After my most-prized boat life moment-coffee in the cockpit at sunrise- we departed Peck Lake and began the more scheduled version of our days. This, for starters, included the girls’ first day of boat school, complete with Headmaster Mom.
Our structure will be similar to last year (breakfast first, school work next, boat hijinks for the rest of the day), but the content has certainly changed, and for the better from my perspective.
As a fourth grader, Lily’s work load runs the gamut of usual suspects: reading, writing, math, science and social studies, each with a task list to guide her along. (We are more than lucky to have such supportive teachers at home, who spent hours of their own time prepping for us in this detailed manner.) Today we spent time reading aloud with discussions on literal speech vs. personifications vs. similes, she worked from a math workbook, studied the counties of our state, and began her ‘Feature Creature’ series, where she’ll detail specific information about a mammal, a bird, etc. Tomorrow we’ll start on the journal that she is to keep, and begin a second realistic fiction piece of her own.
V has her own set of daily tasks, which include as many worksheets dealing with phonics, blends, word games and math problems as she wants to complete. Since she loves them, she’ll eat through my stores of these quickly. We also added a ‘Creature Study’ to our daily list, so that she can choose an animal that she’s interested in learning more about, and together we can research a few facts about it. (Today’s creature was a roseate spoonbill…) Violet is also making ‘How to’ guide books, and today’s was How to Make a Picture, complete with ‘iDea’ on the list of ‘things you’ll need’; brilliant.
Both girls are avid readers, so I don’t utilize our official school time for this, though V has plenty of emergent reader books that she’s already gone through at least twice. She’s game for reading ANYthing aloud to us at bedtime, even if it takes her time to struggle and practice to sound words out- she’s up for the challenge.
Aside from this formal 1 1/2 to 2 hours (I’ll be honest- it’s rarely 2), this world we’re living in is an endless stream of teaching moments. Systems, navigation, tankage, knot-tying, rules of the road, communications, they all make for good lessons, and Andy and I are both working on how to customize what level of detail we need to give for each situation, since it’s certainly easy to overwhelm them with too much.
OTHER things we learned on the boat today, for example, pertained to black water tanks (it’s not great when your macerator pump fails and black water leaks into the bilge), fuel filters (also not great to have an old spin-on cartridge version with ancient lines enabling air to enter and bog the engine down), and TowBoatUS (great insurance, especially for those moments when the bogged engine (see above) threatens to cut out whilst going through a bridge opening in the [albeit small] current of the Intercoastal). See?! Teaching moments!
In the end, though we called TowBoatUS for the first (and let’s hope last!) time to have us on their radar, we were able to limp our way into the North Palm Beach Marina, where Andy dispatched we non-mechanics (the moms and kids) to the pool while he and Dan raced to West Marine for a new racor filter, and then installed it. Five hours, our first swims, a sweaty work day on the boat later, and Bob’s your uncle, we’re now anchored just inside of the inlet in Palm Beach, with plans to wake at midnight for the crossing.
It’ll be about 12 hours to get to the bank, and from there we’ll head to Sail Cay for the night before heading to Green Turtle on Saturday. We’ll be out of range until then, but you can probably still hear us singing Hamilton if your ears are sharp enough!
Fair winds and following seas!