This blog post is dedicated to my sister Barb’s (aka Mrs. Stultz’s) third grade class in Virginia Beach, Virginia. They are learning about the globe, maps and oceans, and have been following our blog to see where in the world we are sailing and traveling. The children in the class have posted some questions for us, which we are responding to here.
Dear class – thanks for sending your questions to us. Right now we are on the island called Reunion. This is a French island so we are practicing speaking French with all the people here and are enjoying all of the French bakeries and coffee! This island has a volcano which we hiked and we saw all of the old lava that had come out of it and the giant crator that was formed after the volcano blew! We will be leaving here soon for our sailing passage to South Africa – but first, here are the answers to your questions.
1. Savannah wants to know why you sail.
We sail because it is a fun and out of the ordinary way to travel around the world and see different countries. It is also good environmentally since most of the time we use the wind and our sails to get wherever we are going instead of fuel. We love being in nature away from cities and towns where the air is clean and not polluted. And it is a cool way to meet people like other sailors and people who live in the places we visit.
2. Lajuane wonders what you DO when you travel.
Well, when we are sailing from one place to another, we must watch for storms and other ships. So we take turns being "on watch". When we are not on watch we catch up on our sleep and cook meals and stuff like that. When we are not sailing from place to place, we visit the neat places we are in, sometimes we drive around, go hiking, swimming, kite boarding or scuba diving and then we get the boat ready for sailing again. We also make friends with other sailors and people who live in the places we visit. All of the sailors we meet are also from different countries around the world. Right now the sailors around us are from Norway, Sweden, England, South Africa and the United States.
Can you guess which one of us this is?
3. Savanna asks where you sleep and what you eat.
We have about 8 beds that we call `berths`on the boat where we can sleep when we are sailing. We have a kitchen on the boat called a ‘galley’, and since we have a fridge and stove, we can cook just about anything we want! When it`s cold and wet we like to have things like stew or soup or chili. Also, sometimes we catch a fish and then we can have fresh fish for dinner! We also learn to cook some of the different foods we find in these countries like curry and laksa (coconut noodle soup with prawns).
4. Thylia is wondering where you get food.
Well luckily the boat has lots of good cupboards so when we are in port, we can buy groceries just like you at home in the grocery store. We like to go to the local market for fresh fruit, vegetables and meat where the local farmers bring their food to sell. The fruit we get here is awesome – mango, papaya, pineapple and lots of coconuts! Sometimes we can be sailing for up to 4 weeks without seeing land. When we are on a long sailing passage, we will run out of fruit and vegetables, so then we have to have things like canned peas and carrots (yuck!).
5. Braylen wants to know how long it takes to get across the Indian Ocean.
We sail about 150 nautical miles each day (it`s about the same speed as jogging). So to get all the way from Jakarta, Indonesia to Richards Bay in South Africa it will take us 30 days of sailing. But since we are stopping at many islands along the way, the whole trip will take us 4 months.
It takes about 1 month to get across the Indian Ocean, but we don’t do it all at once since it there are so many great places to visit along the way.
6. Lila asks if you ever get sea sick on the ship.
YES! We all get sea sick once in a while. It feels awful, but luckily it only happens at the beginning of a sailing passage and then we feel better after about 2 days. We do have some medicine that helps too, but mostly we just have to lie down and sleep until we feel better. But even though we are sea sick we still need to keep sailing – and sometimes that is very hard!
We just have to get our “sea legs”!
But if we take our sea sick medicine we feel better. And it only lasts a couple of days then we feel great again for the rest of the passage.
7. Mia wonders how long you have been traveling and whether you ever see whales.
We have been traveling and working away from Canada for 6 years so far! And yes we have seen a lot of whales. One time in a place called Tonga we got to swim with humpback whales - it was really great. But most of the time, we just see their spray and their tails when they jump in the air.
8. Kayden wants to know if you've seen a flock of whales (I think she means a pod).
Only once, and that was when we were in Tonga and went swimming with them. They were humpback whales. We saw a bull (the dad), a cow (the mum) and a calf (the baby).
9. Deshaun wonders what other animals you've seen in your travels.
My goodness, we have seen so many animals in the wild (not in the zoo)! Let`s see, we have seen elephants in Thailand, crocodiles, kangaroos and Koala bears in Australia, flying fish, eels, manta rays, tortoises, grey sharks and reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, orangutans in Borneo, monkeys in Asia and whales and dolphins in all of the oceans and all kinds of birds, petrels, tropic birds, albatross, eagles. Last night we even saw oxen in a parade!
10. He knows you're from Canada and wants to know if you lived in a teepee or a house.
We lived in a house in Vancouver, but we had a camping tent that looked kind of like a teepee!
11. Kayden asks how many continents you've visited.
Let`s see, on this sailing trip we have visited North America, Australia, Asia and we are about to get to Africa - so that makes 4 continents. That leaves South America, Europe and Antarctica!
12. Taylah wonders what you will do in Africa.
When we get to Africa we are going to find work to do so that we can stay for a year or so. While we are there we plan to go on a safari, and since we will be in Cape Town we will go hiking at Table Mountain. And of course we will buy a car and drive around to see what the country looks like. Cress wants to rent an airplane so he can see the country from the sky!
13. Emma is worried about whether you are afraid or scared that pirates might get you!
Well we are very careful to listen to the `pirate reports`and make sure that we do not go to the places where the pirates are. It is something that we think about, and read about to make sure we don`t put ourselves in danger. Although, we wouldn`t mind seeing Captain Jack Sparrow!!!
14. Andre wants to know if you like traveling.
Yes we do love travelling and meeting new people and seeing new places. There are so many beautiful places in our world, we feel lucky to be able to see so many cool things and get to know so many different people.
We get to try different cultures too, hearing the languuges, seeing how people dress and eating their food and sharing their festivals and celebrations and also learning how people in other countries believe different things than what we do – like different religions such as Buddism, different beliefs about family – like the eldest daughter in the family is not supposed to get married, since she is to stay home to look after her parents.
15. Sutton, Emijah and Kimiyah wonder if you ever miss your family back at home and if you like being without them.
Oh man, we really miss our family and our friends. We keep inviting them to come sailing with us, and some of them have come! Even your teacher Mrs. Stultz - (who is my big sister) - she came to visit us in Singapore! And so did our parents and 2 of our children and 2 of our grandchildren so far. We love having friends and family come to visit us, but we also go back to Canada once a year or so to visit them there. And sometimes, we like being alone too! It`s very peaceful then!!
Mrs. Stultz in Singapore!
16. Emijah asks how long you will be out to sea.
Well, that is a million dollar question! We may end up living on our boat for a long time. We can even bring the boat back to Vancouver which is also on the Pacific Ocean, and live on it there. That way we will be closer to all of our friends and family. So, I think we will be at sea for a very long time.
17. Thylia wants to know where you found the dolphins.
It was very early in the morning and we were in a place called Grand Baie, Mauritius - and we were having our coffee in the cockpit when we looked up, we could see them jumping and swimming a little distance away from us. So we got into our small dinghy and went out toward them and we went swimming with them. That was quite amazing! Most of the time, the dolphins find us instead of us finding them! They like playing in the bow waves.
18. Riley wonders how many more miles you have to go.
We have 1500 nautical miles to go to get to Richards Bay in South Africa. And another 1,000 miles to get down the coast and around the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town. Then about 15,000 miles to get all the way back home to Vancouver!
Thanks for sending all of these questions! We really enjoyed answering them. Please do let us know if you have any more!
Irena and Cress
We have been in South Africa for 2 weeks now, and really loving it! We have done a bit of exploring in between boat jobs and various yacht club BBQs and catching up with all the cruisers. Invariably we all compare notes on how our passage was and how much wind we saw and how many days it took (we took 9 days, very respectable). We were definitely one of the lucky ones as far as the passage from Reunion goes. We made it into Richards Bay harbour before some of the high winds started. On that same passage a few boats were damaged, some even towed into port and one very unfortunate boat hit a container 500 miles offshore and sank (the name of the boat was Wizard, a South African boat with 5 crew on board - all 5 were rescued by a passing freighter). So we count our blessings and thank our captain for getting us here safe and sound.
