when we crossed paths with neighbors also walking. They stopped, said hello and asked, ‘How in the world are you planning for this trip?’

The trip, which is being documented on this blog, which I expect I will not be the sole writer of, is our maiden voyage on Sailing Vessel Real Life down the coast of Florida, through the Keys and on to the Bahamas beginning this August.

When Carol, one of the very first people I met in our neighborhood 11 years ago, posed this question to me, I, in turn, asked myself, “Geez, how are we planning for this??”

How do you pack for a year? Well, we began with a spreadsheet and just kept adding to it and adding to it until we couldn’t think of anything more to list. So the spreadsheet has been quite functional. We’ve read books and experiences of other families who have gone cruising for an extended time and that has helped shaped our checklist.

The checklist, as you can imagine, has found away to keep growing as the days and weeks go by. Included on the list are things such as lining up the kids’ homeschool for the year ahead, repair work on the boat, brushing up on our sailing skills and things to be done around our house.

Mid-June I skippered a daysail with the family on a J22 on Lake Michigan. That served as a nice refresher for my sailing skills that have been mostly dormant since last summer.

Jennifer skippering a refresher sail on a J22 on Lake Michigan along the Chicago skyline eight weeks before leaving for our trip. Click on the image to see the pics from that day.

But, the other way I’ve planned for this trip is by just going with it.

I’ve surrendered to the idea that it’s not all going to come together perfectly. We will forget things. And then we will figure it out. I read not long ago about another sailing family who had a mantra when difficulties arised. Of course, I forgot their mantra, but have adopted one of my own — “We will get there when we get there.”

Also, included on the checklist have been visits to check on Real Life. At the end of June we stopped in Ft. Lauderdale, where Real Life is currently docked, to check on the work being done on the boat. We finally got it out of the shipyard after more than a month and have since moved it to a residential canal. As the mechanical work winds up, we took the cushions from the aft and forward cabins out and are having new ones made. 

Here, Real Life is tied up to a residential dock in Ft. Lauderdale. It’s a nonliveaboard and a more afforable option than keeping it in a marina until we arrive in August.

The next big item on the list is to find a liveaboard slip in Ft. Lauderdale for the weeks we will be there before setting sail Nov. 1.

By Jennifer

Enjoy this slideshow from this past April when we closed on then Fantasy Island and now Real Life. We moved the boat from a dock at the previous owners’ home to a marina in Dania Beach, just south of Ft. Lauderdale. It was the first time we took the boat through the canal system in Ft. Lauderdale. You’ll see with us a hired captain, Palo, and Richard, the broker who helped us in our boat search in Ft. Lauderdale. 

By Jennifer

Over the last weekend in April we all boarded a cramped Spirit flight to Fort Lauderdale where we would close on our new boat, a 1985 ’42 Brewer 12.8. Kevin could have gone and handled it, but I thought this was too pivotal a moment not to have everybody together and everybody on the same page as we get ready to go on this first phase of our trip. I’m so glad we did.

Because if we didn’t, I wouldn’t have met Frank and Joanne.

Frank and Joanne. They were the original and only owners of the boat they fondly called Fantasy Island. Of course, like any child growing up in the ’70s, Kevin and I naturally assumed they named it after ABC’s cheeky television series “Fantasy Island.” Yes, you know the one with Mr. Roarke and Tattoo? We even spent a Saturday night downloading and watching old episodes off the Internet with the kids showing them what it must be all about. Well, Frank and Joanne did not grow up in the ’70s and, no, it was not named after the mystical island that made guests’ inner dreams come true. Frank and Joanne bought the boat from a boat show and hurriedly needed to name it for insurance purposes. They chose Fantasy Island, named for an island in the U.K.

They sailed everywhere on their Fantasy Island for 27 years. They lived the life and loved every minute of it. I know this because Frank was ever so distraught when it came to finally departing with it that weekend.

“Joanne’s having a really hard time,” he said. “I hope this was not the glue that held the marriage together. Let me know if you change your mind.”

His face spoke volumes. Sadness, remorse, fighting to let go. And, yes, I felt wretched watching him and his wife struggle with this because, on the flip side, this was our joyous moment. Right?? All I can say is: Thank you Frank and Joanne. Thank you for the hospitality you obviously were accustomed to cruising on Fantasy Island. And thank you for showing us the snippets of your time cruising and for showing us what this boat is made of. 

By Jennifer

Welcome to our trip. We, Jennifer (first mate), Kevin (captain) and Madeline (12) and Zach (9) invited you along because we wanted to share our adventure with you. When we first announced our trip to family and friends early this spring, the reactions were something like — deer-in-the-headlight stares, befuddlement, Wow!, stunned-to-tears, flyin’ high-five-support, at-a-boys and you-go-girls.

Our reaction to our own decision to take this trip was simply, unequivocably: yes. The thought of not doing it became, speaking for myself, the bigger fear.

Our trip. What exactly is it? On the surface, it is sailing down the east coast of Florida, on to the Florida Keys, the Bahamas and then we’ll see. Looking closer, it’s a family sabbatical. It’s taking hold of the fleeting time Kevin and I have with our children as children. For Kevin, from my perspective, it’s also answering the call that has been tapping his shoulder for as long as I have known him–sailing, voyaging. For me, it’s also embracing an inner challenge, self-discovery, and coveting time as a couple and a family.

We haven’t left yet. But, here is how it is shaping up:

We live in Wheaton, a small town 35 miles west of Chicago. Most of our family lives in the area and our kids attend the local public elementary and middle schools. We plan to begin our trip this August. Meanwhile, we just purchased our sailboat, soon to be named Real Life, a 1985 42′ Brewer 12.8. It is currently in a Fort Lauderdale shipyard getting tweaked for our trip.

There is a lot to do between now and then.