Key West Christmas

16 Comments

So after being woken up by the drunken drowned rats at midnight—and assuring the kids that the noise outside wasn’t Santa, but that he’d be coming as soon as they were gone—the kids managed to get back to sleep until our normal six a.m. When they came out it was … Read More

Halloween

18 Comments

People ask us about our kids’ schooling a lot. This is a pretty good example of “school” for them. The Edison and Ford winter estates are practically next door to us here. They walk around, see a bunch of cool stuff, listen to a bunch of random facts about two … Read More

Florida Family Fun

17 Comments

Sanibel Island is just a few miles away. Always a fun spot for a few hours on the beach and some shell hunting. I love the look on this little girl’s face. The Sanibel Island Lighthouse, lighting the way since 1884. Hard for her to get her nose out of … Read More

Fifteen Years On

22 Comments

Ali and I realized recently that this month marks 15 years since we moved aboard Bumfuzzle and kicked off this life. Everything before nomadism now feels like a different life entirely. While we experienced life from the perspective of a steady day-to-day suburban childhood to a never-know-what’s-around-the-next-corner adulthood, our kids … Read More

Back Where We Belong

19 Comments

Well, after a week in the work yard, one of these boats is ready to go back in the water. One of these years, when we’re in a country that doesn’t get paid $85/hr to do basic labor on a boat, we’ll give the bottom a good sanding and skim … Read More

Florida Boat Yard

15 Comments

I’d been promising the kids their first motorcycle rides, so when I was set to leave the next day, there was no more delaying. I remember my first ride as a seventh-grader on the back of a friend’s dad’s motorcycle. He went so far as to pull a wheelie going … Read More

Hurricane Season Haul-Out

16 Comments

With nowhere to go for two days I was able to just hang on the boat, work, and… nope, that’s about it. No people came through, no going ashore, no swimming. Just quiet—except for the water being released from Lake Okeechobee. The morning that the railroad bridge opened up, the … Read More

Florida… Again.

25 Comments

Storms blew in and blew out, and pretty soon it was time to make our run across the Gulf Stream back to Florida. A few hours later we were in Fort Lauderdale, and as always seems to happen—like a sign—when we return to the States, a squall popped up. We … Read More

Eight

47 Comments

Eight years. I look forward to this little girl’s future, while at the same time I pine for her past. Which, I suppose, is all the more reason to work hard at living in the moment. I could go on and on with superlatives that describe Ouest, but at the … Read More

Always Water

10 Comments

I wouldn’t say “provisioning” has started in earnest, but multiple boxes and cans of the same thing have been coming home from the store pretty regularly these days. St. Augustine has turned out to be a pretty cool place to have a boat with kids. We’ve got the marina right … Read More

Builders

19 Comments

We’ve always got “garbage” piled up next to the dock locker that the kids use to build different things. It’s gotten to the point around here that our neighboring boats are even dropping off their boxes for our kids to use. By day three I had everything pretty well assembled … Read More

Thanksgiving

26 Comments

Just in time for Christmas. Lowe managed to hold on to all of his teeth until they came out naturally—seems to imply that he is just better than his sister at protecting his face when he wipes out. We went down to New Smyrna Beach for the big kite festival. … Read More