Yeah, I do not think this was such a good idea. It sounds romantic, but not very safe. Two young children, with no interaction with other people or other children for long periods of time, I believe is not good.
I believe the best you can do for young children is given them the feeling of stability, so when they do started growing, they have a solid foundation to fall back on.
I think the parents hearts were in the right place, however, you really need to think things through, and have a back-up plan. I wish them well, and I am glad they are all o.k.
Sailing on Oologah lake N/E of Tulsa where there is a island between the docks & the lake.
Son & daughter went sailing one Saturday while I was working on the family sail boat. Several hours later, an sailboat that was new to the marina came flying in under sail & power. They were yelling about some little kids way down the lake in a little yellow sailboat.
I waved & said they were mine. They said that they were at least 3 miles up the lake. I asked, “Did they have their life jackets on?” I was told that they did so I told the people not to worry about them then.
Near that same age, we took them overnight on a quarter ton racing sailboat out past the Fallons and down to half moon bay & back. Lots of other things with boats.
If I had the money then, we were going to ‘go small, but go now’ & prolly cross an ocean or two.
I endangered their life much more when I had them in a car.
Every time I was speeding in any possibly questionable circumstance, they were in much more danger. And as a family we have been on some hairy sailing trips.
Of the parents on this thread, how many of you have never been over the speed limit or crossed a yellow light that was close?
So, yes, I would have done exactly the same if I could have.
Statistically, we basically shouldn’t ever put our kids in the car for anything less than a critical doctors visit. Car accidents are extremely common, and most of the time that we have our kids in the car, it’s totally optional.
But it’s a risk most of us choose to take. I don’t see the boat as any different.
auto travel is indeed a risk. expected infant diseases aren’t a risk for that activity. even for other hazards, high level medical care is about 20 minutes away in most cases.
besides the risk chance is the recovery success. emergency health care is readily available and less expensive closer to home.
most long term memories start at about 4 years of age and these will be few as life goes on. what would these kids get out of a trip like this any way?
I think when most people talk about coming from a stable home, they’re talking about the marriage of the parents and not the literal stability of the home.
I’ve taken my children boating since the day they were born. It required extra precautions (life jackets) and monitoring, but some of our best bonding moments happened on that boat, when it was just the four of us and nature.
I spent years of my early childhood alone, in small boats, on the Chesapeake Bay, out of sight and often after dark. Good life experience.
Not particularly worried about the cost of a rescue. Those crews and equipment are there for a reason, and the event is as good or better than any training. They will cost us sitting at base or headed for a rescue either way.
I just spent a week with VATF1 (Fairfax County VA’s Urban Search & Rescue Team) at a training facility in Georgia. They are one of only two teams in the US certified for overseas deployment. On every mission they are sent they work tirelessly for weeks to rescue, at most, a dozen people. Most often less.
First of all, I don’t have the means or skills to carry off such a thing or I might have because it sounds like a great adventure. Secondly, I’ll bet that far more people get hurt or die boating recreationally than sailing around the world, and that hasn’t deterred people from hopping on jet skis or taking a boat for a spin. Finally, satellite communication is making boating much safer for everyone because we can see weather reports and call for help from just about anywhere.
No matter how you slice it - per mile, per hour, or per trip - the fatality rate for kids in car seats in cars hustling down the highway is pretty damn low. I don’t have numbers, but I’ll be that by any of those measures, circumnavigation of the earth via small sailboat is far more hazardous.
There are people who are happy to be self-reliant and who do things like sail the oceans and cross the continent on wagon trains. Their children often grow up to be self-reliant and to have a realistic view of fear and danger.
There are people who are happy to stay home, and perhaps to read about the adventures of others. (and, perchance, to dream.)
And there are people who subscribe heavily to the Culture of Fear, who are not happy just to sit at home and worry but who also feel a desire to stop anyone else from enjoying the freedom of living a self-reliant type life.
They are self-reliant until they get themselves into trouble, and then they call the Coast Guard. Is that the kind of self reliance you are talking about?
One of the missions of the Coast Guard is to rescue people. Now, if these parents made a habit of getting into trouble that would be one thing but I seriously doubt they foresaw their child getting that ill, and if they had everyone would have stayed home.
I don’t know much about sailing, which is why I’ll leave it to those who actually DO know about sailing to judge the real risks here.
Can we stop armchair-quarterbacking every damn set of parents whose kids aren’t perfect or get sick or have a boo-boo? Even if said illness or boo-boo requires an air evac. The world isn’t safe, but Og forbid we should all just crawl into a hole and never take any risks whatsoever.
Yep. They got off the couch and did it. I bet they’ll do it again … and so will their children. And so will the thousands of people around the world who are at this very moment sailing small boats on the oceans … but they don’t make for captivating Culture of Fear cable television news.
I feel no desire to try to stop them, even if it were feasible … and it is not. I’ll just mind my own business and let other people mind theirs.
Rewarding? For a 1-year-old kid? He’s still learning how to walk and grab things; he’s not going to remember a single damn thing about this trip.
When I was his age, my parents took my older brother and sister to Disney World, leaving me with the neighbors for a week or so. I don’t remember any of it.
If knowledgeable sailors say it’s safer than driving the kids to school every day, I’ll take them at their word.
It’s great that these people want to take their kids to visit other countries. Even the 1 year old would, at worst, be no worse off than if she was at home. But the decision to use the most protracted means to make the trip is baffling.
My kids are about a year younger than these two, and I would never consider confining them to the house for weeks at a time, much less a space the size of a couple of rooms.
What were they doing all day? Books and toys are not going to cut it for very long. There’s not quite enough space to run around and no new people or things to interact with. A trip to the supermarket or playground is a carnival of stimulation compared to a few weeks in the middle of the ocean.
Everybody’s got different standards; some people won’t leave the kids with a sitter for a few hours so they can catch a movie, some folks won’t put them in day care. It’s hard to say what the right balance of childhood development vs. parental activity is, but I’m OK with calling the adults clueless or self-absorbed in this case.
I’m not a circumnaviagtor but I’ve crewed on a couple of extended duration sails, and while there is certainly less of a backup net in mid-ocean the biggest hazard is boredom; sailing can be fantastically boring out of port even when you have a sustaining wind and can be suicide-inducing when you’re in the doldrums.
As long as you are appropriately provisioned and have the basic equipment and skills for navigation and self-rescue it is probably less risky than taking kids on a camping trip in an “improved” campground for a weekend, especially since there really isn’t anywhere for kids to get lost or into trouble. With toddlers or small children it is certainly important to secure the ship hazards and have netting to prevent small kids from falling overboard (and discipline larger and more mobile children about shipboard safety) this isn’t hard; in fact, it is probably easier than child-proofing a suburban home.
As for the outrage of the o.p., it is so weak as to be watery as the ocean. Part of the mission of the Coast Guard and Navy is to provide rescue and support on the seas to whomever is in need, and we pay a fantastic premium to maintain those capabilities to be exercised when and if they are needed. This is one of the more useful tasks these organizations do in terms of public benefit (compared to, say, drug interdiction or fighting the “War on Terror”) and as this was a situation of a child becoming ill–which could happen anytime and anywhere–rather than the parents taking the boat into hazardous conditions or without basic skills and provisions, it is hardly a case of neglegence except in the narrow-minded view that raising your kids in any fashion outside of the suburban soccer/piano/ballet exposure is “negligent”. Kids and adults are subject to all kinds of risks; aside from vehicular accidents and exposure to illness, there are all of the normal traumatic hazards of childhood activities, abduction or molestation by friends or strangers, natural disasters, et cetera. By comparison, a well-provided cruise in a sailboat with experienced sailors is not some kind of death-defying activity, and there is an entire subculture of people who do this for decades without suffering any kind of critical failure.
The most salient argument was actually the lack of exposure such children will have with other kids and the resulting social isolation, which is why many crusiers with kids regularly tag up with one another in ports and exchange shortwave or e-mail conversations. It is a valid concern, though, which is why most cruiser families will take a hiatus to allow their children to attend normal school at some point, but honestly, their kids are probably bored by the poor discipline, boring conversations, and lack of personal attention they get from being boat-schooled, not to mention missing all of the exposure to new people and places they get setting into ports around the world and responsibility they are expected to demonstrate .
Lamesauce rant from a narrow-minded viewpoint: 2 out of 10 possible dolphin squeaks.
I’d just like to point out that the rescue apparently wasn’t solely due to the child’s illness. The boat was in fact disabled and sinking, so the rescue would have occurred even if she was a glowing model of health, or even if there were no children aboard at all. They probably wouldn’t have sent in the parajumpers ahead of time without a sick person on board, but either way, they needed a rescue.
(just reading your OP). Parents who when they realized that their child was ill was able and knew who to call for help from a source that they know would be able to assist. So totally responsible, and doing their homework, as all parents we hope should be, they given the highest honor we can give. God Bless them.
