Tom and I knew we wanted to live this way, or at least
try it out. We shared the dream, so why not do it at a time when we were
both young and healthy, and before our kids became attached to too many
shoreside attractions?
I loved boating. My family had the first boat when I
was three years old. It was one of those mahogany speedboats: open, varnished
and fast, not a Chris, but you know the type. Two years later we got a
“cabin” cruiser, the Betty Jo. It had bunks in the bow so
we could sleep aboard. My two younger sisters and I wore orange kapok
life jackets and played dolls in the cockpit.
We spent a lot of time at our marina, more home to me
than home. It was located just before Mile 0 of the ICW. Fifty years ago
there was no mass snowbird boat migration as we know it now, but we did
see an occasional “stranger” boat tie up at the end of the
pier in the spring and fall. We kids sneaked peeks of wonderment from
behind pilings.
My parents bought another cabin cruiser, the Carol C.
There were seven of us now, five little girls, a handful as they say.
Even though Carol C was bigger, it was hard work for my parents to have
all of us to sleep aboard. Sadly, they decided to give it up till we were
older.
But we all really missed being on the boat. On Sunday
afternoons we piled in the station wagon and rode around looking at boats
for sale. We needed a bargain. Dad finally found it--a 20 year old Mathews
‘38 38’ (for year and length). He bought it cheap and with
faith, as it was very leaky and had a lot of rot.
"Betty
Jo," Mel's family's first cabin cruiser, 1951, by John Wittig
Mel
at the helm of "Carol C" with parents, John and Margaret Wittig,
1954, Wittig Family Photo. |
We worked on it for a year, every weekend, vacation,
and day off from school or work. While my friends were doing normal 12-year-old-kid
stuff, I “worked on the boat.” Git-Rot got the rot, and MarineTex
replaced it. I think there was more MarineTex than wood in that boat when
we finished. But it looked beautiful, with varnished mahogany, blue decks,
sparkly white hull and new transom. We were all proud. We named it SevenWyts,
for all seven of us with the last name “Wittig.”
This boat was for cruising: first for weekends in the
lower Chesapeake or for a week to the middle bay, then for two weeks to
the upper bay. And finally, we took the real cruise. This was in 1963,
aboard our now 25-year-old formerly rotten rebuilt wood boat with huge
old gas engines. There were seven people aboard 38 ft. for more than a
month, five kids between 8 and 16 years old. We went from the lower Chesapeake
to Cape Cod--to Nantucket and back. People up there couldn’t believe
it. Neither could our friends back home. But it was the time of my life—a
defining moment—when I knew that I could do this for a long time.
Two years later we did another month long cruise to Canada, via the Hudson
River, Lake Champlain and up the Richlieu River.
When all the kids were gone from home, the first thing
my parents did was to sell the house, move aboard the now almost 40-year-old
SevenWyts, and head for Florida and the Bahamas. They lived aboard and
cruised for eight years, the latter part of it on their TwoWyts. And they
told us of families cruising with small children and of home-schooled
kids.
Tom’s and my cruising dream was as old as our marriage.
We dreamed of living aboard, cruising to far off places, being close to
nature, practicing self sufficiency, simplifying our lives, all aboard
our own ocean going home and surrounded by the ones we love. In our early
years, we just assumed we’d do the “mom and pop” thing
like the few other cruisers we met. Or at least we’d wait till our
children, should we have any, were older and our financial resources were
more secure. That was surely the most sensible thing to do. But when you
are at an age when optimism runs high and the signs of your own mortality
have not yet manifested, hard decisions are easier.
Mel's
family and friends, swimming around the "Sevenwyts," Cuttyhunk,
MA, 1963, by John Wittig
:
Mel and sisters playing with dolls in the cockpit of the "Betty
Jo," 1952. Mel is on the right. Photo by John Wittig |
We had enjoyed 12 years of honeymoon, childless marriage.
We spent every weekend on whatever boat we had. In the early days there
was Tom’s 18 ft sedan cruiser, the last and finest in a long succession
of small motorboats he had owned since age nine. Then there was the first
Chez Nous, “Our Home,” sweet Tartan 27, loved and cruised
for four years, only to be displaced by Chez Nous, Gulfstar 41,
centercockpit ketch, roomy enough to live on.
And live on it we did, behind our house, in a small canal
in southern Virginia. In the moderate weather months, all but coldest
winter and hottest summer, we spent every night on the boat. On weekdays,
I came home from work, gathered food from the house, cooked supper in
my galley. We dined by cozy lantern light and slept in our bunks. In the
morning, we used the house for showers and breakfast before heading out
to work, me to teaching, Tom to his trial law practice. We took long vacations
in the summer, and cruised all over the bay, only docking to take on supplies.
There was a different anchorage every night, a different horizon each
day. We thought we could do this forever. This was the life!
The best thing about our modified living aboard was that
Tom was able to unwind from some of the stress of his job as a trial lawyer.
He didn’t take paper work or books home with him--all of that was
done at the office, which necessitated some really long hours. The only
thing he brought home was the worry. But the minute he stepped aboard
Chez Nous, shoreside problems and concerns melted away. We had
to make one important concession though; we ran a long phone line out
to the dock so he wouldn’t miss calls.
We had never gotten into the house and fine furniture
thing like our peers, or the going out to meals and movies. There were
no expensive vacations either, as we took them all on the boat. Our “new”
cars were used. We knew that it didn’t take a lot of money to make
us happy, as long as we had each other and the boat to live on and time
to take off to a distant shore.
We were also at the point that if there were to be kids
in our lives, now was the time or it would be too late. We knew we wanted
to continue to live aboard and that “real cruising” would
be in the future. But the 41 ft boat was not the one we wanted to raise
a family aboard. With enough money put away to pay for most of a larger
boat, we searched for a good liveaboard and cruising boat for a family.
We put a down-payment on the “perfect” family cruiser, Gulfstar
47, third Chez Nous, sight unseen as it was still in the planning
stage in the magazine ads, just as our family was still in the planning
stage.
Melanie
in Dinghy in 1980, 13 months old. By Mel Neale
Melanie
and Carolyn in the Bahamas in1988. By Mel Neale |
The boat arrived three months before the first baby.
Once we had it tied up behind the house, we moved aboard for good. The
second baby arrived two years later. We began to spend more time away
from the dock at marinas and anchored out, cruising, but still attached
to the job. Even though we still owned the house and rented it out, we
knew we would never live in it again. We kept it as insurance, in case
any part of our liveaboard dream didn’t work.
Meanwhile, Tom’s law practice was growing and the
demands on his time escalated to the point that he often only saw the
kids if I woke them up when he came home late at night. With reputation
and long hours as a trial lawyer came more money, enough to pay off the
boat and to set aside some retirement funds and enough savings to live
on for a while should we need it.
I had quit my teaching job after the second was born,
as motherhood aboard became a full time responsibility for me. We learned
from this that we could make it on one income, and that I could survive
as a “stay at home mother.” We also observed that the girls
seemed happier and healthier than my teaching friends’ children
who stayed in day care centers all day. Their minds were thriving from
constant attention, stories, reading, problem solving, the “pre”
home-school stage in our lives.
All around us friends and families were splitting, relationships
falling apart, especially among the other young lawyers. The guys got
younger wives, the women got the kids. Some had not lasted the second
time around. Even though our lifestyle was so much different, I could
understand the pressures as a form of occupational hazard. Being able
to control the fate of others seemingly by the strength of your will and
personality is quite an ego trip, but a responsibility few outside the
law can fathom.
There was always the nagging question in our minds, especially
mine, as to whether “the law” was worth the toll: family life,
getting to know the children before peers replaced parents as their primary
influence, possibly our marriage. Tom was good and he loved the law. He
was also tired all the time from the long hours. And he loved Melanie
and Carolyn and felt he was missing being part of their lives. I knew
he wanted to know them more than for just a half hour a day.
Captain
Carolyn, Age 4. By Mel Neale
"Chez
Nous" Gulfstar 47. At anchor in Bahamas in 1994. By Mel Neale |
We enviously read in the magazines about people living
on their boats, cruising in the tropics, happy, healthy, and spending
very little money. Some had families with small children; we saw pictures
of them frolicking on beaches. And there were the stories my parents told,
and I know they didn’t spend much money. It would soon be time for
Melanie to start pre-school, then kindergarten, the first step in being
plugged into the shore, trapped for the next 20 years.
I did the math.
I had it all figured out:
We could sell the house and our interest in a few pieces
of property. Today it’s hard to believe, but at the time banks paid
interest rates of around 14% on CD’s. We had some steady income
for a few years into the future. It looked pretty rosy, if not for the
long term, at least for a while, just to see if we liked it. The first
year we would do a careful accounting of all our expenses to see if we
could continue to afford it. I would start home-school early, while we
were still in the bay, to see how that would work for us. When the money
ran out, Tom and I were pretty resourceful. We could figure out something
else to do, stop somewhere if needed, take shoreside jobs for a while.
He was very strong willed and had excelled in his previous endeavors,
the type of person we now call “A”. We would do a trial run,
arrange for a legal position he could return to in the summers, or at
the end of a year of two, without burning all bridges as they say. He
had always wanted to write and I had always wanted to do something with
my art and photography. And we knew a lot about boats, having been around
them all our lives. There would be a place for us in some job market somewhere
when the time came. I did not want to be rich. I wanted a happy husband
and family.
So, I popped the question. The answer was conditional,
especially as to timing. And then there was the ego thing, the hardest
part. Tom would have to divest himself from a thriving legal practice,
of which he was the “boss,” the one who won the cases. Some
of the cases took years to finish, so there could be no more new ones,
which meant less work but also less money for a while before we could
take off. This was a big sacrifice I was asking for. But we could cruise.
So we set a date in the fall, more than a year away, and started to undo
what had taken 15 years to do. Tom did arrange to be able to come back
to work for a summer or two and to maintain a titular position, just in
case we didn’t like it or something bad happened.
"Chez
Nous" Gulfstar 53. Our current and our fourth "Chez Nous." By
Mel Neale
Melanie
and Carolyn in the Bahamas in 1998 aboard "Chez Nous." By Mel
Neale |
We started Calvert School kindergarten a year early with
Melanie and made up some pre-school lessons for Carolyn. We bought guidebooks
and charts and started planning the dream.
Harder than convincing my husband was telling the grandparents.
They were upset enough that we lived unconventionally on a boat with their
two precious grandbabies, but the idea of removing them from grandparental
sight for most of a year was almost unbearable. And not allowing the children
to attend “real” schools was difficult to explain, even though
Virgina was a pioneer state in the beginning of the home education movement
in the early 80’s. My parents, still living aboard, didn’t
have much to say, except that they’d see us down there. Both sets
thought we’d do it for a year or two and settle back into a comfortable
life, at worst tied to some pilings in Virginia.
Cruising has a learning curve. The first year we learned
compromise. We thought we’d reach the Caribbean, then turn around
and head back to Virginia for Tom’s summer job. We learned that
we liked to cruise to nice places and stay for a while, to unwind and
enjoy each other and the children and that we were both committed to their
home education. We learned that the Bahama Islands are a nice place to
be and that they are just far enough away to make the trip there and back
to Virginia in the eight months we planned to be underway the first year.
And we learned that the children and the grandparents needed time to be
together while there was still time. We learned that if we were really
careful we could live on the money we had allotted, at least for a few
years. We found that there were a lot of nice and some very different
cruisers from all walks of life and distant places out there who would
help out when there were problems. We had new friends and interests; the
children found other children. We learned that this was a life we loved
and that we would do it for as long as we were able. We also knew that
if we had to stop now, we would be thankful that we had done it, especially
at that period in our lives.
When we reached Virginia we also learned that Tom needed
to be involved in some type of work during the summers. The work of cruising,
maintaining the boat and educating the children in the winters was personally
satisfying and took most of his time. Going to the part time summer job
was good, but this was not forever. And Tom learned to love the law from
a distance. It was time to follow the heart and start to write about boating.
As the primary teacher and mother of two young children, I had a few more
years of responsibility before I had to find work, but my time came too.
1993.
Mel and Tom's 25th wedding anniversary, Bahamas. Getting ready for
a wet stormy dinghy ride ashore for dinner. By Carolyn Neale
|
Our favorite boating and cruising expression is “Peace
and quiet.” It’s what we say to each other when the engine
finally goes off, either with sails set or the hook down for the night.
With these words we express what we love about this lifestyle: being free
of land tethers, close to nature and the ones we love, self sufficient
and sustaining, aboard our home.
So here we are, having lived aboard for almost twenty-four
years, still cruising, but working too. Our children have known and loved
their grandparents by being together during summers; they completed their
home education aboard; they are now ashore in college and grad school,
both at schools on the Florida coast. Melanie lives aboard her own small
sailboat, Carolyn works part time at a marina. Tom and I are still married.
The girls just returned to Florida after two weeks back home in the Exumas,
Bahamas aboard our fourth Chez Nous.
Copyright 2005 Mel Neale
