Jill Schinas - Kids in the Cockpit: A pilot book to safe and happy sailing with children

I should like to express my gratitude to the many yachtswomen, men and children who, wittingly or otherwise, helped in the research and writing of this book. Where the contribution was unwitting, and where I have been unable to contact the people concerned, their names have generally been changed.

My own children need no pseudonyms, and to them my debt is greatest; Caesar, Xo and Roxanne taught me everything I know about sailing with kids. The children also posed patiently in their lifejackets on innumerable occasions, and made their own lunch and their own amusements while Mummy wrote, read and scribbled ad nauseam. Caesar also helped to type up the manuscript and spent hours scanning photos, Xo read and re-read the work looking for any errors, and it was Roxanne who came up with the title. This book is dedicated to the three of them.

Jill Schinas

Theyre going to have a baby, you say! My goodness! So thats the end of their adventures under sail. This was the reaction that my parents received from friends and relations when they broke the news of our impending change in family status.

When the time came for us to start a family, Nick and I were not there to break the news ourselves. We were bumming around Venezuela in our 43ft ketch, Maamari. Our journey had taken us from England down to Africa and across the pond to Brazil, where we got married. Now we were in the Caribbean, looking for work with which to fund our future travels and building ourselves a crew at the same time. The end of our adventures? On the contrary, for us this was just the beginning. In a few months time we would move on again, and the show would continue.

Oh, the baby was planned; of course he was planned! After all, what difference could an itsy-bitsy baby make to our life?

If you have picked up this book then plainly you are much more clued-up about babies than Nick and I were. The fact that you are studying a book about the subject goes to show that you have some inkling of the fact that taking a child to sea is not all plain sailing, whereas Nick and I had absolutely none.

How can it be that a woman and a seawife at that was able to reach the state of motherhood in complete ignorance of the awful ordeal that is involved in boating with babies? Who was responsible for this gaping chasm in my education? Who can I blame? None but my own dear mother. My mother and father were sailing long before I arrived on the scene, and after I was born Mum gave it up for all of three weeks. Then it was business as usual with the baby aboard. What an example to set a child!

At that stage my parents sailed and raced a 12ft clinker dinghy. Later, when I was about two years old, they built themselves a Wayfarer in the living room of our half-completed home. The hard from which they used to launch their dinghies the same from which my dad still launches his tender is overlooked by a rustic quay, medieval in origin. Thus, the comings and goings of the racing fleet were always subject to the scrutiny of sightseers. When the race was over and the boats returned, an interested audience assembled to watch in wonder as we swooped down towards the hard.

At the last second, when it seemed inevitable that our craft must come grinding and crashing to a halt on the stones ahead, the helmsman would ram the tiller down, the boat would answer by rounding up into the wind, and the mate would hop over the side and grab hold of the forestay. On a breezy day the manoeuvre was quite dramatic to behold, and more than once, as I recall, Mum disappeared up to her armpits in the icy water.

After the sails were lowered, depriving the boat of her vital spirit and leaving her simply as a shapely box, then behold from under the tiny foredeck there would emerge a small boy, ensconced in a kapok lifejacket. After him appeared a toddler, similarly clad (that was me), and then my father would reach in and pull out a carrycot. By now the spectators on the quay would be standing mouths agape. More than once, I am told, we heard the cry, How many more have you got in there?

Nick also grew up messing about in boats (in fact, in the same harbour) so we both know what it is like to be kids afloat. People often imagine that sailing must be very tedious for a small child, but because we have been there we know for a fact that, properly packaged, sailing is anything but boring for a youngster. Sailing was life itself for us when we were small; it was the pivot of all existence, and even when we were soaked to our skins and turning blue at the edges, we would never, never have swapped our boat-crazy existence for ordinary life. Born and bred to boating, Nick and I knew the scene from the inside, but what we did not know, before our son arrived on the scene, was just how hard it can be for the people doing the breeding.

My first Atlantic crossing was aboard a boat which had no self-steering, and because she was a lively creature a fin-keeler and could not be left for even a moment to fend for herself, her crew of three had a rather hard time. Still, it was fun and I simply could not wait to do it again.

My second crossing was aboard Maamari, and that was a honeymoon cruise. Actually, Nick and I did not get married until just after the crossing, but that sail was the blissful epitome of what a honeymoon should be. We idled along, watching the clouds and admiring the sea. We gazed at the stars, we read, we conversed... and when it pleased us we did nothing at all. The three weeks of that crossing were some of the happiest of my life.

By contrast, our first crossing en famille was a nightmare; I could not wait for it to end! With the kids aboard there was certainly no time for reading or relaxing. There was not a single moment when I could simply stand and stare. Indeed, there was scarcely time for the navigation and the watch-keeping. These activities, which we had once savoured, became nothing more than essential chores to be fitted in, as best we could, around the relentless, never-ending duty of attending to the needs of the children. Paul Heiney summed it up very neatly when he and his wife, Libby Purves, sailed around Britain with their kids. Two children, four months and only 30ft of boat. No nanny. Only Mummy and Daddy to turn to and Grace OMalley wanting attention, too. I just dont think we can do it, Paul told his wife. Well, Nick and I were in the same boat, metaphorically speaking, and similar words fell from my lips; we had bitten off more than we could chew. Let me make it perfectly clear: sailing with itsy-bitsy babes is not plain sailing.

But, wait a bit; isnt this the case whether we are afloat or ashore? Life with children is never what it was in the carefree days BC (Before Child). It is bound to be different, wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Take mealtimes, for example. Mealtimes among minors is such a fiasco that, in the good old days, those who could afford servants opted out of the feeding scenario and most other infant scenarios, besides. Life with children is different, and we have to adapt. We give up candle-lit dinners, but must our sailing go the same way?

Not necessarily. The point, really, is that it does no good to whinge on about the way things were. Weve made our beds, as the saying goes, and now we must find a way to get comfortable again. There are three solutions to the problem of sailing with small children. One is to give up. Sell the boat; console yourself with the idea that you can buy another when they are bigger. Curiously enough, almost nobody follows this option. Sailing is an addiction and you dont give it up just because the going suddenly gets tough.