The Best of Both Worlds

Winters sailing in the Caribbean. Summers “cooling it” in rural Wisconsin. Who could ask for anything more?

Issue 2 : Sept/Oct 1998

Seasonal cruisers Dan and Cathy Haupert and their daughter Mara have the best of both worlds … and they know it. Caribbean liveaboards in the winter, they metamorphose into members of the Wisconsin working class each summer.

“After six or seven winter months of Caribbean paradise, we begin to fantasize about ice breaking up on the northern rivers and the budding of our springtime forests, then we crave a change of seasons,” Cathy says. “Likewise as the chill north wind swirls the autumn leaves and geese fly south, we consider it perfect to return to the Caribbean.”

This pendular lifestyle first began in 1987 when they bought a 1965 Ericson 35 and christened her the Catherine L. This marked the beginning of a five-year plan. Dan had been a Wisconsin small-lake racer and sailor all his life with some experience crewing aboard a 48-foot Cal on San Francisco Bay thrown in for variety.

Cathy’s experience began later but with more intensity. She took a Sailboats, Inc. class, chartered a 32-foot sailboat for a 1986 vacation with Dan, and was hooked. “We enjoyed it immensely,” she says, “and haunted marinas on the shores of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and even Eastern Florida, looking for the ‘right’ boat, one built sturdily for bluewater cruising and within our budget.” The following year they had the boat and a cruising plan.

The family lives in what they describe as “an ancient mobile home on 300 wooded acres in rural Wisconsin,” making it easier to leave the rooted lifestyle behind once a year and enabling a larger portion of their earnings to support their wintertime passion. Cathy works as a nurse during the summer, and Dan has a small business which operates year-round, even in his absence.

The Catherine L spent a couple of years on the hard on the Hauperts’ Wisconsin property while Dan worked through an extensive list of upgrades: replacing gate valve thru-hulls with Marelon ball valves, refitting the large windows with Lexan, adding fuel and water tanks, creating mountings for a used Aries windvane, building a bowsprit for the anchors, adding a manual windlass, installing a chain pipe system so chain could run into the bilge for storage, adding an inner staysail, adding lifeline safety netting, rebedding the ports, building a sea hood for the hatchway, rebedding and reinforcing fittings and stanchions, installing four bilge pumps (two electric and two manual), and adding an automatic Halon fire extinguisher for the Atomic 4.

He increased storage space by removing a shower stall and making use of the bilge space below, made other dead spaces available through hinged doors, built a boom gallows, replaced electronic instruments, added a masthead tricolor, drilled and strengthened areas of the deck where delamination had occurred, renovated the interior (which had been wallpapered!), sanded the bottom and applied a barrier coat and bottom paint, and secured an infant seat to a settee for the newest addition to the family.

Mara was born in 1990, just after they moved the Catherine L to their Wisconsin property. This was no surprise, rather part of the program. Dan says her birth dovetailed nicely with their plans. Cathy says of Mara, “She is our general ambassador, being more extroverted than we are. Life aboard would be extremely dull without her exuberance and laughter.”

The Catherine L was launched once more in the spring of 1993 on Lake Superior. Mystic, the author’s boat, shared a dock with the Catherine L as Dan added tanks, fiddled with the windvane, and prepared for life at sea. Cathy was also around, helping with the proceedings as much as is possible with a toddler in tow. A beautiful, bubbly, no-fuss child, Mara was already a joy to have around.

Toward the end of the 1993 Lake Superior sailing season, the Hauperts sailed away just as others were preparing their boats for winter storage. They crossed Lake Superior and sailed down Lake Michigan, arriving in Sheboygan, Wis., with ice forming on the deck. That spring had been the year of the flooding on the Mississippi, so the Catherine L was trucked to Kentucky Lake, following the waning days of fall ever farther south. From Kentucky Lake, they traveled through the Tennessee River and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a little-known ribbon of paradise running through eastern Mississippi and western Alabama, ending on the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile Bay.

The threesome celebrated their first Christmas holiday away from home in Fairhope, Ala. They had meandered to the Gulf Coast of Florida by the time their first winter season drew to a close.

Panama City, Fla., was the beneficiary of a large portion of the Catherine L’s cruising budget the second season when they replaced her original Atomic 4 with an M25XP Universal diesel and continued down the Intracoastal Waterway, through the Okeechobee Waterway, and to Miami, their “jumping off place” for the world beyond.

Winters came and went and Mara grew as the Hauperts explored the Bahamas … the Exuma Islands … the Jumentos … the Dominican Republic … Puerto Rico … Culebra … St. Thomas … and St. John … both above sea level and the world below. They dove for many a dinner and learned to extract and prepare conch and then to create harmonizing horns with the shells that remained behind.

Mara is home schooled aboard the Catherine L using the same texts and workbooks as the kids in her hometown school which she does attend briefly most years. Cathy says, “On board she has her own space, brings favorite toys, games and so on and has photos displayed of family and friends. She’s adapted well to our transient lifestyle. She looks forward to exploring new places, but enjoys returning to the north woods to run. While cruising she has learned to play instantaneously with children of any age.” Mara learned to read by age 3. The hardest part is keeping up with Mara’s increasing appetite for books while sailing in Spanish-speaking areas.

Mara was born to cruising. The Catherine L was prepared for the trip. What about Dan and Cathy? “Advanced preparation doesn’t prepare you for the changes in climate and sailing areas,” Dan says. Sweetwater sailors, they were unfamiliar with currents, tides, the effects of salt water, temperature, and the intensity of an all-sun climate. “Then,” Cathy adds, “there’s the reality of being together 24 hours every day in a confined space in sometimes intense, and even dangerous, conditions. Even loving, caring people don’t know how they will react or feel during the innumerable ‘crisis’ situations that can occur. A small child adds to the intensity. I don’t think there is any way to prepare yourself beforehand, except by gaining sailing experience and having quality safety gear.”

Safety gear heads the list of what the Hauperts value most highly aboard the Catherine L. Dan rates a functioning GPS as their most valued equipment and keeps a back-up unit in a soft metal box to protect it from lightning strikes. Their second priority is good ground tackle. The third is a reliable engine. All of these are secondary to a sound boat that sails well.

The Hauperts live simply on the boat as well as at home in Wisconsin. Catherine L has no refrigeration, and they forgo endless missions in search of ice by living without. “Our simple lifestyle without TV or refrigerator has allowed us to meet our entire electrical demands with a single 20-watt solar panel,” Dan notes. They are considering the addition of a second solar panel to accommodate the needs of a small laptop computer in the future. Cathy adds, “ We feel that a GPS has become a necessity and use a SSB radio receiver for weather information at times. We do have an AM-FM radio for music and news when available in English. Our main form of entertainment is reading.” Their largest expense, one which they have wherever they live, is food, which runs approximately $350 a month.

Still, she notes, their good old boat and their simple lifestyle have enabled the Hauperts to cruise in all the same waters occupied by people who’ve invested much more in getting there. “We have rowed our eight-foot dinghy to the same beach as megayachts and spent hours there reading, swimming, or playing,” Cathy says. “We’ve sailed into deserted coves, visited the rainforest, explored Spanish forts, shopped in the tourist shops, and toured the mountains in the Dominican Republic. Along the way, we’ve met an Australian couple on a 26-foot boat, a Swedish sailor aboard his 13-foot fiberglassed lifeboat, a Florida couple and their 10-year-old daughter aboard a 30-foot boat, and even an elderly couple with three dogs on a 35-foot boat. So any size can be home.”

For the Hauperts, Cathy says, “The best part of the cruising lifestyle is being able to watch our child grow up in our presence. Unlike the vast majority of families in the U.S., she is able to see her parents work as a team on a day-to-day basis. She sees us work through conflicts and stressful happenings that occur with keeping the boat safe. And we watch her grow in understanding and wisdom about the world around her.”

Mara’s theme

I like home schooling because when I am finished with my assignments, I have the rest of the day to play. The subjects I like are world history, science, and reading. Math is sometimes fun, also.

It is sometimes hard to fit in when I return to public school because I feel different and miss out on some of their subjects, but they haven’t studied what I have studied. I try to share some experiences and things I have learned. My classmates like the postcards I send from the Caribbean. They didn’t believe that any sound would come from the conch horn I brought and blew for show and tell!

The Dominican Republic was the most interesting place I’ve been. There were pigs, chickens, goats, and motorcycles in the streets. The houses had dirt floors and beautiful knickknacks on their shelves. The children played baseball with homemade cardboard gloves. It was hard to teach two Spanish-speaking girls how to play “hide and go seek” with the little Spanish I knew and hand gestures.

Mara Haupert

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