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In harbors on both coasts, young families are getting ready to leave. Even school-age children are no deterrence.
More and more of them are taking the same correspondence courses that cater to the children of diplomats and military personnel in remote foreign posts.
At quiet Bahama anchorages of an evening, the youngster rowing a dinghy across to a neighboring boat is likely to be looking for a friend working on the same study assignment.
Tom Colvin himself is one of that cruising minority. Gazelle was not built for a client; she was built for the Col vin family, and she has taken them more than 10,000 miles in every weather. Her Chinese rig is the product of years of research and practical trial. For an experienced sailor like Colvin, who first went to sea at 14 on a three-masted schooner, the steel hull with its full-battened sails represents just about the ultimate in versatility, strength and simplicity.
Like all proper cruising vessels, Gazelle gives her crew the basic necessities of privacy and comfort. To enjoy his kind of life, says Colvin, a cruising man needs remarkably little money beyond the cost of his boat. Long passages at sea have taught the Colvins that they can live afloat with their three children — Karen, 16, Kevin, 11, and Kenneth, 9 — on an income of $3,600 a year. A careful yearly budget kept by Jean Colvin shows these expenses:
FOOD AND CLOTHING FOR A FAMILY OF 5 $1,800
MAINTENANCE ON VESSEL, INCLUDING FUEL 300
RESERVE FUND (REPLACEMENT PARTS, SAILS, MEDICAL EXPENSES 300
TOTAL $2,400
LUXURIES SUCH AS PHOTOS, POSTAGE, EATING OUT, TOURING, SOUVENIRS 600
TOTAL $3,000
ADDED INCOME TO BE USED AS
DESIRED 600
TOTAL $3,600
"That's poverty level ashore," says Colvin. But he hastens to add that it can offer a more than comfortable living afloat. Provided, of course, that the cruising man is more than a competent sailor. He has to be something of a "boatbuilder, mechanic, electrician, navigator, sailmaker, rigger, doctor, lawyer, pilot and philosopher."
As an amateur practitioner of all those professions, Colvin figures that having designed and built nearly 200 boats, he has been on the beach long enough. Now 48, he has put his shop and his home up for sale, put his drawing table and drafting instruments aboard ship, and is getting ready to go to sea once more in a new aluminum junk of his own design. "I'm not retiring," he insists. "But I've paid my dues I ashore. I'm going sailing." Which means, as any cruising man knows, he is going back to the good life.