14 More Things I Know at 12 That Land Kids probably Don’t

Part 2

By Sophia

A lot of people read my first blog list. Some of you were boat kids who said — yes, exactly. Some of you were land kids who said — wait, really? And there was alot of adults who encouraged me to keep writing. Both made me very happy. So I kept going. Turns out 12 things wasn’t even close to enough.

1. How to Navigate

Not just “turn left at the buoy.” I mean reading a chart, understanding depth, knowing where the shallow water hides, recognizing the markers and what their colors mean. My dad taught me that the ocean has a whole language written on those charts and once you learn to read it, you never look at water the same way again. I’m still learning. But I know enough now to follow our track on the plotter and understand where we are and where we’re going. And that feeling knowing your position in the middle of open water or in a channel is hard to describe. It’s like being in on a secret but its also super important for our safety.

2. How to Handle Seasickness

I’m not going to pretend this one is fun. Seasickness is real and it’s awful and almost every sailor has dealt with it. I have too. What I’ve learned is that fighting it makes it worse. You have to give in a little ,go up to the cockpit, find the horizon, breathe slowly, stop reading, stop looking at screens. Your body apparently needs a fixed point in a moving world. Once I stopped trying to push through it and started working with it, it got easier. I still have rough days on ocassion. But I know what to do now, and that makes all the difference.I think after a while you get sea legs and it all gets better.

3. How Every Island Feels Completely Different

People think islands are all the same. They’re not ,not even close. Some are flat and quiet with water so clear you can see the bottom in 20 feet. Some are lush and loud with birds you’ve never heard before. Some have little towns where everyone knows each other and waves at you from the dock. Some feel completely wild, like no one has been there in years. I’ve learned to arrive somewhere new with no expectations, just curiosity. Every island has its own personality. Finding it is one of my favorite things about this life.It keeps this life very intrestiong visiting new places .

4. How to Stay Calm When a Squall Passes Through

We don’t sail in storms, my parents are way too smart for that. But squalls happen. A rainy squall can come out of nowhere, even on a day that started sunny and calm. The sky darkens, the wind picks up, the rain hits hard and fast. The first few times it happened I felt a little bit of panic. Now I know what it is, something that passes. You reef your sails if you need to, you stay low, you wait. My parents stay calm and that taught me to stay calm too. Twenty minutes later the sun is usually back out and the water is sparkling like nothing happened. I’ve learned that most scary things are just squalls and they pass.

5. What It Means to Really Be Patient

On a boat, you wait. You wait for a weather window to cross. You wait for the tide. You wait for the wind to fill in or die down. You can’t rush any of it. The ocean doesn’t care about your schedule. I used to hate waiting. Now I’m actually good at it not just tolerating it, but finding things to do inside . Patience isn’t doing nothing. It’s doing something else while the thing you’re waiting for gets ready.

6. How to Be OK When the Plan Changes

We were supposed to go somewhere once and couldn’t because the weather turned. It happens all the time on a boat. I used to get really frustrated I had it all pictured in my head and then it just disappeared. But I’ve learned that the place we ended up instead was usually just as good, sometimes better. The detour became the memory. Now when plans fall apart I try to get calm instead of upset. What’s here that we didn’t expect? There’s almost always something.We always find something to do while waiting its ok.

7. Music Makes Everything Better

I play guitar and I listen to music constantly, on passages, at anchor, in my cabin, in the cockpit watching the water. Music has always made me happy but out here it means something extra. It’s how I celebrate a beautiful day. It’s how I make a regular afternoon feel like something special. It connects me to friends back home, to songs we all know, to a world that feels close even when we’re miles offshore.

I don’t feel far away from everything when I have music. I feel exactly where I’m supposed to be, just with a really good soundtrack.

8. Art Is How I Say What Matters

I sketch a lot. But I don’t draw everything, I draw the things that mean something to me. A sea creature ive seen swimming. Bolt sleeping in a funnyb position. A view from the cockpit that I never want to forget. Moments that feel important even when I can’t explain exactly why.But what really influences my art is the architecture. Every island, every town, every place we stop has its own look, different buildings, different shapes, different details that catch my eye. A colorful church. An old dock. A housew with an unusual shape.Things most people walk right past without noticing. I notice them. They end up in my sketchbooks.

I think traveling has made me a better artist without me even trying. I just kept showing up, looking at buildings and places and details, and the art got better because of it.

Art is something i love to do when i want to remember something or be able to describe a place to someone who never seen a place.

9. How to Be Grateful for Small Things

A hot shower after a long passage. Fresh fruit when local markets didnt have any for a while.. A calm night at anchor after a rough one. Cell service. These things feel enormous out here in a way they never would on land. I think that’s one of the best things this life has given me a really goodsense of what actually matters. It’s not much. But when you have it, you notice.

10. You Don’t Need the Latest Anything

I genuinely don’t care about trends. I don’t know what everyone is wearing or buying or obsessing over right now, and I’m not sure I’d care even if I did. Out here, what matters is whether your gear works, whether your food is good, whether the people around you are okay. Nobody on the water cares what brand your shorts are. I think I’ll carry that with me forever ,the knowledge that stuff is just stuff, and most of it doesn’t matter nearly as much as we think it does. I used to love going shopping withbmy mom but now we enjoy other things together.

11. We All Need to Take Better Care of the Ocean

I’ve seen things out here that are hard to unsee. Plastic floating miles from any shore. Coral bleached white that used to be full of color. A sea turtle with a scar from fishing line. When you live on the ocean and love it the way I do, that stuff breaks your heart a little every time.

I pick up trash when I find it. I never touch coral. I try to leave every place better than I found it. But honestly it’s not enough not just me, not just our family. I think All of us need to do better. Every single person who has ever swum in the ocean, eaten fish, or just looked at a picture of the sea and thought it was beautiful should do something.

The ocean gives us so much. It’s time we started giving something back.

12. How to Speak the Language of the Sea

Most people don’t know the difference between a halyard and a sheet, a cleat and a cleat hitch, port and starboard without thinking twice. I do. I know what it means to be close-hauled, to gybe, to trim a sail until it stops luffing and fills just right. I know the parts of the boat the way most kids know the rooms in their house. It happened slowly, word by word, trip by trip, until one day I realized I was thinking in sailing terms without even noticing. It’s its own language, and once you speak it, you feel it everywhere. You hear the rigging and understand what it’s saying. You watch another boat and can read what they’re doing. The sea has always had its own vocabulary. I’m lucky enough to know it.

13.How to Be a Good Student Anywhere

People always ask me about school. I think they expect me to say I don’t really do it, or that it’s kind of optional out here. It’s not. Every morning after breakfast I sit down and do every subject. My parents check in on me and look through my notes — they’re really big on notes. At first I didn’t totally get why but now I do. When you write something down properly in your own words it actually stays in your head. Plus it makes you a better writer and I like writing so that works for me. There’s no bell telling me to start and no teacher reminding me what’s due. I just do it. And then the whole afternoon is free — family time, or whatever adventure is waiting for us that day. Honestly that part is pretty great.

14.What the Night Sky Looks Like Far From Any City

I saved this one for last because it’s the hardest to describe.When you’re out on the ocean, miles from any shore, on a clear night with no moon, the sky does something I didn’t know was possible. It fills up with stars like ive never seen before. Every star that city light normally drowns out just appears. The Milky Way isn’t a smudge, it’s a river in asky. Constellations I learned from books become obvious and real. The sky goes so deep it stops feeling like a ceiling and starts feeling like something you could reach.And it feels so close. That’s the thing nobody tells you. Not distant and far away like you’d expect but close. Like if you reached up you could actually touch it. I’ve tried. You can’t. But it feels that way every single time.I’ve seen this so many of times now and it still feels incredible.I don’t know how to explain it to someone who hasn’t seen it. I just think everyone should see sky in the ocean away from the land.

I think thats all i can think of for now.

Read Part 1 here. And if you’re a boat kid with your own list , I want to hear it. Drop it in the comments or find me on Instagram.

Bye Sophia