sv evi

Luz (7)

Some of my favorite things to do on the boat are color, play games, swim, and play on the paddleboard. I also play Aina Amelia with Jade — it’s a really fun game we made up. Sometimes Mama really nicely lets us do video games.

Passages can be fun, but normally they are really boring because you can’t play many games or you will get seasick. Also, your parents are usually busy so they can’t play with you. Mama sleeps a lot. On the plus side, sometimes we get to do video games on passages. If it’s a day sail, we normally don’t get to do video games.

I still miss things about living on land: friends, some food, our house, family, all our old stuff like the slinky and our vacuum. I miss our vacuum because Mama used to play with us trying to get our feet with the vacuum and we would run away.

I like snorkeling and looking at all the fish, sharks, whales, turtles, coral, starfish, sting rays, manta rays, and whale sharks. I also like poking the Christmas tree ferns to make them disappear. Also, one time we saw a water spout.

We meet a lot of friends. There is Harlow, Kota, Bo and Shona on SV Tayrona. They are really good friends. There is Milla, Ziggy, Caz and Hamish on SV Cooeyanna. There is Dalton, Hall, Caroline and John on SV Nogal. Hall left his water bottle on our boat and now we use it all the time. There is Gretchen, Edgar, Margeaux and Jarrett. They live on SV Lions Den.

We also meet some boats that have only one child, like Rex, Taylor, and Brad who used to live on SV Pangea. Also Isobel, Jen and Andrew who used to live on SV Due South. And Sophia, Janet and Craig on SV Cool Bananas.

In home school I’m a year ahead in maths. So now I’m working on 3rd grade maths even though I’m in second grade. The subjects we have in school are maths, reading, boat, knots, science, and sometimes language like Chinese or Spanish. I’m learning Japanese on Duolingo.

I really love living on the boat but I also miss my friends, family and house.

The End

Jade (9)

I enjoy knitting, sewing, and embroidering. I love listening to audiobooks. I like swimming a lot, and Papa got me a weight belt. Yay! Tomu, Luz, and I play a zoomie game on the paddle board with “Halt!” and “Resume!” and “Secretary!” Luz and I have a game called Aina Amelia which we play about 5 hours a day. In the game, Luz is Aina Amelia Bronson, Tomu is Kitty when he plays, and I am everybody else. Tomu, Luz and I like to adapt the rules of games to make them longer, funner, or harder to win. For example, 3 player Doppelkopf, Fancy Crazy Eights, and Catan to 25 points.

Some of my favorite words are: heroic, athletic, majestic, banana, and potato. I enjoy school more now because I start working on school as soon as I wake up at 5 or 6 am, and I’m not drained by the end of school. I’m currently reading The Wild Robot Protects, and the Legends of Lotus Island Book 2. My favorite book to listen to is Harry Potter.

Country	High	Low
New Zealand, 7 months	Po Po came, going to Paihia school, making friends I could keep for 6 months, meeting Taylor	getting head lice and having to cut my hair
Fiji, 2.5 months	my best friend Sterling from home came to visit us	it was really hot when we first got there for the first month, flies kept landing on me, and I was grumpy
Vanuatu, 2 weeks	meeting SV Oceaneer, riding in the back of a pick-up truck to the volcano, seeing the volcano on Tanna Island, and getting cotton candy on Vanuatu’s Independence Day	saying goodbye to our friends and our first volcano trip where it was raining and you couldn’t see anything
Australia, 5 weeks	seeing kangaroos, koalas, and playtpuses in the wild; hanging out with our friend Isobel and playing Loot & Sleeping Queens a lot	once in Airlie Beach the police got called on us because Mama and Papa left us alone at the Lagoon (a pool); we had to wait by a tree and Luz was scared
Indonesia, 8 months	whale sharks, manta rays, Po Po coming to visit, orangutans, waterfalls, hanging out with Chloe a lot. Chloe is my best friend.	everybody always wanting to take our picture, no toilet paper in public bathrooms
Philippines, 2 months	We met our friend Igna, buko mango shakes = yum, we went to an arcade with a fun virtual game	hauling out took soo long, and my siblings and I had to wait in the lounge for hours with nothing to do
China, 1 week	seeing our grandma Po Po, getting a bunch of Pez, and seeing our ancestral home which was very dark inside	barfing in a car right at the end of a 2 hour drive, and then standing around with barf pants for 30 minutes while we checked into the hotel
Singapore, 5 days	very cool parks, yummy fresh squeezed orange juice from a vending machine, Flower Dome at Gardens by the Bay, a light show, and cool street dances	my eye was infected and I had to go to the doctor 2 times, and we did a really long walk to a dim sum restaurant and I only ate 2 oranges b/c I’m a vegetarian. ugh!
Japan, 2 weeks	The Flying Dinosaur rollercoaster, Hollywood Dream rollercoaster, Splash Mountain, and Big Thunder Mountain, zip-lining, and a cool interactive museum. Also Harry Potter tour where we learned about how the movies were made and took lots of pictures	Luz couldn’t go on some of the really fun, faster rollercoasters at USJ, Osaka because she was too short, but Tomu and I could.

THE END.

Tomu (11)

Q: How many hours do you read each day?

A: Maybe 30 minutes at night before bed and two hours a day.

Q: What are your favorite things you’ve done in Indonesia?

A: I liked seeing the orangutans in Borneo, swimming with whale sharks in Kaimana, seeing the Komodo Dragons on Komodo Island, and climbing the boulders in Belitung.

Q: What do you think about home school?

A: We don’t do as much as normal school and my work is mostly independent.

Q: What do you think about passages?

A: It’s mostly fun because I don’t get seasick anymore, and I can read.

Q: What are your 3 favorite games to play?

A: Chess, Doppelkopf, and Catan.

Q: How’s the friend situation?

A: I miss my friends from home, but I like making new friends.

Q: Do you like writing a reflection every year?

A: No!

Q: Do you miss anything from home in Tacoma?

A: I miss running. And the parks.

Hannah (49)

Our second year of living aboard evi was spent mostly in Indonesia. What a fabulous country to explore by sailboat! It was a stellar year. We also visited the Philippines, China, Singapore, the USA, and Japan.

This year it feels harder to write a reflection, because the cruising lifestyle feels “normal” to me now. I’ll start by describing a typical day.

A typical day for me begins with 15 minutes of yoga on the bow. Then sometimes I dive in the ocean and swim to the back. By the time I’ve rinsed off, Riki usually has my coffee ready. Next I usually drink my coffee while making breakfast for everyone. We often eat a purple dragonfruit each day, divided between the kids and I. The kids have toast or granola and milk for breakfast, unless it’s Sunday pancake day. Riki and I often have toast with a fried egg on top. After breakfast we do home school, if we are not sailing or on an all-day excursion. After school, I make lunch. In the afternoon we often explore or meet up with another boat. Then I make dinner (or we go out to eat if we are near affordable restaurants). After dinner sometimes we play a family game like Catan, or Riki and the kids play hearts while I read in my bunk.

I find that the motivation to do home school rests solely on my shoulders — if I don’t say we are doing school then it doesn’t happen. That can feel hard. However, lately Jade has been very self-motivated. She’s been waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 am and immediately starting school, before I wake up. This motivates Tomu and Luz to start school as soon as they get up. 🙂

Lately I have been struggling with cooking for two vegetarians (Jade and Luz) who don’t eat many vegetables beyond carrots, cucumbers, and raw red peppers. Luz also doesn’t like beans. Neither child likes chickpeas, tofu, or tempe. Jade doesn’t eat eggs. They don’t like coconut milk based curry, even if it’s not spicy. They don’t like red spaghetti sauce.

I treasure this time as a family with Tomu, Jade, and Luz, knowing that soon enough they will be all grown up. We play a lot of cards. Lately, Doppelkopf and Skat are our favorites.

Our cruising life is greatly enhanced when we are around other boats, especially kid boats. Yay for friends! This year we had the good fortune of buddy boating with Igna and Kili on White Wings III for long periods of time. We checked into Indonesia in April together and checked out of Indonesia a few weeks ago together.

Riki (61)

After many attempts on Han’s part to have me write my 2nd year reflection, here we go! It’s not that I didn’t want to write it, it’s just difficult to find a quiet block of time without my mind churning over the never ending lists of repairs, maintenance and chores.

My setting is in the comfortable cockpit of evi, feet up with a cold beverage watching a stellar full moon rise over a remote offshore island in Malaysia. I hear the chatter and giggles of the kiddos playing a game in the salon below. This is the boatlife we have settled into starting on our third year aboard. 

Our family has never been short on adventure from the start 12 years ago. With the creation of our new family, Han, infant Tomu, and I moved aboard Guava Jelly and sailed Fiji for a year. After Jade and then Luz were born we up and moved to Cuenca, Ecuador on a whim for a couple of years. Adventure abounds! Even while living a relatively standard home life in Tacoma we were constantly seeking adventure with camping, climbing, backpacking, biking and travel. Sailing the South Pacific and SE Asia didn’t seem crazy and the adventure is day to day life on the briny!

For me, the challenging lifestyle on evi is something I embrace. I don’t HAVE to work on evi…I GET to work on evi! She is a very solid, safe and comfortable home. It is generally our interaction with land where some of the mundane tasks eat up large amounts of our time.

Getting to land almost always requires launching the dinghy (our car, which we call pentapus) and fitting the heavy 18HP outboard. If we are lucky the seas will be flat though this is often not the case and we can have 1 meter waves bucking or rolling 16 tons of sailboat while trying to lower a 47kg motor onto a moving target, off the back of evi. Then navigating through the waves to a remote shore with breaking waves. Negotiating a ride to some faraway town to visit various shops to provision for extended periods of time. This is a task for Super Hannah! I usually did the shopping in Tacoma which is the mundane. Boatlife shopping is an adventure!

Keeping evi afloat and all the systems working mostly falls in my lap. evi is equipped with all the conveniences of a normal home, plus many sailing-specific systems and there is no one to call if there is a problem. A large part of my day is spent tending to the regular maintenance, repairs and cleaning. Acquiring diesel and getting the 600L that our tanks hold is an all-day, sometimes two-day job. See shopping challenges above. There have been days where I will schlep about 800+ kilos of liquid, all in 20 liter jugs…evi is a very thirsty girl!

I am not the most organized person. There is a constant prioritizing of tasks to do, but I embrace it. I honestly fear the day when this is over, and I have no pressure to fix something now! I guess I’ll figure out what to do with all my ‘free time’. Probably go back to being a pseudo soccer mom like before!

This past year has been spent almost exclusively in remote locations of Indonesia. Swimming encounters, up close and personal, with whale sharks, pelagic manta rays, and all the otherworldly marine life has been so inspiring and special to my soul. Exploring a sprinkling of the 17,000+ islands of Indonesia has been epic! Interacting with the locals and their hospitable curiosity has been a real joy. I imagine these are the things any visitors experiencing Indonesia would say. When adding our boat life it is a unique experience that isn’t for sale without doing it yourself.

Finally, these two years cruising with my family, living in a small space and getting to spend and share this time together, witnessing how the kids develop, adapt, grow…sharing this with my life partner is something I’m sure I’ll miss when it is gone.  Until then, we will just keep on keeping on and striving for the next adventure no matter whatever latitude we are at!