FAQ About Boat Life: A Teen’s Perspective

Before I give you the teen’s perspective on boat life, I would like to quickly introduce myself as I have not written for my mom’s blog before. You probably know who I am, if you read her blog so I’ll keep this brief.

Hi, my name is Sophie and I am one of the 5 members of the fabulous SV Graceful! I am 15 years old and I like drawing, painting, writing, swimming, snorkeling, sailing, crocheting, and anything that has to do with boats (Well, maybe not fixing them…).

Below are my answers, the teen’s perspective, to some of the most common questions we receive, as we sail and live on our boat.

For the adult, the boring, version of this, please read my mom’s post:

FAQ About Boating Life

What do you, guys, eat?

It depends on the day, luckily my mom is an amazing cook and can make all sorts of delicious dishes. But I do find that we eat some things more often than others.

Top 5 boat meals, from a teen’s perspective:

1. Homemade pita, cucumber and tomato salad, and homemade hummus

10/10 Would recommend. Wish we ate this more often.

2. Rice.

8/10 Very versatile and easy to cook. Only reason this isn’t a 10/10 is because there’s only so much rice I can eat.

3. Lentils and rice

6.5/10 Very tasty, but I personally am not a big fan of lentils. Plus there’s a limited amount of soy sauce that I am allowed to have.

4. PB&J sandwich on homemade bread

9.5/10 Very tasty and filling. Only reason it’s not a 10/10 is that my family likes the bread so much that it’s difficult to snag a piece before it’s all gone.

5. Oatmeal

          2/10 Personally not a fan of oatmeal, especially if that’s what’s for breakfast every day.

You must love seafood, what have you caught and do you eat it?

Now, I know this may be a shock, considering where I live, but the answer is no!

I do not like seafood. I never have.

The only seafood I will eat is some fish. I just don’t see the appeal in the seafood that the rest of my family raves about, such as conch, lobster, scallops, and shrimp. I will catch it but I won’t eat it.

We’ve caught a wide variety of things from small tuna, through the two biggest lobsters I’ve ever seen, to Mahi-Mahi and conch, which we do eat, and sometimes for a few days.

We also catch a lot of barracuda, which are inedible if larger than a dinner plate, and plenty of seaweed, and not the kind you can make into seaweed salad.

Where/How do you guys get food?

When we are in the US it’s the same place as you, the grocery store. In much larger quantities of course, as we have to stock up on two month’s worth of food at a time before we’d leave the country.

Our whole boat is stuffed with every kind of canned food imaginable, I can promise you that if you were to come over and open a cabinet or drawer looking for a shirt or socks you would likely see 20 jars of salsa or canned chicken.

However, if we do need something such as fresh vegetables or fruits we can always hop in the dinghy, go to shore, and buy some.

Are you crazy?!

Yes. Why else would I choose to live on a boat? I can’t live in such close proximity to my brothers constantly AND stay sane!

Do you like living on a boat?

Yes, I absolutely adore it!

Even though I’m supposed to be an angry and moody teen who doesn’t like anything, I really like boat life. The amount of new friends and people we meet is amazing. Everyone is so diverse, yet we all always have at least one thing in common, we live on a boat!

We see and learn about all sorts of wildlife, both in and out of the water. The experiences that I’ve had on the boat are truly amazing and life changing. And if we get bored of one place we can move our house, I mean boat, to wherever we want for however long we want!

Do you do school?

Sadly, yes.

As much as we try and weasel our way out of it, somehow, no matter how good the excuse, it always ends up happening. But unlike “regular school” we can focus on certain things more than others if we wish.

For example, if I need more practice and help with calculating the area of spheres, I can spend an extra few days, or even a week if I really need to, so that I can understand it as opposed to being dragged through it, just to stay on pace with the curriculum.

If I am interested in marine biology I can choose to explore it further. And finally, my personal favorite, we can take off a few days whenever we want (as long as one of the parents approves it)!

What’s your favorite place you’ve been to and why?

I wish there was a way to pick just one, there are just too many wonderful places. I will once again list a few and rate them.

A teen’s perspective on the coolest places we have visited while living on a boat:

Conception Island, Bahamas.

9/10 Very pretty.

At least it looked very pretty from above the water. I could not put my head in the water and dive down to get a closer look at all of the coral reefs and the turtles as I was developing swimmer’s ear and did not want to make it worse.

Shroud Cay, Bahamas

10/10 Would recommend. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Just look at this. And yes, we took this picture.

St. Augustine, Florida, USA

8/10 Even though there are not a lot of aquatic sights to see, there are plenty of things to do on land. We also had quite a few boat friends here, so we were rarely bored.

Luperon, Dominican Republic

9/10 Very fun, but once again not very many water related things to do as the water is pretty nasty. There are plenty of things to do and see on land, although. Maybe the only reason it was as fun as it was because of all the kids that were with us.

There were 18 kids in total!

You can see our YouTube Episode on that party we threw, once the parents were off the boat.

Dominican Republic – Luperon, Waterfalls and Kids Everywhere!

Los Haitises National Park, Dominican Republic

15/10 It was absolutely gorgeous!

You could swim in the water, there were hundreds of birds, we went on hikes through the jungle, and, my personal favorite, the water GLOWED. The amount of bioluminescence in the water the first night we were there was amazing.

We would swirl the water around and it would glow green and occasionally blue, if you hit a jellyfish. There were also many caves and small islands that we explored while looking for any buried pirate treasure.

What do you do on passages?

Eat, sleep, throw up, repeat. Unless you’re me, then there’s plenty of crocheting and drawing that happens in between. 

Do you have friends on the boat?

Yes we do, in fact we have a lot more than we did when we were in the house. There’s a lot more families doing this than most people think.

For example, when we reached Georgetown, Bahamas, we joined a flotilla of kid boats which had about 9 or 10 kid boats, so we always had plenty of friends.

If you want to read about how we find friends and do school, check out my mom’s post:

Socializing the Kids on the High Seas (by the Irresponsible Parents)

So, are there like, sharks?

This is probably the most commonly asked question and the answer is yes, there are.

However it depends where you are. The Bahamas were FULL of sharks and, as far as I’ve seen, the Dominican Republic doesn’t have very many. 

Aren’t you scared of like, getting eaten?

Nope, not really. Something I’ve learned about sharks is that they generally won’t bother you unless you bother them.

However, this is not true for all species!

If we are swimming and see anything other than a nurse shark we get out of the water. And sometimes, even if it is a nurse shark, if we see more than two or they keep making close passes we get out. If there is someone cleaning fish or if there’s blood in the water we DO NOT GET IN.

Both of those things will attract sharks, and they will be there within a few minutes. But it’s not as dangerous as people think just to go for a swim, it’s much more risky to fly down a highway at 65mph than to snorkel with the fishies :).

What’s something you always tell people about the boat?

There are a lot of interesting things to tell people about, but here is a teen’s perspective, and my personal favorite:

We have somewhere around 150 cans of Vienna Sausage on the boat, and NOBODY LIKES IT! It tastes like cat food and no one wants to eat it (no offense to anyone who does).

I’m not sure if we’ll ever get rid of it. So unless we meet a boat whose crew loves Vienna sausage and wants to trade for it, or we can find a way to use it as bait to catch fish, I think we will always have some cans aboard.