Cruising World - May 2016

may 2016

cruisingworld.com

40

A

fter six months in the Caribbean living aboard his

43-foot cruising catamaran, Fabuloso, with his wife

and two young sons, Mike Zani was more than in his

element. With winter behind him, before the northward passage

home to New England, he hosted a rum-punch competition with

a potluck dinner.

As Zani passed out soft drinks to the children through the

forward hatch, a friend who had been taking a similar family

adventure — but on a traditional wooden schooner — popped

below. “You are really the master of your domain,” said Jesse

Smith, who had been living aboard his Gannon & Benjamin

60-footer, Rebecca of Vineyard Haven. “Yes,” said Zani, jokingly,

“now get out of my kitchen.”

Zani and Smith, two friends from Rhode Island, had been ex-

changing notes all season on what constitutes the ideal cruising

setup. Like a deer catching the faintest scent

of an upwind human, Zani was acutely aware

of anything out of place (or in his way). Along

with the Gonsalves family of Massachusetts —

also on a family sabbatical, aboard a 46 -foot

performance cruiser called Meridian — both he

and Smith were winding down from what by all

accounts was a once-in-a-lifetime trip through

the Leeward and Windward islands with their

wives and children.

How-to articles about realizing your dreams

of cruising and living aboard are familiar in sail-

ing magazines. The mainstream media often

prefer to unveil the darker, riskier side of voyag-

ing with live coverage of aborted family ocean

passages, like last year’s rescue of the Kaufman

family from their cutter, Rebel Heart, when an

ill toddler and failed systems forced a Coast

Guard recovery of the coast of California.

The story of these three relatively concise

and successful liveaboard trips on Fabuloso,

Meridian and Rebecca, however, reveals a more

conservative and thoughtful approach to the

same goal. Here were three strikingly dif erent

budgets and approaches with a common out-

come: an unmatched experience of tuning in

with spouses and children.

WHEELS IN MOTION

I

f there was a single spark that ignited an

inextinguishable adventurous fl ame, all

three families agreed it was a dinner party

on a frosty New England winter night several

years ago. A casual discussion over steaming

hot lasagna with circumnavigators George and

Rosa Day took of in many directions as the

questions started fl ying.

“How old were your children?”

“Was it hard to make healthy meals?”

“What about home schooling?“

“Did you ever want to quit?”

The practical queries came from the wives: Smith’s bride,

Annice Kenan; Conley Zani; and Mege Gonsalves. Near the end

of the evening, the three had cornered Rosa Day for even more

information.

The three women had decidedly dif erent backgrounds.

Kenan, for instance, grew up in North Carolina. Her only expo-

sure to sailing was aboard a colorful, spunky little Sunfi sh on a

lake at summer camp. Though she had the propensity for sea-

sickness, she knew that, at least for Selah, their older, 11-year-old

daughter, a new schooling approach was needed. “The thought

was just to pull her out,” she says. “It’s healthy

to get out in the world.”

“We always wanted to take a family adventure outside the

socialized norms,” says Smith, who learned to sail through racing

nine years before this trip. “When our second daughter, Teal, was

born, I didn’t want to lose touch with her and get roped into the

system of school and sports.”

Though they had taken three trips chartering in the British

Virgin Islands, Conley Zani says that she married into the vision

of “taking of with the family.” She grew up on Kentucky’s bucolic

Lake Cumberland, water-skiing and fi shing. As a kid, Mike had

cruised the Florida Keys and Cape Cod on a Tartan 37 with his

family, and later embarked on a trip around the world that was cut

short when his stepmother was scared of after an Atlantic storm.

Life got in the way of Mike’s further voyaging until he sold his

Scenes from a sabbatical (inset, top to bot-

tom): Annice Kenan and Jesse Smith strike

a pose; Jef Gonsalves mans the helm; Wake

and Mike Zani get down to the serious busi-

ness of having fun. Meanwhile, young dare-

devil Asa Gonsalves catches big air (above).

COURTESY OF THE SMITH, GONSALVES AND ZANI FAMILIES