Sunday Waffles- Living our Dream !
Sunday Waffles Under Sail
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/sailingsundaywaffles/
Names and Ages of people on the boat : Wade & Natalie, kids: Gage, Eden, Cali, & Brielle (ages when we started sailing: 16, 15, 12, 10) Family Name: Erickson
Boat name/type: Sunday Waffles - chosen because our family tradition has been waffles on Sundays. And not only waffles, but we regularly invite family, friends, neighbours, new acquaintances over to join us.
How long have you been living on a sailboat while travelling?
We owned our boat 2 years, spent the first 4-5 months getting our boat ready and then moved on full time with kids and lived onboard for 19 months
What were you doing before you moved aboard?
We lived in Utah and owned a tree service business
Motivation: What inspired you to embark on a sailing adventure?
When we were first married we lived in Hawaii - finished schooling and worked out there for a couple years. While living in Hawaii, we were very involved with the youth in our church. We met a couple teenagers who had just returned from sailing around the world with their family. By this time, we had our oldest son, but he was still a baby. We made it a goal to take our kids on an adventure like this when they were old enough to help and remember an experience that sailing around the world would bring.
Vessel of Dreams: Tell us about your sailboat and its unique features
Our vessel was a 48’ Leopard catamaran. When Wade reminded me of our goal from our days in Hawaii, I told him it had to be on a catamaran. I had only ever been on a monohull and did not love the heel on the moving sailboat.
I also liked the idea of more living space - especially for our size family. A unique, and wonderful feature of our boat is the forward door from the saloon to the front of the boat. Huge blessing for that access while under sail, but also on anchor, it provides a VERY nice breeze through the boat.
The front and rear cockpits were very nice and spacious for hosting several buddy boat friend get-togethers. (Another feature I appreciated was not having the motors, etc under the rear cabin berths.)
Do you have a memorable moment from your first weeks afloat?
One memorable experience was our first sail out of Fort Lauderdale with our kids. It was a busy day on the New River and navigating the bridge operators we intimidating - we may have gotten reprimanded a time or two. Oops! We were VERY inexperienced for reading weather and thought we’d be ok, but quickly learned it was NOT an ideal day to be out in the ocean.
A big storm had gone through and although the winds were lower, the sea-state was still a churning mess! As we headed out into open ocean, our stuff (rookie move not securing) went flying off counters - things falling and breaking, and we had one of those “What did we just do to ourselves?” moment, seriously second guessing if we could actually do this!
Due to the confused sea-state, the shifting winds, and a boat full of seasick crew, we ended up entering the Miami bay area after dark. Luckily, we had gone down to the bay with a captain to get experience on our vessel so we knew the area - which was helpful since the bay has many shallow, dangerous parts.
It felt AMAZING to get our anchor down and reflect on what we did right (very little) and the LONG list of things we needed to do differently with passages from then on. We spent Thanksgiving weekend in the Miami bay and couldn’t get out of there fast enough to start our adventure!
Going up the Rio Dulce river in Guatemala
List a few unforgettable destinations you've visited.
Our favorite water destinations: Bahamas, Curacao, San Blas islands (Panama), Honduras, and Belize;
Our favorite land destinations: Dominican Republic, Granada, Guatemala, & Colombia
Did you take any challenging or unexpected routes?
Bahamas to the DR was our worst sail by far - very scary! We also had a scary sail from San Andres islands (north of Panama) over to Honduras due to the pirate threats and our actual encounter.
Is there a typical day for your family on a sailboat?
Natalie is our early riser. She would be up with the sun, doing personal study and/or exercise. Wade would usually join in for the exercise portion - SUP, beach workouts, or walking/running/exploring the land. We’d have breakfast and scripture study with our kids. Then homeschooling would begin till lunch. A couple afternoons a week, we would join other buddy boats and do science classes together.
Wade would do his own personal study and then boat projects while the kids did their school work.
Every afternoon, we’d go exploring: walking around islands, snorkeling, spearfishing, scuba diving, swimming, etc. After dinner, we’d regularly divide up and go to separate boats to hang out and play games with friends (adult boat, teenager boat, and “the littles” boat).
How do you handle education and schooling?
My two oldest did a high school/college hybrid program through a state college. They earned their high school diplomas along with their 2-year (associates) college degrees. This was a very hard program that took a lot of work. And internet was mandatory, which made boat life very complicated. (We were just before starlink days, unfortunately!)
The younger two girls had paper books and workbooks that we worked through. I really liked their language arts, science, and history curriculum (We used The Good and the Beautiful, a christian based program). They did not have a math curriculum at that time, so we used “Math U See” for one of our girls and “Master Books” for math for the other. Both fit their personalities best. As mentioned above, we’d join together for teaching the science curriculum. We learned all about water/ocean/weather and marine biology. Perfect topics with hands-on learning!
Our main group of scientists ( less two )
What were the biggest challenges you find about this lifestyle?
The initial obstacle was how to afford to buy a boat and go sail for two years. It’s pretty miraculous to witness first hand how setting a goal and focusing on accomplishing that goal is so powerful!
The second obstacle was adjusting to the changes when we first moved aboard. We had been living on our boat for probably about a month.
One day, I (Natalie) was talking to someone who had asked me how things were going/how we were adjusting to boat life. I responded “the kids are doing great, but I’m a mess.” My kids overheard me say that and quickly corrected me. We were out LIVING OUR DREAM - having this amazing experience. Yet, we were all struggling!
We starting having more open talks about how we were coping with all the changes, dealing with our new responsibilities and tasks, and how we were learning to be more patient and supportive of each other and our needs. I learned I needed exercise time - those endorphins are vital to me and my mood. I also needed me time: to learn/study, to be creative, and sometimes just some down time. Date nights were still very important to our relationship and time with other women (boat buddies) was very therapeutic! (Our kids and Wade had their own needs - I’m just listing a few of mine as an example.)
Did you overcome a particularly tough situation?
Our captain was under a lot of stress those first few months. You are on constant alert 24/7 - watching the weather, fixing boat problems or maintenance, figuring out safe anchorages, worrying about the anchor holding, and moving/anchoring/docking the vessel at any point.
Due to this high stress, lack of sleep, and pressure, it was pretty difficult to be a crew for our captain, who was not being the nicest. Fortunately, our captain was receptive of a good heart-to-heart conversation and fixed his attitude towards his crew.
We also learned how to anchor better - and in the different types of seafloor - and best of all, we learned about this great anchor app that would track your movement and alert you if you went out of your anchor parameters.
Lastly, we learned from a lot of our inexperienced mistakes (fortunately, none were bad enough to cancel our adventure), sought advise from more experienced sailors, and became more confident in our knowledge and abilities in manoeuvering our vessel and living on the ocean.
Has this lifestyle helped you grow and learn?
I’ve mentioned a lot above. I’ll add this: we grew more individually and in our relationships with each other in these two years than we probably had collectively in our lives. One daughter struggled with school and confidence so much that her friendships, abilities, and desires really struggled. Since this adventure, she has excelled in school, socially, and anything she sets her mind to do (so now she is more than willing to try new things). At the beginning of the trip, it took everything she had to jump off a 15 foot cliff into the water. A year later, she was jumping off 40 foot cliffs with no hesitation, learned to scuba time, and became a strong swimmer.
Life has become more intentional. Our minds have shifted to decide what really matters and is important in life. Providing for yourself, serving and giving in your community, growing and learning are all important and part of a fulfilling life - but so is living your dreams.
You don’t have to have some big, audacious dream like “sailing around the world” to have an impact on your relationships and living life to the fullest.
Sometimes, life needs to be about developing talents, working hard, and being involved in multi areas of life. But during those times especially, I think its super important to slow down and spend some quiet nights together - even if it's just playing games. Give the focus of our lives to those relationships most important.
Colombia ‘Lost City’ trek
I didn’t talk about this in this section, but this is after we got done with the 4-day trek in the jungle. I told everyone to make the face of how they most felt in that moment: Gage & Eden - so tired, wanted sleep. Wade - already had his shower and food so he was happy. Cali & Brielle so happy to be done! And Natalie - HANGRY and annoyed that Wade left her with grumpy kids to get them back alone! Lol
How do you connect with others while sailing?
A really easy was to connect is just going around anchorages on dinghy’s and looking for other kids on boats! Boat kids are THE BEST at inclusion! They are always willing to meet and hang out with other kids. This provides an easy flow in the adults meeting and becoming friends as well.
Curaçao with buddy boat kids
Do you have any memorable cultural experiences?
The two biggest that stand out was our time in Colombia - we did some service to people outside of Cartagena and were exposed to very harsh living conditions the poor people endure. The second experience in Colombia was the Lost City trek and seeing native people and learning about and seeing their customs and lifestyle. The third experience happened in our time in the San Blas islands of Panama with the Kuna people. We did another service project and helped them clean up their island and taught them about proper garbage disposal. We are hoping they will take some of our ideas and input to keep their beautiful lands clean of garbage.
The ‘Lost City’ Trek
Do you have future plans or new destinations in mind?
Our goal was to go around the world. Due to covid, we didn’t get to do that - since most of the South Pacific was closed. We still want to do that, especially experience the south pacific. Once our kids are all graduated from high school, we want to buy another boat and go back out there. Keep sailing the ocean!
How do you see your adventure evolving?
A big change is we won’t have our children with us full time again. But we hope to go with couples that we traveled with before.
We’ll never be done with adventures. We’re exploring and enjoying the world around us whenever we can. We are surrounded by beauty - this world is full of incredible places to see, cultures to learn about, and experiences to have with loved ones. We’ll keep experiencing as much as we can until we can go out on the seas again.
Do you have any advice for people looking to embark on similar adventures?
Learn all you can - books, podcasts, YouTube videos. Have proper expectations. Living on the ocean is hard, there are a lot of challenges. And boats are A LOT of work - maintenance, repairs, etc. If you don’t like to work and fix things, you probably will not enjoy this lifestyle.
Doesn’t matter how fancy or new your boat is, plan on a lot of work and money to take care of it. Anything you can do for practice ahead of time, spending time together, talking about roles, responsibilities, etc and how to work through those (communication) before you get on the boat will all be super helpful to having a more enjoyable, safe, and relationship building experience.
How do you manage safety and emergencies on your journey?
Like everything else - be prepared for multi scenarios. We had extra emergency water containers onboard - separate from our water tanks, incase there was a problem with our water maker/tank/pumps. We carried extra fuel - always. We were very organized with our food storage - and using that food. And we always food prepped before passages.
We always had a set schedule for watches on passages at night - but during the day, we were more laid back. We’d each take turns at the helm and switch the rotation up.
When we were going through known pirate waters, we had a set plan - radio channels, turning off lights/ais, “weapons” each boat had onboard, what we were going to do if we encountered anyone, etc.
Do you have a heartfelt message or piece of wisdom/advice for families looking to embark on similar adventures. This could include maintenance, money, relationships, mindset …
I think I have probably already said a lot about this - I could probably write a whole book on this stuff, actually. Lol
I will add - it was all worth it! The ups and downs, all the hard work to make it happen, all the hard work to be out there and stay out there, and all the sacrifice we made to accomplish this goal and dream. We sold our business to be able to do this. It probably wasn’t the best time for us to sell - if we would have waited another year, we could have sold our business for substantially more because we were doubling and growing like crazy. But that was the time we had with our kids. That was when we set the goal - and we had enough to make it happen. It was worth that sacrifice. I don’t regret anything about it at all.
Lastly, I will add that coming back to land-life has been HARD. Hard on all of us - and maybe hard because it was unexpected. When all the gurus tell you to have the next dream set up before you finish the current one, I can understand why now. We came home changed. I guess that is expected.
We came back to our same house and friends and way of life, but we didn’t fit back in because we weren’t the same people who had left. This has left us floundering a bit....trying to learn this new identify of ourselves and move forward. Looking for those new goals and how to accomplish them.
It’s all part of life, and we’re working through all the ups and downs of that. It’s all good - we’re getting there! And still being able to get together with our boat buddies from time to time has been a balm to our hearts like nothing else could.
