I think this is a good time to share how our day to day life looks while we are working for $ on the West coast and working on our boat on the East coast. It’s crazy. It’s overwhelming. It’s a fantastic adventure that we are so glad to be doing. At home in SB Clark works as a Food Safety Consultant. He is busy in spring/summer working very long hours. In the fall/winter he is able to work about 2 days a week. This coincides nicely with hurricane season – home April to Sept and in Florida about 10 days a month the rest of the year. My work is flexible and home based, a perfect travel job.
Three of our four kids ages 22, 24 and 27 are independent. Our youngest, Kelly, is 14 and in the 8th grade. She needed to homeschool after a surfing head injury kept her out of half of 7th grade. We decided to keep going with learning independently in order to have the flexibility to go to Florida. She goes to tutor center when we are in SB and works remotely over the internet when we are at the boat. We don’t get wifii at the boat so we found a cute coffee shop nearby that we ride our “boat” bikes to for school and work.
While we are at Migration, our days start with school, work, emails and calls, and making a list of what we want to work on for the day. We also want to enjoy Ft. Lauderdale so making time for the beach and the dinghy, biking around downtown, going out to the restaurants and of course the endless trips to West Marine and Boat Owners Warehouse is always a challenge. Lots of waterways mean lots of drawbridges so it can take a lot longer to travel around town there. We try to minimize the number of times we go out so we have more time to work on the boat.
Kelly is also a competitive surfer which adds a fun but time consuming aspect to our life. We bought her a board at a local surf shop in Florida and found a few of the best spots to take her out. This means even more time driving and in the water but It’s important for her to continue her activities and be ready for competitions when she’s home. It also means getting to know a completely different type of surf and conditions than her home surf so a good lesson for her. We try to get her out at least twice during the trip. Socially, Kelly is very outgoing and open to friends of all ages and types, even the 2 great danes who live at our dock. This is one of the best things about homeschooling and traveling, kids see the world in a much broader way.
All in all, this first season in Florida has helped us to practice balance, flexibility, and patience. We were completely unrealistic in how much work we could get done on the boat. The learning curve has been steeper than we anticipated and EVERYTHING takes longer than we thought. That being said, we have enjoyed the area more than we thought and are comfortable operating in our floating home. Migration has truly become part of our family and we are more excited than ever to hit the open blue water and hang out in a serene anchorage with nothing but turquoise blue water around us!