Sailing in Search of Good Life

After dark, when the moonlight dances on the wave tops, Tom and Mel Neale can see the constellations as the ancients saw them, brilliant against a sky clear of smog or dust.

He used to be a lawyer, she a schoolteacher, navigating their way through 9-to-5 jobs, career ladders and commutes. That was 17 years ago. Then they headed off to sea on their 47-foot yacht.

Since then, they have been living their dream, drifting lazily aboard Chez Nous between the East Coast and the Bahamas. The yacht is the only home their two daughters, now teenagers, have ever known.

“This may sound corny to you,” said Tom Neale, “but out here we can feel God breathing.”

The Neales simply find life on a sailboat more satisfying than staying ashore. So do others--especially baby boom families--who are taking to the seas in increasing numbers despite the risks and sacrifices.

For some, cruising aboard a sailboat for years can offer a rugged reality more evocative of a trek across the prairie in a Conestoga wagon than an extended stay at Club Med. Life is frequently reduced to the basics: food, water and staying afloat.

There are times when the sky goes black, lightning crackles near the mast, and the sea turns savage. Safe harbor is still miles away, and the howling wind carries the unmistakable roar of the surf lashing a rocky shore.

And there’s no one else to turn to for help.

The risks of live-aboard sailing were vividly illustrated by a recent rash of mishaps involving American yachts, including one that was rammed and sunk Nov. 24 off New Zealand, killing two Southern California children and their father.

Nonetheless, this winter about 10,000 live-aboard yachts will be bobbing along, many with no particular place to go and in no particular hurry to get there, said Jimmy Cornell, a London-based sailor who writes often about the sea.

Ten years ago, the number was about 6,000 yachts.

Cornell, who calls often at marinas worldwide, said a precise figure is impossible because the cruising population is, by definition, transient.

In the fall, there’s a dash of sorts from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas and points south; in the spring, from Puerto Vallarta to Hawaii and the South Seas.

Generally, however, most yachts putter about the Sea of Cortez or the Caribbean. Some are gone for a year, some for five, some for the duration.

And, increasingly, children are along for the ride.

Perhaps one in four yachts now carries parents and children, said John Riise, managing editor of Latitude 38, a Sausalito-based magazine devoted to live-aboard sailing.

Cruising parents typically want a shared adventure and a full dose of family values.

Aboard Chez Nous, that’s not a cliche. Parents and daughters prepare and eat three meals a day together. When the Neales wish for a fish dish, they don masks and snorkels, grab underwater slings and go fishing.

School is also a family affair. Melanie, 16, and Carolyn, 14, spend six or seven hours a day below deck with their correspondence courses; Tom teaches history while Mel teaches math and biology. They also get practical instruction from their folks.

One recent day, Melanie had just finished taking an engine apart with her father and was grinding a valve. “Out in the Bahamas, you can’t just take it to the shop and get it fixed,” she said.

After their schooling, the girls often paint or write letters in the forward stateroom. “Think how much better that is than this crap on the television,” Tom said.

The rigors of the live-aboard life are real, Melanie said. But there’s plenty of time to play. “We wouldn’t want to [live ashore] even if we could.”

Of course, like any yacht, Chez Nous has to pull into port periodically for repairs, supplies, visits to doctors and grandparents, or to sit out bad storms.

And time ashore gives parents and daughters a chance to recharge--after long stretches of being trapped aboard a small boat with only each other for company or after fighting boredom and sunburn while drifting without even a hint of breeze.

Even so, from the day they got married in 1968, Tom and Mel always wanted to go to sea. Both had grown up sailing in Virginia. Typically, it took years--11 all told--to make the dream a reality.

They didn’t starve. But every spare penny went toward buying a boat. There was no big house on the hill. No dinners at fancy restaurants. Not even movies.

Right off, however, the Neales bought a 27-foot sailboat. They traded up to a 41-footer, then up again to the 47-footer. The $100,000 it cost was a hefty sum, especially in 1979, but that bought a boat big enough for children.

“This is how so many people do it,” Tom said. “Other people think that [cruisers] are wealthy and loafing on inherited money. Most people who do this sacrifice for years to do it.”

It used to be that cruising did attract primarily the rich or retirees. “People would save up for years and kids would move out and the folks would sell the house and buy the boat and off they’d go,” said Latitude 38’s Riise.

Now, said Richard Spindler, the magazine’s publisher: “What you have are the baby boom people, just gazillions of them, saying, ‘I work pretty hard. Why? I can get a great boat for $30,000 to $40,000, do something different and enjoy life.’ ”

In fact, the backs of specialty magazines such as Latitude 38 and Cruising World are littered with ads listing yachts for sale, many older but still solid vessels for $50,000 or less.

Various parts, steering gear and a sophisticated navigating system can add another $20,000.

Karen Bauer, 35, and her husband, Rod, 46, bought their 30-footer, Oasis, for $68,000. They added $7,000 in gear before setting off last year from Alaska.

“We sold the house and bought the boat,” she said while Oasis, en route to Mexico, was docked recently at a San Diego marina. “We figured it was a good trade.”

At another San Diego marina, Bob Moore, 39, and his wife, Linda, 33, also were getting ready for a journey to Mexico. A former merchant seaman from Washington state, Moore said he and his wife “saved our nickels and dimes for 15 years” before setting off on Bandit, a 50-foot sloop.

Both families have their children aboard.

“I have a lot of faith in my parents,” said Ruth Bauer, 12. “They wouldn’t be going offshore if they didn’t know what to do.”

When 14-month-old Kareena Moore toddles about the deck, she is strapped into a harness and tether. The sides of the deck are lined with safety netting. Always thinking safety first, her parents expressed no reservations about taking her to sea.

“I think we are putting her in danger. But it’s a calculated risk. Look,” Bob Moore said, “you could put her in a bubble somewhere.”

People sometimes do fall overboard or get smacked in the head by a boom. Occasionally, small sailboats are run over by big ships.

But it appears the most significant danger of live-aboard sailing is far more commonplace. For 18 years, publisher Spindler said, Latitude 38 has learned about half a dozen cruisers killed each year--almost all in their dinghies, run down by other dinghies that were going too fast. “They get ground up by the outboards,” he said of the victims.

Nevertheless, he said, cruising remains “nowhere near as dangerous as flying a small plane.”

Acquiring the skills to be a safe cruising sailor takes a long time, usually during those years spent squirreling away nickels.

“It’s the only frontier left in the world--aside from space exploration--where you have to survive on your own wits,” said Bob Harris, who lived with his family on a 43-foot yawl named Priority Won for six years and is reluctantly back ashore in Los Angeles as boss of Paramount Pictures’ costume and property departments.

“If you get in trouble,” Harris added, “you can’t call a cop. You can’t call a mechanic. You can’t call a hospital or an ambulance. You have to be a radio technician, electrician, plumber, cook, fisherman and mechanic. And on top of that, a sailor.”

Janet and Bob Bean of Huntington Beach were experienced sailors when they decided seven years ago to go cruising on their 35-foot sloop, Windfall. It still took them most of a year to get ready.

She took a variety of classes to become more seaworthy, including courses in navigation and ham radio operation.

He made sure that the boat was outfitted with the proper charts, that the rigging was in good order and that it had the proper anchors, ropes and chains.

“When you’re living on a boat . . . you have to set it up with all the things you need to live, not just a weekend snorkeling trip,” said Janet Bean, 36.

“You have to make sure you have all the right clothes [and] foul-weather gear. You have to make sure the boat is stocked well. you have to have a good capacity of water on board, a good capacity for fuel. All the right emergency equipment.

“If you don’t have those things, you’ll end up hating it, hating each other and hating life.”

There can indeed be trouble in paradise. For aboard a small sailboat, there’s ample opportunity for disagreement--just no room for it.

“A lot of people don’t make it, frankly,” said magazine editor Riise. “Either they hate sailing, hate being seasick all the time, or they hate each other.”

Earl Rubell said he once read a newspaper advice column that said no relationship could stand more than 72 hours of continuous togetherness.

He spent 7 1/2 years at sea with a girlfriend aboard a 30-foot sloop. One afternoon in Panama, he couldn’t stand it--or her--any more: “The pressures of being on a 30-foot by 9-foot space with one person, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just got to be too much.”

Rubell, a pediatrician, flew home to Los Angeles. Now 72, he volunteers full time at the Venice family clinic. His friend took the sloop, dubbed Crazy Lady, and sailed to the South Seas.

He and she are no longer together.

For others, cruising has been like the love boat. “We decided that if we could live together on a boat for five years, we could get married,” Janet Bean said.

From 1990 through 1994, they eased around Central and South America. In July, back ashore, they were married.

After being at sea for five years, Janet Bean said, they were ready for a spell on dry land: “We wanted a good hamburger.”

They also got the opportunity to bank a bit more money for their next cruise. A typical at-sea budget runs about $2,500 a month; the Beans spent a few hundred dollars more each month.

An accountant, Janet Bean, 36, worked full time in 1995. In January, the newlyweds headed back to sea aboard Windfall--fortified by romance and the cushion of cash that she socked away in the bank, a supplement for her husband’s monthly pension from firefighting.

“We’re just basically going to take off to the Bahamas and the Caribbean, wherever the wind blows us,” she said.

Aboard Chez Nous, in port this week in Fort Lauderdale, the watchword is frugality. Meals run toward rice and beans, homemade bread, home-grown sprouts and, if the hunting has been good, fish.

To make money, Tom Neale writes for Cruising World and delivers speeches at cruising seminars. Mel, an accomplished painter, sells her work when in port. Melanie helps out by hawking hand-painted T-shirts.

It took several years for Tom Neale’s writing to pay steadily. At first, he said, “I worked on people’s diesels. I worked on people’s toilets. Whatever you could do, I did it.”

Money is sometimes scarce, he said. But life on a 47-foot sailboat isn’t about money, anyway.

“Think about seeing the starfish on the bottom of the sea in the moonlight,” he said. “Think about that. The sea is that clear. The sand is that white. And you’re seeing it in the moonlight.

“Or you’re on watch at night. You and your kid are all alone on deck, talking about things. You and she are totally alone under the stars. It’s incredible.

“Or working together as a family, to survive in a storm. It’s very scary. And then you come through it together.”

He paused, then added: “People who don’t understand, will say, ‘When are you going to come back to the real world?’ To me, out here, this is the real world.”