Rereading Voyaging With Kids before I pick a floor plan
Behan Gifford argues you should optimize the boat for the 90% case, not the worst night — and with four kids and a 50-foot deck, that's making me rethink the layout question.
Rereading Behan Gifford, Sara Dawn Johnson, and Michael Robertson's Voyaging With Kids on a flight back from Annapolis. Second pass this year. The chapter that's poking me is the one on choosing a boat layout — specifically how cabin configuration interacts with how kids actually live aboard.
Their take, distilled: parents want privacy from the kids, kids want privacy from each other (eventually), and the boat decides who wins. Sailing Totem — the Giffords' Stevens 47 — had three kids stacked in the forepeak together for nine years and a circumnavigation. That worked. They also write that they wouldn't do it again with teenagers.
I have four kids. Ages 4, 7, 11, 14. By the time we're a year in, I have two teenagers. By the time we land back in Bend, I have three. Most production catamarans in our range — 48 to 52 feet — come in either an "owner's version" (three cabins, master suite taking up half a hull) or a "charter version" (four cabins, four heads, smaller everything). Neither lays out cleanly for a family of six.
The Lagoon 50 owner's version puts the parents in a forward suite in one hull and uses the other hull for two kid cabins plus an office. Two of my four kids sleep in a converted office. The Fountaine Pajot Elba 45 four-cabin layout solves the bunk count but each cabin is small enough that my 14-year-old would be miserable in three months. The Outremer 51 we've been most interested in has a cleaner layout, but the four-cabin version is rare on the used market — I've seen two come up in twelve months.
Gifford's broader argument is that you shouldn't optimize for the worst night of the trip — the rough passage, the seasick kid — because most nights aren't that. You should optimize for the boat at anchor, where 90% of life happens. The 90% answer for our family is probably four small bunks with reading lights and doors each kid can close, even if those bunks are smaller than I'd like.
The bit I'm still arguing with: she's pretty firm that bunk-sharing among siblings teaches something useful, and that the privacy I'm trying to engineer is a parent reflex more than a kid need. She might be right. My 11-year-old daughter would tell you otherwise in a clear voice.
A number from the book that stuck this read: in their survey of cruising families, the most common reason given for ending a voyage early was not money, not weather, not boat issues — it was a kid (usually a teenager) who wanted off. That tracks with what I heard talking to families at the Annapolis boat show last fall. It doesn't change which boat I buy. It changes how I weight the cabin question. If the layout fails the 14-year-old in year two, the trip fails in year two.
So I'm doing two things differently now. I'm taking four-cabin charter layouts more seriously than I was a month ago, and I'm asking every broker on every listing whether the second-hull cabins have opening hull ports and standing headroom — the two things every cruising-kid blog post agrees on for older kids. Still don't have an answer. Probably won't until we walk the boats.
More notes-in-progress over at the boat worksheet.
