I lived nomadically growing up – my children will have stability and roots

I hated the bunk I slept in as a child.

It was narrow, dark, and always damp with the smell of salt and wet canvas from our boat’s sails that were stored beside my bed.

Situated in the forward cabin on the port side, I would fall asleep curled around the shape of the boat as it rocked.

My parents bought our first boat in the 1970s when I was six months old.

They had been living in a single rented room in London and decided that a boat would be a cheaper and freer way to live. Neither had any sailing experience. They simply bought a 30-foot oceanic catamaran and learned how to operate it as they went.

I grew up on that boat. We travelled to Italy, where my brother was born, and later crossed the Atlantic and rounded Cape Horn.

Today, social media is full of families seeking similar lives, educating their children under open skies, away from school gates and daily routines. It looks idyllic and I understand the appeal.

While my parents had a plan – they wanted to sail around the world and to test themselves against the elements and the odds – their route was guided more by curiosity than strategy, a mix of weather, instinct, and whatever lay on the horizon.

Some of our experiences were truly remarkable. I saw phosphorescent tides in the Bay of Biscay and dolphins dancing through the waves beneath the webbing of our catamaran’s twin hulls.

I learned to sail, light fires, and steer an outboard motor before I learned long division.

I remember crossing the Channel in thick fog, with no engine power, banging saucepans with my brother to warn off cargo ships in the darkness. I learned resourcefulness, how to read wedged against a bulkhead so I did not roll with the waves, how to mend a dinghy, and how to find food when meals were forgotten.

Yet, as much as those adventures taught me resilience, they also came at a cost.

For the first 11 years of my life, we had no postcode, no front door, and no permanent education. My parents would only stay in one place long enough for me to attend the nearest school – sometimes for a term, sometimes for just a few weeks – before we set sail again.

I had changed schools at least a dozen times and grew used to arriving mid-term with no uniform, no friends, and no idea what the rules were.

Teachers assumed I had been taught what I had missed, when in reality, learning was something I pieced together from libraries and the books I read by lamplight as the sea hissed against the hull.

I undoubtedly had big gaps in my knowledge, yet I was too frightened to ask questions, afraid of drawing attention to myself or revealing what I did not know. So instead I learned to stay quiet, even when I was lost.

My appearance did little to help matters: my sun-bleached hair, second-hand clothes, salt-stiff skin automatically marked me out as different, so I kept my distance from other children.

Friendship always meant loss anyway and we would leave before the bond could grow roots. Instead, I watched teachers, classmates and strangers, collecting clues about how to belong.

What I wanted most, though, was stability.

A bedroom with walls that stayed still. A bed that stayed made. A space of my own that did not smell of mildew and seaweed. I longed for a dog, for riding lessons, for shopping trips and birthday parties with the same friends two years in a row.

So, when I see families online choosing nomadic lifestyles and schooling their children beneath palm trees now, I feel a mixture of admiration and tenderness.

I understand the dream, but I also want to whisper that freedom can sometimes feel like disconnection for their children.

The photographs show turquoise waters and sunsets, but rarely the loneliness or the ache of saying goodbye over and over again.

Adults often told me how lucky I was. They imagined freedom and adventure. What I wanted to tell them was that I felt completely unmoored. I craved safety and predictability, the gentle rhythm of ordinary life.

Then, when I was 12, my family settled briefly back on land. Yet emotionally, that longing never really left me.

Even as I grew older and made deliberate choices that gave me stability – like going to university, getting a job in a law firm, a steady income and a place I could truly call home in London – I still struggled with feeling like an outsider.

I remember being terrified of children because they reminded me of my own lost childhood, how invisible I had felt, and feeling uncertain of where I belonged.

It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I started to see a change.

I remember walking home from work one evening, wearing a sharp green suit from my job and passing a group of teenagers. Only, as I did, I realised that they didn’t see the scared child I once was, but a confident adult woman walking by. It was a moment of startling clarity that I had finally built the safety I once longed for.

Today, I have complicated feelings about my parents. While I admire their courage and tenacity – crossing oceans with no training is an extraordinary feat – I often feel they gave me the world, but not the tools to navigate it.

Now as a parent myself, I have tried to do things differently.

Though I am not against adventure and have taken my children travelling, giving them small doses of uncertainty to show that the world is wide and worth exploring, I have also given them stability and choice.

They have a home where their friends can visit, have access to sports, music, and keep familiar routines. I also encourage them to speak about what affects them, to say what they want and need. They know their voices matter.

Because children do need wonder, to see the world and to learn to handle its unpredictability. But they also need a place to return to, friends who stay, teachers who know them, and a home that holds their stories, not just their survival.

After all, even the best boats need a harbour.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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