Baby Aboard

Our biggest question about having a baby has been how to keep her safe in the marine environment. We have bought all six books that I could find on Amazon about cruising with children. Clearly tons of cruising families have lived with children from newborns to teenagers on sailboats. And it just so happens that everyone that writes a book about it says it is a great experience. If anyone knows of a book about how unhappy a family was cruising with children, let us know.

Most of the suggestions I have read have been the same. To sum them up:

• Put the kid in a life jacket when underway.
• Devise some kind of toddler harness and tether system when ever kid is above deck.
• Teach them to swim.
• Teach older children to row the dingy. Started by having them practice row with the painter still tied to the boat. As they get better give them more line.
• Put netting up around the life lines.
• Lash a car seat above or below deck.
• Have some kind of playpen area, either a commercial "pack and play," or create one in a bunk with netting or lee cloths.
  
• Bring things to entertain them like toys and books.
• Let them participate in sailing, steering, etc. But don't push it because it is really not that fun for kids for very long periods of time.
• Find other kids and cruising families. Meet up with them again if possible.
• Hide fun treats and toys to take out for long passages and bad weather.

In addition I have found some unique ideas online. One family created a flotation system for the car seat, and tested it in the pool. Not sure if we will do this, but it does seem like there is an untapped market for various baby flotation devices. I really enjoyed one families description of buying an immersion alarm for their three year old. I won't ruin the funny part, so you can read it yourself. On one online forum I found some interesting posts including one that has some pictures of hanging the infant seat in the companion way. I'm not sure that the carseat companies have safety tested all the ways that parents are using the seats on boats, but it does make me think.

Carseat flotation
http://www.sailjazz.com/editorial/read/27

Immersion Alarm (LOL)
http://www.weliveonaboat.com/2008/07/keeping-kids-safe-on-a-boat.html

The V-Crib
http://www.searoom.com/sail_baby.htm

Comments by Gaff Cutter family and Hanging Carseat
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Board/pbo/Number/397323/an/0/

What is it like to live on a boat?

Our friends and family have been asking what it is like to live on our boat. We have been on our boat almost two months, and I keep waiting for the boat to be clean to take pictures to post. Well, today I decided that we should just tell the truth. Neither Ari nor I excel at picking up. We even got rid of most of our stuff, and yet there is still clutter.

So life on a boat is exactly like life on land, we are surrounded by junk. Above is our Nav desk where we we put project and mail junk. Ari has been constantly doing projects since we moved aboard. I doubt we will ever really clean this area up.


This is the "nursery." Most day we keep this clean, but today is laundry day, well really yesterday was. We have friends who are expecting a baby a month after us, they already put the nursery together, we try and keep it clean.

Here you can sort of see our bed. I didn't make it up all nice, but it is small. I bought a foam mattress pad to make it softer. We have to tuck the full sized pad in to make it fit. We have worked out a clever system of taking turns sleeping on the inside and outside throughout the night. I think soon I will be too pregnant to sleep on the inside. It is getting hard for me to roll over when it is time to switch.


Despite the mess we are loving living on the boat. Like tonight when Ari took the little boat out for a row, and later a sail. The sun was setting, it was warm, and we enjoyed a cool drink on deck afterward.

We are excited for the little one to join us on our adventure. More pictures of boat life soon.