by Erik Orton
Our friends let us use their washer and dryer. I’m sure our boat lifestyle seemed peculiar to them. I doubt any of their land friends washed their clothes in their host’s machines during a dinner party, but they were good sports, and we were grateful. On the way home, Erik flipped on his headlamp so other dinghies could see us as we splashed across the dark lagoon with a dinghy full of sleepy children and warm laundry. We bought a floating VHF a few days later.
We had never expected to be in Sint Maarten long enough to build a community. But now we had land friends who sometimes let us swim in their pools and do our laundry during dinner. Our lagoon friends were always changing. While Silverheels prepared to sail to Grenada, Copper Penny showed up in Hawaiian shirts and became our new sailing aunt and uncle. Larry was a silver-haired career cop with a Southern accent and a heart of gold. Penny had a grandmother’s heart, a mother’s smile, and a teenager’s sense of adventure. Their trawler was docked at the luscious Simpson Bay Marina. They gave us chilled orange juice and let Lily pet their dog. We visited their slip whenever we went ashore . . . until they sailed to the BVI. We hadn’t met any other boat families with kids. That didn’t matter when we thought we were leaving. When we were leaving, we were in a frenzy to get everything ready. We were desperate for a routine that brought us together as a family. Now that we were staying, the lagoon had become a giant waiting room.
“Since we’re not going anywhere, can we invite friends to visit?” Alison asked. That was a good question. We, the kids especially, spent most of our time at anchor, surrounded by unswimmable water with limited electricity, limited internet, and unlimited humidity. Those dang Caribbean breezes helped. I had no idea how long it would last.
ERIK
“What would you say about moving to the French side of the lagoon?” I asked Emily one morning. She had plenty of complaints about the French side: gross water, sketchy, rusting boats, triple the distance to the chandleries, and we didn’t know anyone on the French side. “Good points,” I agreed. “But it would be quieter. We wouldn’t get jostled every morning by boats going out the drawbridge and tourists on Jet Skis.” I kept thinking out loud: “We aren’t going to shore as much these days, and we don’t really know anybody on the Dutch side anymore either.” This was all true, but also, I was getting lazy. It didn’t seem worth all of the trouble to re-anchor until I added, “It’s only five bucks to anchor on the French side. That’s a flat rate, not a weekly rate.” The Dutch side charged twenty dollars each week. The engine repair was taking a lot longer than we had expected. We kept returning to the Dutch office and paying to extend our stay. At this point, we preferred to extend our money.
“That’d be fine with me,” Emily said. We pulled anchor and re-dropped it west of the Causeway Bridge on the French side of the lagoon.
“Now we can stay forever,” I said.
“That sounds nice,” she said.
“Really?”
“I’m coming around. I’m focusing on the good stuff, like being rocked to sleep, having a jungle gym onboard, and Eli asking about iguanas. I still like to watch the planes take off. But I don’t want to be on them anymore.” That was something. The kids were doing pretty well too, but they were still adjusting.
“I wish there were some kid boats here,” SJ said as we sat around the salon. I didn’t blame her. I was with my best friend—Emily. But SJ wanted a friend who understood what she was going through, someone besides her family. We were unexpectedly creating a new life in this place. We’d never intended to stay so long.
Once our destination fever broke, I accepted that our engine would be ready when it was ready. I stopped wishing we were somewhere else and started exploring where we were.
Our boat faced a hill that rose steeply up out of the lagoon. It was the tallest point in Simpson Bay and was called the Witch’s Tit.
“That’s a sucky name,” SJ laughed at her own pun.
Alison rolled her eyes. “I’ll call it The Witch’s Hat. It looks like a pointy hat more than that . . . other thing.”
“Who wants to climb the Witch’s . . . Hat later?” I asked.
Sarah Jane pulled her hair into two aggressive pigtails and said, “I do!”
Jane and I took a VHF, got dropped off at the base, and started up the cliff face. It was steep but not steep enough to need ropes. We scaled the volcanic rock, passing goat scat and nodding to the goats that silently watched as we moved upward.
At the top everything fell into place. I could see the whole lagoon, the two bridge entrances, the airport runway, the beaches outside the lagoon. I saw Marigot to the west and Philipsburg to the east. All over the lagoon and bays sat tiny white specks that all swung in unison as the wind shifted. Directly below us, in a field of green and turquoise, was our tiny white speck.
Our boat was our whole world. But it wasn’t the whole world. I had my own ideas and expectations. Emily, Karina, Alison, Jane, Eli, and Lily each had their own too. But there were other ideas and expectations out there. Beyond the edge of the island, the ocean spread far into the distance. St. Barts and Saba and Sint Eustatius broke the horizon. I saw how small I was, how small we all were. We were all part of a beautiful picture. There was plenty to see. We would wait.
Chapter 7
Discovery, Discovery, This Is Fezywig
French Side, Simpson Bay Lagoon, Saint Martin
40 Days aboard Fezywig
EMILY
On the first day of spring, we celebrated Erik’s fortieth birthday with Silverheels, cinnamon rolls, and boat fenders as balloons. One month later, on Easter Sunday, we celebrated my fortieth birthday with sunrise singing, colored eggs, and cardamom cake. Between those two holidays, everything changed. We had visits from two different New York City friends, we met two kid boats, and we fell in love with them so quickly that we moved Fezywig to anchor near them.
Our first NYC visitor was Ty, a photographer who arrived with origami paper, dark-chocolate-covered almonds, and no return ticket. Erik and Sarah Jane had taken the dinghy to pick him up at the airport. The rest of us crowded around the salon table coloring welcome signs when we heard two kid boats, Discovery and Day Dreamer, hailing each other on the VHF.
“Karina, jump in,” I nudged.
“I’m not doing it,” she said. Her eyebrows rose at the suggestion.
“Okay. Let’s practice first,” I said, “Pretend you’re calling: ‘Discovery, Discovery, this is Fezywig,’” I said. Karina picked up the VHF, her thumb hovering over the button to open communication. She held the radio up to her mouth and inhaled through her nose. The rest of us gathered around her. She set the radio down. It was a no-go. Alison opened her palm in a willingness to try. We repeated the practice, but she also chickened out. The radio sat quiet on the navigation desk.
Discovery and Day Dreamer stopped talking. The channel went quiet.
“I’m sick of this!” Eli said.
He picked up the radio. He pressed the button with his thumb and said, “Discovery, Discovery, this is Fezywig,” He repeated himself once more. Then we waited.
“Fuzzy-Wing. This is Discovery. Let’s move to channel six,” the girl’s voice said.
“Wahoo! Yay!!!!” Cheers broke out aboard Fezywig. Eli was a hero. He had made contact with another kid boat. Alison helped him switch channels.
“Who are you?” the girl’s voice asked. Each of the Fezywig kids shouted their own version of the appropriate response. Foxtrot. Echo. Zulu. Yankee. Whiskey. India. Golf.
“We’re Fezywig. We’re a kid boat. We want to meet you,” Eli said, but between our shouting and his thumb losing grip on the button, the girl was confused.
“What?” she asked.
Karina held her hand out and Eli gave her the radio.
Thumb firmly pressing the channel open, she said, “We have five kids. We want to play.”
“Ooooooh! Do yo
u want to meet today or tomorrow? We finish school after 1:00 p.m. We’re at the Boca Marina.”
It was Friday. We had Ty with us, a playdate Saturday, and church on Sunday. Our social calendar was filling up. First, all of our kids played at Discovery with most of their family. Next, we combined for a beach day with most of Day Dreamer and most of Discovery. Eli broke all his personal records for distance swimming, buoyed by a life vest. Then all of our kids played at Day Dreamer, where Sarah Jane discovered boat swings, a bosun’s chair at the end of a long rope attached to the top of the mast. “I don’t want to go back to the city now. The boat is better,” she said. “Can we get a swing?” Erik set one up the next day. Finally, we got everyone from all three boats together.
We met aboard Discovery for their youngest daughter’s birthday party. Other families were there, but the ones that stayed in our life were Discovery and Day Dreamer. Discovery included John and Michelle, who jointly ran a tech company that allowed them to be digital nomads with their four children: Kate, fourteen, who was eager to learn and nearly always cheerful; Jaci, ten, a competitive equestrian; Genna, seven, I’d only ever seen her dancing to the music on her iPad; and Jack, four, a zombie killer and Minecraft expert. Eli was happy to have another boy around. They also had two dogs and a cat.
Day Dreamer included Peter, who worked remotely managing websites and loved to cook; and Lisa, who scuba dived, was the main teacher on their boat, and did not love to cook.1 Lisa would’ve been easily mistaken for one of her three daughters except her hair was cut into a bob and she always carried a backpack. Their daughters were Emma, a precocious fourteen, with long white-blonde hair, and a natural leader; Anna, about twelve, who had dark blonde hair with brassy highlights and loved to draw; Sara, ten, who was blonde with freckles and always moving. Day Dreamer also had a lively black rescue dog.
Erik played his guitar. Karina and Alison joined in on their ukuleles. Emma brought her electric keyboard, and Kate tap danced on the deck. As the party wound down, the kids and the adults naturally separated. The kids had already divided themselves into the “Bigs,” Karina, Alison, Emma, and Kate; the “Middles,” Anna, SJ, and Jaci; and the “Littles,” Eli, Genna, Jack, and Lily. They all played on the front deck of Discovery while the adults claimed the seats on the back deck talking.
“It took us four days to check into the French side because it was either a lunch break or a holiday,” Erik said.
“Another day in paradise,” John said. Even before moving his family onto a boat, he’d been unconventional. He’d won science awards in high school and studied computers in college. He told us how his boss had asked him to stay on after his freshman-year internship. “I told him I had to go back to school. He asked, ‘Why?’ I told him I wanted to get a good job and make a lot of money. He said he’d pay me a lot of money. So, I dropped out of school.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Erik said.
“I still think college is a good idea,” Michelle said. “Not just because employers are looking for it, but because it can be a great way to learn.”
“The internet is a game-changer in traditional education,” I said. This was one of my favorite topics.
“My girls have learned so much living on a boat: history, geography, languages. A lot is built into this lifestyle,” Lisa said.
“That’s what I’m hoping,” I said.
“You guys are blending right in,” Peter said. “It usually takes new cruisers about six months to really slow down.”
“Our busted engine kind of forced that on us,” Erik said. “We’re not going anywhere. And I’m okay with that for now.”
Ty got a gig and, after twelve wonderful days, had to return to New York City. Even though Eli was the hero that had hailed the other kid boat, he was more homesick for his old life than he was happy about his new buddies, especially since six of them were girls. The day of Ty’s return flight, Eli stood on deck with his backpack, ready to go. He had packed all his plushies and one pair of underwear.
“I’m going back with Ty,” he said.
“I’ll be at work,” Ty said. “What will you do all day?”
“I’ll sit in your air-conditioned apartment and play video games,” Eli said.
“Good plan, sweetheart,” I admitted. “Except I would miss you too much.” I wrapped my arms around Eli, backpack and all. Tears slid down his face as Erik drove Ty to the airport in the dinghy and we waved goodbye. Eli resigned himself to make the best of his circumstances. With new friends so near, that was getting easier.
Our second visitor was Karina’s best friend, Ruth. She stayed for a week catching up on her sleep, learning to drive a dinghy, and hanging out with the other boat kids. After she left, we hoped Erik’s parents would visit. They wouldn’t want to stay on the boat, but we were only one hundred feet from the Le Flamboyant Hotel. It couldn’t hurt to ask. In a short time we’d made our own little neighborhood on the French side of the lagoon—Fezywig and Day Dreamer on the southwest and Discovery on the southeast. We weren’t in a hurry, but we wouldn’t be in one place forever, either. Nick always said the next part would solve the engine problem. Once we had two working engines it would be tricky to predict where we might be.
Up to now, we had called our boat Fezywig, but the hull and bow said Longhi. Erik ordered weather-resistant decals in a Dickensian font to reflect our namesake, Mr. Fezziwig. Ever so carefully, Erik aligned the “Y” decal on the boat’s hull and made sure the center of the “Y” was split symmetrically. Then he evenly spread the “FEZ” and “WIG” on either side. Finally he added “NEW YORK, NY,” our homeport, on the stern. Now everyone would know we were officially the Fezywigs.
Discovery decided to leave the steady flow of shore power, water, and internet to anchor near us and Day Dreamer on the northwest side of the Simpson Bay Lagoon. Our kids were thrilled. They stood at the stern cheering as John circled for an anchorage. When he shut the engines off, Alison and Sarah Jane swam over to greet them. This trifecta of kid catamarans clustered together marked the unofficial beginning of the honeymoon phase of our sailing sabbatical.
Now that the kids had friends nearby, they were more attentive during school. They wanted to finish so they could play. Karina and Alison gave Kate and Emma ukulele lessons and started having jam sessions, filled with cover tunes and originals. The Fezywig kids taught the others how to bake bread, cinnamon rolls, and pumpkin bars. Emma taught Karina and Alison to make Swedish pancakes. Kate and Emma choreographed diving routines including the Middles and Littles. The Middles staked out Day Dreamer’s boat swing and turned it from a human tetherball game into an aerial art, though they would still pass the Littles back and forth like a tetherball. The Littles painted, built Legos, and built worlds in Minecraft. The older girls made origami, jewelry, and handwritten film scripts. All of the kids were in the movies. Some of these projects took several days. And there was always the beach, snorkeling, and kayaks or sunfish to paddle around. They never ran out of ideas. “It’s way more fun than hanging out watching a movie,” Alison said, recalling her land friendships. But every now and then even these boat kids would pile onto Discovery and watch a movie.
As our kids’ social lives expanded, I had less and less help at home. I was floundering as an educator. In my conventional life, I had leaned heavily on online resources and a printer for our homeschool. On the boat, the printer blew up the first time Erik plugged it into the European outlets and the internet was rarely accessible. I scrambled for a new plan. Michelle and Lisa shared their personal libraries with me, but where would I find the time? Hours I would ordinarily spend preparing for school were gobbled up with hand-washing laundry, collecting water, and preparing three daily meals from scratch.
“Do what only you can do,” Erik suggested. “The older kids can handle meals. It will be good for them.”
Erik told the kids about it at lunchtime.
“I’m not
sure what we have or what needs to be used first,” Karina said.
“I can guide you there,” I said. “That’s actually a good skill. It’s not just following a recipe; it’s managing ingredients.”
“I like cooking,” Alison said. “Can I make Swedish pancakes for dinner?”
“What if I’m responsible for lunch, but I’m at another boat?” SJ wondered.
“Come home ahead of time so lunch is ready,” Erik said. “Not ready in a pot, ready on the table with the table set.” Karina, Alison, and SJ took over all the weekday cooking.
A few days after the new meal prep rotations Erik found me sitting on our bed surrounded by books, binders, and spiral notepads.
“How is lesson planning?” he asked.
“I feel guilty reading and taking notes while the kids are working.” Lily came in for a hug and a kiss.
“You are working,” Erik said.
“I’m the best cook onboard.”
“They’ll get better,” Erik said.
“It’s not about food. It’s about nurturing relationships. I want to take care of my family,” I said. Eli came in to show me a drawing.
“You need to be an executive,” Erik said, not for the first time. “Being a mom doesn’t mean you have to cook and clean. It can, but it doesn’t have to. Let the kids grow by taking on responsibilities. Take that time to do the things you want to do and only you can do.” SJ poked her face in our overhead hatch, inviting me to watch her latest trick on the bimini. I stood up on our bed and rested my arms on the hatch, ready to be impressed.
“Where is the cumin?” Alison asked from the galley. I answered. Karina popped out of her hatch directly across the stern to share a well-phrased paragraph from Atlas Shrugged. I sat back down on our bed.
“I came in here to run some ideas past you,” Erik said. “But maybe now is not a good time.”
“Everybody wants a piece of me,” I said. Peeling back a layer of domestic responsibilities brought into focus what only I do in our family. As a wife and mother, I am the emotional touchstone. The mechanism can be anything; cooking, reading aloud, laundry; but the relationship is the goal. Every person in our family wants me to see them, listen to them, and encourage them. The main thing they wanted was my attention.
