Two families choose Alberg 30s for living aboard
Issue 50 : Sept/Oct 2006
Two months ago my husband and I brought our daughter home to our 30-foot sailboat. We live aboard a 1965 Alberg 30 sloop, which we recently sailed from Boston to the Florida Keys. While doing a few cruising upgrades in Marathon, Florida — solar panels, ham radio — we found ourselves pregnant and settled down temporarily, found work, and began preparing for our baby’s birth.
The Alberg 30 is a classic design with beautiful lines and long overhangs. The boat is cruised all over the world; in fact, there were five in Marathon Harbor at one time last year, all of us cruising on Alberg 30s. The same boats are raced extensively in Ontario, where the design was originally produced, and in the Chesapeake Bay. Living space, due to the narrow beam, is very limited. The boat is 8 feet 9 inches at its widest point and, unlike the modern cruisers, does not carry that width far forward or aft. The interior is typical of stripped- down sailing accommodations — two settees, a small galley, head, hanging locker, and forepeak. The basics. Nothing more.
With our space in mind, we warned our families that anything not deemed absolutely necessary for baby-tending would not have a home on our boat. Sophia sleeps in the forepeak with us in her own corner berth with a new mattress and crib sheet. We awake every morning to see her gazing at the forward hatch. She is, like most babies, obsessed with sunlight . . . sunlight hitting the curtains, playing tricks with the awning fabric, streaming in the portlights. What better place in the world to have sunlight at her disposal than aboard our boat?
Her best perch is a bouncy chair that sits on a settee. From there, propped up and engaged, she can watch us cook, dance, clean, and play. The breeze blows through her mobile, which hangs from the overhead. Her other gear includes a baby swing of the outdoor variety, which we hang from the boom in the cockpit. She loves sitting there, under the awning, watching the sun flicker off the water and reflect off the stainless steel. We fill a plastic baby bath with water and leave it on the stern to be warmed by the sun. After her bath, the water flows out the cockpit drains. Her car seat can be tied to a stanchion or a winch when we sail. Other than that, we exist with nothing more than simple baby clothes, a nursing pillow, and an extensive array of blankets, burp cloths, and rags (you can never have too many).
Parenting choices
Many of the parenting choices we made, choices that would have been the same regardless of our living situation, are perfect for boat life. Breast-feeding is miraculous — completely free and requires no refrigeration whatsoever. If only all cruising rations were so simple . . .
We love sleeping with Sophia next to us. Night feedings are a matter of rolling over! We spend enormous amounts of time just being together in bed, watching the stars through the hatch, napping away weekend mornings. Sleeping together was a natural choice and has become one of our favorite aspects of parenting.
Who knows what the future will hold? We hope it will include a long cruise and many adventures. We imagine it will include homeschooling, at least for some period of time. We look forward to that. Cruising children are some of our favorite children. They tend to be adventurous, outgoing, independent, and responsible. If our daughter manages to nab just one of those qualities, we’ll consider ourselves successful as parents. The money we save by living simply, keeping minimal bills (no house payment!), and buying only what we need (and will fit in our boat) allows us to work less, spend more time with our daughter, and eventually set off sailing.
Blog connections
During our trip south we started a blog, a website of stories and photos, to update family and friends on our travels at <http://www.ellenjohnandrubicon.blogspot.com>. An unexpected bonus was the strangers who found their way to the blog. Soon we had connections all over the world. One of the most meaningful of these was with another couple moving onto their Alberg 30, Strathgowan, in Ontario. Angie and Todd Redhead and their son, Lochlan, 6 months old at the time, would become even more important to us with the arrival of Sophia. We told ourselves that if they could manage with a very active baby boy, we could manage a newborn in our limited quarters.
Angie and Todd’s choice to live aboard was made before they had their son. Seeking to “declutter not only possessions but also lifestyle,” they sold their house, making them debt-free, and moved aboard last year. After wintering aboard with the baby, who is now 22 months old, there are no regrets. Says Angie, “There are things I miss, like a nice hot bath in the evenings whenever I wanted it and a craft/art room where I could leave all my work-in-process projects. Now I have to pack everything away even if it’s not finished to make way for dinner preparation, and so on. None of these things outweighs the benefits of living aboard though.”
Angie and Todd agree with us that the ability to raise their son, full-time, is a huge benefit of being on the boat. Debt-free and simplified, their lifestyle gives them the freedom and the means to create a life focused on their family. What does Angie hope Lochlan will take from his early years on the boat? “Freedom from being confined to ‘the norm,’ a sense of adventure and exploration, and a curiosity about the world outside of his four walls,” she says. Angie and Todd and Lochlan live aboard their sailboat on Lake Ontario. While Todd holds down a land-based career, Angie is a stayaboard mom who maintains her blog.
And us? We’ve seen cruising kids leave their boats and go on to become college students, bankers, teachers, and sailors themselves. We hope our daughter will feel independent and confident enough to make any choice she sets her heart on — be it a life in the mountains, an apartment in Hong Kong, a house on a quiet cul-de-sac. A sense of possibility and, as Angie says, freedom from confinement are perhaps the greatest gifts we could give our daughter.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
