ISLANDS IN THE SUNT
hough they’d launched their plans together, once un-
derway, the three families met up at just the beginning
and midpoints of their trips, choosing to either follow
their own desires or meet up with other extended family mem-
bers at diferent locations.
The Virgin Islands served as the jumping-of point for all three
families, and they spent a week letting of steam on the beaches
and planning their respective itineraries. They all met up again
for the New Year. The Gonsalveses joined the Smiths aboard
Rebecca, after which the families again dispersed. As the Smiths
explored the Grenadines, the Zanis ran the length of the Lesser
Antilles, ending in Grenada.
“The sail back from Grenada to the BVI was one of the best
parts of the entire trip,” says Mike Zani. “It was just a bombing
broad reach the whole way.”
An ongoing consulting career for Conley Zani forced her
to take of for periodic business trips, leaving Mike with the
home-schooling mantle as the family headed southeast along the
Leeward Islands. A former nanny joined Fabuloso for visits when
Conley was away, as did Mike’s father.
Dominica was at the center of the Gonsalveses’ winter plans.
With more than a week spent in Antigua, they split from their
friends and worked westward, eventually exploring the Spanish
Virgin Islands before making it to the Bahamas. The family set out
to follow their own path with few interruptions, wishing to focus
on schoolwork and establish a routine. “We really wanted to enjoy
ourselves,” says Jef. “Six months is short. When we caught a fish,
the children would draw it out on paper. We did some intentional
situation-specific education, like looking up and documenting the
animals we found, but six months was a little short to dial that in.”
Meridian made longer passages than the rest, with several over-
night jumps, including the trip between the BVI and Culebra, in
the Spanish Virgins. “We tried our best to keep a rhythm,” says
Mege. “We didn’t have visitors. We didn’t fly of. It was just the
four of us.” Both Mege and Jef agreed that the longer passages
were disruptive to their rhythm at times. “If we had spent six
months just in the Bahamas, we could have focused more on
social time with other families, which would have been more fun
for the children,” Mege says.
Though the trip was not meant to be a vacation, Jef says it
was an opportunity to, at least temporarily, change the way they
live. “One of the main points of the exercise was to slow the life
pace down,” he says. “But there were constantly things to do. It’s
hard to slow down.”ONEROOM SCHOOLHOUSESA
sa Gonsalves finished all his third-grade workbooks
in the first three months. His older sister, however,
had the greater workload of a fifth-grader. “Orly was
anxious to keep up with her schoolwork,” says Mege. “When we
had Wi-Fi, she’d send in her assignments. She also spent time
identifying shells and fish, and anything else around her.”
The children’s school, Friends Academy, worked closely with
the Gonsalveses before they cast of. Though assignments were
prepared in advance and the children stuck to their regimens, the
school’s headmaster reassured the parents that
the children, no matter what they accomplished
in their planned curriculum, would experience “an
incredible education in life.” Still, working with
four teachers on Orly’s fifth-grade curriculum had
its challenges.
“Some of her teachers were really enthusiastic
and organized, and some were not,” says Jef. “Asa
only had one teacher, and she was super helpful,
which made it easy for him to follow the program.”For everyone involved, the school component of the sabbatical
was compulsory but still daunting from the start. Conley Zani ran
into concerns at their Portsmouth, Rhode Island, public elemen-
tary school. “Schools send messages that can feed your fear,” she
says about the conversations she had with her children’s teachers
before they left. “They warned us that our kids might not graduate
with their class. There was a lot of pushback for us.”
But the Zanis brought their boys into the fold by using every-
day tasks to teach them. Provisioning, for instance, was a lesson
in sorting and categorizing. Even bleeding the fuel line in the
engine became a teachable moment. Conley says this seat-of-the-
pants approach was empowering for both her and her husband.
All the parents conceded that, at the outset, they were blind
to the gifts they would receive by the end of their journeys. The
leap of faith they collectively took was tested when storms blew
through an anchorage or a barracuda swam up behind a snorkel-
ing child. But children are adaptable. The leap paid dividends.
“I’m most proud that [now] our children don’t have a fear of
the great wide world,” says Kenan. She recalls a blustery day sail-
ing in the Grenadines, when 7-year-old Teal was sliding down
Rebecca’s teak bridgedeck.
“Careful, Teal,” she said. “Don’t forget to hold on.”
“Mama, I know!” the girl called back, stating
the obvious.
“My fear was in the clarity of that moment,”
Kenan says. “I laid down and closed my eyes and
got through it. If I hadn’t unpacked that anxious-
ness, I would have been furious and resentful.”
The decision to wait until Asa was reading
paid of for the Gonsalveses. “We had time and
couldn’t get enough books,” says Mege. She
adds that they all began to feel a great sense ofmay 2016cruisingworld.com44
ONLINE EXTRA
For more details on each
family’s budget and
their experiences with
home schooling, visit
cruisingworld.com/
1605families.