Future Plans & Sailing

My friend Herbert Salvenmoser recently went sailing with Wolfgang Hausner http://www.wolfgang-hausner.com/logbuch.html . He's been sailing and living on catamarans since 1965, circumnavigated the world twice and lives now on his boat in Cebu, Philippines. He also has a daughter, Vaitea, who is now 15 years old.

Wolfgang and his wife Gerti didn't opt for an Austrian or German http://www.deutsche-fernschule.de/index.htm education http://www.ils.de/index.php?rf=http://www.ils.de/fernlehrwerk.php , but instead went for home-schooling American style, through the Calvert School http://www.calvertschool.org/hs/homeschool_title in Maryland. The results seem to be more than encouraging, with apparently no problems as far as socialization is concerned.

I have always been interested in home-schooling and distance education, especially since Liping checked it out and got her 2nd degree in Organizational Behavior http://www.bbk.ac.uk/manop/op/courses.htm from the University of London http://www.lon.ac.uk/colleges.htm on our last trip in 1994/1995.

I did a fair bit of research those days about Master's Degree programs, but now I am more interested in courses for children. Home-schooling programs for elementary, junior, and senior high school. I used to teach some of the "kids" living on boats years ago and my impression was very positive.

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What I would really like to do, is go and buy another catamaran http://www.yachts-in-greece.com/multihull.html in about 2007, something like an Antigua 37 or a Catana 40 . Somewhere in the range of 38' to 42', big enough for a family with kids, but small enough to handle for one person alone.

And then slowly, slowly sail through the South Seas, from island to island, and from country to country. Not like last time, in a hurry to cross the Pacific before the cyclone season sets in again, but with long breaks here and there. Perhaps even make it a permanent lifestyle, like some of my friends have done. And if it gets tedious after a while, what with all the work, the dirt and the anxiety, maybe settle down on one of those islands.

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By far the biggest change and challenge, however, is that this time it won't be just Liping and me, but our child and us. That's why 2007 seems about the earliest reasonable time to go. (I did help by boiling lots of water when one of my friends gave birth on her boat, but I am not all that keen to repeat the experience. :-)

Maybe this is all a bit crazy, but then most of my past ventures fall into that category. As I know people who have done it, it is definitely do-able, the only questions that remain are whether it a good thing to try and do and whether we can actually handle it.

So far, it is just a dream or a plan. I constantly make many of those and almost all of them get discarded at one stage. I hope that this particular one doesn't.

Cheers!

Holg

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Boy, it does look ugly with the links like that, doesn't it?