Quit your job, sell your house and set out on a yearlong sailing adventure with your two young kids. It might sound crazy, but Mark and Katya Gordon highly recommend it. So do their daughters, Cedar and Lamar. In 2006 the family pared down their lives and fit everything onto a 34-foot sailboat before setting off for Bermuda via the Great Lakes and the Eastern Seaboard.
The idea for the trip had roots in the days when Mark and Katya were first married.
“We knew we wanted to do a big sailing trip, but we knew we wanted to have kids too,” Mark explained. “So we developed a seven-year plan. We would basically get a boat, get it prepared, have a couple kids and when the kids were five and seven we would take off.”
Sailing was a perfect method for adventuring with the kids because of its very nature.
“Sailing allows you to travel and bring your home with you,” Katya said. “The kids are fine–they still have what’s good and important like their daily rhythms and their own beds every night. It’s like a floating home. If you want to be adventurous and have little kids it’s a good way to do it.”
Soon the Gordons’ seven-year plan turned into a five-year plan. They saw no reason to wait. They devoted those five years to preparing for the trip, with one income going toward the boat and preparation, the other toward paying bills at home.
Following a three-month “test trip” – a circumnavigation of Lake Superior – Mark and Katya felt ready to embark on the big voyage. They set off in late June 2006 with Lamar and Cedar, then two and four, and sailed from Wisconsin across the Great Lakes and through the Erie Canal.
The family made it to the Bahamas on Christmas Eve, and after spending four months there, headed back up the coast. They ended the journey in Maryland one year to the day they left the dock in Wisconsin. (They had planned to sail all the way back, but Mark was offered a job in Two Harbors, so they returned via car and had the boat shipped back).
Reflecting on the trip now Mark and Katya say they would do it again.
“As I look back, in the beginning we were probably thinking, this has gotta be good,” said Mark. “Being out there traveling with our kids 24/7 – we thought there has to be something good that’s going to come from this. And it totally shaped our kids’ paradigm on how they look at the world.”
In that sense it was a huge success. Katya and Mark describe the community among those living on the water as “resembling farming or pioneering communities – friendships are built fast and deep and are based on scarcity and need, as well as shared interest. There is an assumption that we will do everything we can to help someone else, and they will do the same for us.”
The family is now settled in Two Harbors, where they have started their own charter sailing business in nearby Knife River. (Visit www.amicusadventuresailing.com for details.) They are already planning their next big excursion.
Are you considering this type of adventure? I bet you can guess – Mark and Katya’s advice is “Do it!” And they’re happy to talk to people who are interested in setting out for distant horizons. Get the full story of the Gordons’ sailing adventures on their blog at gordonsailing.typepad.com.
