Civilized or Human?

Bob Bitchin

Character is Not Inherited, It is Earned

The reality of my world was shaken the other day when I got what I considered to be a really weird request from one of my readers. Not to go into a long dissertation on what was happening in his life, but in a nutshell, his under-aged teenage daughter had run off, and she was taking him to court saying he was an unfit parent because he wanted to live on a boat! He wanted me to write a letter to the court saying he wasn’t weird. Wasn’t weird! Hell, as far as I am concerned people who don’t want to live on boats are weird! After living aboard for 30 years, I found myself without a boat and moved onto land. It has been two years now since I lived aboard Lost Soul. Every day that I come into the office, I listen to Edditer Sue and Production Manager Robin, who both still live aboard, and get about

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Starboard Attitude as jealous as can be. Specially when they take off early on a Friday to “go to the island.” But I even get jealous when they snivel about having to do the varnish over the weekend. It’s not that I miss the constant upkeep, but I miss the feeling of accomplishment I used to enjoy when I’d put the brush down after finishing the job.

And so I sat down to write a letter to the court, to try and show just how sane a man has to be to want to live aboard a boat. In the years I sailed the world I met hundreds of people, and many of them were rasing kids aboard as they sailed. Now I have to admit, I am not the parental type. Some folks are born to raise children and some are not. I was not... just ask my three kids and six grandkids. They will tell you that. But the kids I met while out there cruising were tolerable. In fact, I actually enjoyed being around them. You see, life at sea breaks down the barriers between children and adults. While “out there” the family faces common problems and they work together to accomplish goals; goals as simple as getting from one port to another, but goals none the less. But in “civilization” children learn from their environment and their peers. I don’t know about you, but when faced with a choice between sending a child to school or taking them sailing, I think sailing has to be my first choice. Yes, there are some good schools out

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Bob Bitchin there, but today life is a lot faster than it used to be. I was raised in the ‘50s in the San Fernando Valley area of Southern California (see: Happy Days!) when things were a lot slower. Nowadays the Internet brings everything right into your home and into your child’s life. There are no barriers to protect them. But at sea, the world is opened up in a different way. If you are cruising the world or living aboard in a city marina, the lifestyle on a boat is a lot more centered. There is less intrusion into your life and there are certain things that bring and keep families together. I remember about 15 years ago, as Jody and I were sailing up the Pacific Coast of Central America and Mexico, we had to sit out some bad weather in a port on the Guatemala/Mexico border. We were there for about a week with a growing group of boats waiting to cross the Sea of Tehuantepec. On one boat there was a family who had a 12-year-old daughter named Heidi. She had been living aboard basically her whole life.

What amazed me was how mature she was. When everyone would gather at the watering hole for the evening (a standard cruiser practice) she would sit and do her homework, and when she would get into the conversation her input was usually welcomed, not as a child, but as a member of the cruising community. In fact, it was because of meeting her, and the other children like her that I met, that we created the

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Starboard Attitude “Sea Urchins” column (Heidi wrote the first one!) with stories by and about children who are cruising. I have to admit I had a problem writing a concise letter to the court for this gentleman. Each time I started I would go off on a tangent about just how stupid I thought it was that people would want to live any way OTHER than on board! How nuts does one have to be to send their kid to school in today’s world? Okay, I don’t want to offend folks who’s kids are in regular schools and don’t live aboard. That’s not my point. But there is a point to all this.

The world is being torn apart by people who want to tell others how to live. Religious zealots are killing people who don’t share their beliefs in their particular theology. In order for us to pass on our values to our children, we can’t expect them to absorb those values just by sleeping under the same roof. We have to teach them. At school they are taught the values of their teachers, or of the school board. But those who are raised at sea learn about the beauty of life by living. Character is not inherited, it is learned by example.

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