Sailing with children
Is it recommended?
On the last day of our two-week sailing trip in the Seychelles, I break a rib. Maybe two. Sometimes it feels like three. We had docked Felicité, our 38 ft Lagoon Catamaran bareboat charter and tied her up at the marina on Mahé. She was snug between two bigger, better 45 ft cats and tied securely to the jetty. She hardly moved at all. Even the space between the back of the jetty and the aft of the yacht remained a consistent half meter. The first mate and I had spent the afternoon packing and cleaning, while our husbands sorted out the boat and did the hand over with the charter company. Our children played on the jetty. Mostly, they fished.
My son, who had a broken leg and who couldn’t walk when we arrived two weeks before, was leading the fishing competition. He had spent a lot of time fishing off the side of the boat on our trip as he couldn’t actually do much else. Certainly, he couldn’t swim, or dive, or sup, or explore palm fringed beaches, or laze in the shallows to cool off, which is what we were all doing all day every day. Mostly, he fished.
You may ask at this stage what we were doing taking a child with a broken leg on a sailing trip, but we hadn’t planned for the accident two weeks before we were due to leave, and if the thought of taking children sailing hadn’t stopped us in the first place, we certainly weren’t going to let this small hiccough stop us either.
He was tottering around and dangling his broken leg over the edge of the jetty to get as good a view of the fish as he could. There was a small crowd of people around the kids and eventually we just left them with the pliers as we were too busy to attend to them and their catch every two minutes. I was consistently worried that he was going to fall in and sink like a stone in the harbour water and that I would have to dive in there after him.
This had been a great concern of mine the whole trip. The first week was not so bad as he really couldn’t move much and relied on me to carry him from fore, to aft, to below, to the saloon, to fore, to aft and so on, as the other children moved from one place to the other. It was during the second week, that I woke up at 5am to hear the thump, thump, thump of his cast along the deck above my head as he made his way -alone- in the breaking dawn to have a wee off the trampoline at the front. This was of course entirely against the rules, but the fact that he was moving was so amazing that I would catapult out of bed and run, heart palpitating to catch up and nonchalantly pretend to be looking at the still glimmering stars, while making sure I had a hand on him.
He did not fall in. Neither did any of the other children and every one survived, which was the most important thing. In fact during the whole trip we managed to keep his cast dry besides for the one drenching when I had his inflatable boat tied to me with a squeedgy and we were surfing Endless Summer waves on Côte d’ivoire on Praslin. He did not flip or fall out but a wave crashed over his head and flooded the boat. Anyway we made it to shore quite quickly and he lay on the beach with his foot in the air as the water drained out before we took him back to the yacht.
On this final day of the holiday, after two weeks of living between the most incredible beauty and pretty hardcore camping on the water, we were congratulating ourselves on getting everyone back alive. Evening approached. We knew we could feed the mutinous crew, settle them down to a movie on a laptop in the main saloon, and saunter down the jetty for dinner at the Maharaj, while keeping an eye on the boat for movement of any kind.
We had just ordered icy cold beers, which we were enjoying, along with the fact that for the first time in two weeks all four of us were off the boat and child-free, when a tropical downpour hit. The rain was torrential. We were mesmerised by the water falling from the sky, when Skipper looked up and said,
“Hatches.”
He did not need to say another word. The first mate and I were up and running towards the boat as if our semi — dry beds depended on it. She almost slipped in her haste and I saw her wobble and regain her footing before proceeding slightly more carefully down the jetty as I overtook her at a steady clip.
I flew up our side of the yacht, where the line of hatch windows opened up to the sky and the stars at night from our bed. The catamaran had been a natural choice for this cruise as we were two families of four and the set-up gave each family their own hull for the children to defile and to which we could send them in moments of high stress, such as when some-one had eaten someone else’s biscuit, or caught a fish, or won at cards. Our kids had the fore cabin on our side, and we had the aft.
Our hatches were usually open when we were on the boat to encourage air flow.
All of our hatches were closed, which was nothing short of miraculous. Our bed had been wet twice the day before, once by an apparently misfired bucket of water, which landed on my husband’s chest as he was having a quiet moment in bed, and once by a squall. It was only just dry.
“I’m out.” I called over to the first mate through the pelting rain, turning and heading back to the Jetty. Still moving too fast.
That is when I slipped, and in trying to regain my balance, launched myself headlong off the back of the boat toward the jetty a meter and half below and at least two meters away.
I smashed my left shin on the edge of the first step, then my foot as my face hurtled toward the sharp steel edge of the hard-wood jetty.
I reached my arms out in front of me, as if I were trying to fly myself out of the situation and swoop up and over the mast of the opposite boat. Unfortunately though, I do not have super powers and just saw the jetty coming at my face at a frightening speed. I hit the edge with the palm of my hands. Grabbed on and braced hard, slowing my flight before performing my best ever low-push-up, effectively removing my face from the line of fire. I was so strong from four weeks of carrying my 26 kg son around everywhere he needed to go, that I then transitioned into an up-dog my yoga instructor would have been proud of, and she can bend like a pretzel, as the rest of my body continued on its trajectory, which is when my ribs hit, and I thought; “There goes a rib,” as I moved into a high-push-up, twisted my body around, drawing my legs through the water and then sat on the edge of the jetty.
As the rain beat against my shocked body, I marvelled that I was still conscious.
The next bit is quite a blur. It happened so fast. I was still running on shock and adrenaline. The first mate, having had two weeks of boo boo’s with her youngest, who was leaving the boat basically wrapped in bandages from head to toe, treated me just like a child. She made stand up, took me inside, gave me a dry dress to put on, told me I'd be fine and then escorted me gingerly back to the restaurant.
I requested an extra chair to put my leg up on, a lime to quarterize the graze with and a napkin full of ice to reduce the swelling on my shin. Over our last dinner, we discussed the pros and cons of sailing with kids and decided unanimously that we would do it again tomorrow.
Sailing, we have been reminded is not for sissies and this was easy sailing. This was not beating into the wind and the waves and doing rolling watches at night all alone in the great big ocean, which I have known people with one year olds do. This was cruising, like one would do in the Med, except in Seychelles there is still an abundance of marine life, which for me, is really what it’s all about. The kids all did remarkably well and I am fairly confident that they learnt somethings. Certainly they had a lot of fun and caught a lot of fish.
I hope to return some-day soon and participate in the regrowth of the coral reefs as well as visit the outer islands, but for now, we are planning our next trip. Two years’ time, in Thailand perhaps, and we will try not to break anything before we go or whilst we are there.
