Your Names and those of your Family: Molly and My Lagerström. Mum and skipper Maria Lagerström and dad Mark Lagerström.

How old are you? Molly is 8 years old and My is 7 years old.

Boat Name: Alice

Boat Type/Model and Size:

Conrad 46. A schooner-rigged plastic boat built in Poland in 1986.

Your Home Port: Göteborg, Sweden

Blog/website/facebook pages:

• www.sailingaroundtheworld.org
• Sailing_Alice on Instagram
• Swedish podcast Andra varvet.

How did you start sailing?

Mum and dad have always been sailing with us. In Sweden, before we started sailing full time, we always sailed on weekends and holidays all year round, even in winter. Only when there was ice on the sea we stayed in port, because the boat was stuck.

Describe what sort of sailors you and your family are:

At the moment we are sailing around the world and we live full-time on the boat. Our plan is to be gone for three years and we have already been away for two years. We have one more year before we go back to Sweden. Right now we are in Micronesia and our next stop will be Indonesia.

What do you like most about living on a boat?

Molly: The best thing about living on a boat is that I can jump in the water and take a swim any time I like.

My: The best thing is that I can always swim and I also like painting a lot and there is always time for me to do that.

Tell us about your cabin where you sleep?

Molly: Me and my sister share a cabin. My bunk is on the top and my sister sleeps on the bunk under me. There is a lot of small compartments in the room were we have lots of toys. We also have a big box with shells that we collected on different beaches.

My: I like to collect bones from different animals that I have in a box in our room. But mum always tries to take them away because she thinks they are disgusting.

What are your favourite jobs on board?

Molly: The only job I have on the boat is cleaning up and I hate that.

My: Sometimes I help mum to look outside in the morning when she keeps watch.

Do you have a special place on the boat where you love to be?

Molly: In mum and dad’s big bed in the captain’s cabin. It’s very cosy.

What have you learned since you started sailing long distances?

Molly: I learned so much about so many animals. I also learned English.

My: I learned a lot about animals, I learned to read pretty good and I learned a lot of English.

List the countries where you have sailed:

First we sailed down the west coast of Europe, then Cape Verde and over to the Caribbean. After the Windward Islands we sailed north to the British Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica and then down to Panama. In the Pacific we sailed through the Galapagos, French Polynesia, American Samoa, Kiribati, Marshall Islands and now Micronesia.

Where are you now – and where are you going to next?

We are in Micronesia and our next stop is Indonesia.

List the oceans/seas you have crossed:

We crossed the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific ocean. Or at least we are very very close to finishing our Pacific crossing. Only the short sail to Indonesia left.

Approximate sea miles:

23,000 miles. But our parents have done one circumnavigation before we were born, so they have some more miles.

Which country have you enjoyed the most so far – and why?

Molly: Galapagos. Because of all the animals – especially the sea lions.

My: Galapagos because of the sea lions. I had a big birthday party on Galapagos on a beach with lots of other boatkids. We had a big pink cake. A sea lion came up and pooped just beside the cake and left it there like a present, I thought that was very funny.

What has been your scariest day on the water?

Molly: Nothing really, we have never been in any storm.

My: I have a lot of nightmares when I sleep.

What has been your best moment on the water?

Molly: When we see dolphins and whales.

My: I love when we catch big fishes. Just a couple of weeks ago we caught a big sailfish.

Do you have a favourite anchorage, where you spent some days at anchor?

Molly:  The place I like the most was the tortoise island in the Caribbean. We built farms and pens for them on the beach and collected them, but they kept escaping. But they liked pineapple so they stayed when we fed them.

Mum’s note: The island is called Baliceaux. I think it belongs to Bequia. First when we went on land we didn’t see any tortoise. We walked around for an hour or so and suddenly there was tortoises all around us.

What do you do on passage when you sail from one country to another?

Molly:  Look at my ipad and do a lot of paintings with watercolours.

My:  Fishing and painting. Sometimes me and mum make new clothes for our Barbies (dolls).

Tell us about the local kids you have met:

Molly:  We often meet local kids especially here in the North Pacific. We like playing in the water together. Sometimes its hard to understand them. The girls are nicest. Sometimes it’s a bit too much when there are so many children.  In Kiribati on the island of Makin the local children came out and played with us in the water around Alice. We jumped in the water from Alice, it was lots of fun.

My:  In Ponpehi in Micronesia we went to the local library and joined the story hour. Afterwards, all the kids got popcorn. Together with our mum, we told all the kids about our sailing adventure. After we played on the playground outside until they closed the library.

Have you met other kids on sailing boats?

Molly:  In the Caribbean we met a lot of Swedish kids, that was fun. On Barbuda we met two kids on the Swedish sailboat Happy Pancake; they were really fun to play with. They are from the same part of Sweden that we are from and before we went sailing we had our boats in the same harbour without knowing. I am really looking forward to meeting them again when we are back in Sweden.

My:  Here in the North Pacific we haven’t met so many other sailboats with kids. But in Majuro we met a sailboat from Canada with seven kids onboard! They were really nice and showed us a big tree we could climb and pick red fruits in the form of small clocks. They were really good. But I fell down from the tree and that hurt a little.

How would you recommend living and traveling on a sailboat to other kids whose parents are thinking about doing the same thing?

Bring a lot of toys!

Is there anything you miss about living on land?

Molly and My:  Sometimes we miss our friends we had in preschool. Sometimes we miss the winters with ice skating and snow.

What will you tell your friends when you get back home after your circumnavigation?

Molly: I will tell them about Galapagos and all the animals there. I will tell them about mum and My getting chased by sea lions and how I played with a baby sea lion in the water.

Any other things you want to tell us – or stories you have to tell:

Mum:  The best thing we do as a family is snorkeling. We do so much snorkeling. When we started sailing the girls couldn’t swim, but they always enjoyed being in the water and they are very comfortable in the water. Now they are good swimmers and can dive down a couple of meters. We love looking at fish, turtles, mantas and starfish.

Our mum has some advice here:

Before we went sailing we spent a lot of time in the communal swimming pool here at home in Sweden. We put the girls in swimming school early. It was sometimes a challenge under Covid with all the extra rules and regulations and not always fun for us parents to spend all this time in the communal swimming pool, but our efforts really paid off.

Our girls always felt comfortable in the water and being able to snorkel and discover the underwater world together have been absolutely amazing. This is our absolutely best family time.

We often find the best snorkeling grounds in shallow places: 1-3 meters depth with a lot of corals. Then the girls can swim around freely and explore. I think the best snorkeling so far has been in the Tuomotus in French Polynesia.

Here in the north Pacific near the equator the water is really warm, but in many places the water is a bit cold, even in the Caribbean the girls start to freeze after a while. We invested in good wetsuits for the girls and have used them a lot. They are a bit hard to find out here so it’s a good thing to buy them before leaving civilisation. A good place to look for them along the way is in surf schools. They often have old used ones, good quality and for a good price. A wetsuit can also add some buoyancy when they are just starting to swim.

It’s also good to bring some warm and comfortable bathrobes in the dingy when snorkeling, so the girls can get warm fast after a good snorkel, especially if we the parents want to stay longer in the water.

Footnote from Mum about schooling the girls on board:

In Sweden children start school at age 6. So Molly started school the same year we left.  Schooling is a hard subject and not our favorite thing on the boat. My doesn’t like school at all, she wants to run around. Molly thinks school is okay.

In Sweden it’s against the law to home school your children, so there are no online options or home schooling options in Swedish for young children. So we bought all schoolbooks and I am the teacher. It’s not that hard when they are this age.

Saturday is Candy Day

We try to do around 1-2 hours of school every day expect Saturdays.
This is because the children eat candy on Saturdays.  For ALL Swedish children Saturday is a special day. Many many years ago the Swedish government came out with a recommendation that children should only eat candy once a week. For some reason, this day became Saturdays for ALL Swedish children. So this day is the children’s special day and for that reason no school and just candy.

When we started sailing I had the idea that we would do a lot of school on long passages and not so much when we were in nice anchorages. This doesn’t work. It’s to hard to do math on a rocking boat when you are a little seasick. So we only do school on long passages when we feel like it.  We mostly do Swedish and math in school, reading and writing, but it’s good to do some science and social science as well, just for variation.

We don’t do any English, they learn anyway. When my children speak English I try to never interfere and I hardly ever correct them. I know that it sometimes sounds a bit funny (same when I talk and use the wrong words, that happens all the time), but I want them to just feel comfortable speaking English, and that comes with self esteem.

I bought a lot of books before we left, but I realized I could have brought more. I also have a subscription to an audiobook-service which is really good, the girls can listen to both fiction and non-fiction and they love it when we are on passage.

I realized that school stressed me a lot in the beginning and I still have worries sometimes that the girls aren’t learning enough. But we do easily work through all school-books with ease that they should in a year. I realized that children learn when they are ready for it and it’s hard to press that time. The important thing is the routine, even if we break that routine a lot. They know that it will be math, reading and writing every day and sometimes they take the opportunity to actually learn something.

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Related Links:

• Cruising with Children (Noonsite)
• Homeschooling Links and Articles (Noonsite)
• More Portrait of a Cruiser stories

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If you think you have an interesting story to tell and would like to take part in our Portrait of a Cruiser series, please contact Sue at [email protected] for a questionnaire.

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The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of Noonsite.com or World Cruising Club.

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