What happened when we decided to take our toddler around the world in our yacht?

When Chris and Shawna Dutton started a new life cruising the world with their two young kids on a Selene 53, not everyone was onboard with their plans…

When we told our family and friends that we were selling our home, our cars and almost everything else we owned to buy a boat and travel the world with our two young children, the two most common reactions were either: “You’re living the life most people only dream about” or “I honestly thought you were crazy.”

Looking back on it, I realise they were both right. But as I write this now, sitting at the table of our Selene 53 on the approach to Bermuda after our second Atlantic crossing, I can’t help but smile as I recall what this journey has meant to our family and the experiences it has given us.

Two Little Words

Like most families, we made some major life decisions in 2020. During the Covid lockdown, we realised that we loved the freedom of travelling
for 6-8 weeks at a time, instead of the usual 1-2 weeks, made possible by working remotely. More importantly, we realised that time together as a family – true quality time – was the most precious thing of all.

It was on a trip to Loreto, Mexico, sitting in a marina admiring the boats at Puerto Escondido, that my husband Chis uttered the two tiny words that would change our lives forever – “What if…?”

Recommended videos for you

What if we bought a boat and cruised around the world? What if we didn’t wait for our daughter to grow up before we jumped into adventure? What if we started crossing off our bucket list of travel destinations when we were in our 30s rather than when we retired?

The idea caught fire and over the next two years we started doing things to make it reality. It was a slow but very deliberate process.

Chris, a software engineer, started his own company and began building contracts to sustain our income while cruising. We finished the house we had been building and listed it for sale.

We spent endless weekends driving up and down the West Coast of the US looking for our ideal boat. I reached out to other families who were already sailing the world and asked questions about global health insurance, mobile phone plans and the must-have items to sustain family life aboard.

It was also during this time that we found out our family would be growing. It did make us pause for a moment and question whether we could really do this with a baby in tow but we decided we could.

In fact, by the time we eventually moved aboard, our son Jacob was 18 months old.

We found the boat that has become our home, MV Next Chapter, in Southern California in July 2023. She’s a 2007 Selene 53 trawler with a trans-Atlantic cruising range, a watermaker and fin stabilisers, plus an interior that is a wonderful mixture of practicality and comfort.

We did make a number of modifications before setting off, such as increasing our refrigeration capacity and adding a healthy supply of spare parts and emergency equipment.

We also upgraded our tender, and washer and dryer – after all, cruising with a toddler in nappies requires lots of laundry. The list was long but we needed to know we could handle any situation.

We could have spent a year at the dock, making ever more upgrades, figuring out the boat’s quirks and testing all the systems but if you have ever spent time in Southern California, the traffic alone is enough to drive you mad. So, after countless “Oh my god, what have we done” moments, we made the decision to depart the dock on the first Saturday of August 2023, rain or shine, projects completed or not, and remind ourselves of why we choose this life.

That gave us just three weeks from receiving the keys to departing the dock.

This was one of the best decisions we ever made. Nothing is ever 100% ready but “good enough” can become a very important mantra out on the water, to maintain your happiness and, at times, sanity.

First Steps

Our first cruise out of the marina was to the fuel dock – every motor boat owner’s most expensive day. We fuelled up and set off to Catalina Island, a short 6 hour cruise across the bay.

Everything went smoothly – we didn’t smash into the dock, we made it to our anchorage with plenty of daylight left, then later that night, once we’d tucked the kids in bed, we looked at each other with a growing sense of amazement that we’d actually done it – our dream was becoming a reality.

Three hours later, in the dead of night, we started rolling around as the wind shifted direction bringing in a 3-4ft swell with it. We spent the rest of that night chasing random clinking noises, picking up items that had slid off the counters, praying our kids would sleep through it and deeply regretting that initial sense of smugness. It was an utterly miserable, sleepless night and our first big reality check.

The next morning, we picked ourselves up and went into “how are we going to fix this” mode. Instead of our planned three days at anchor, we paid for a mooring and had the best weekend exploring Catalina Island, playing on the beach and driving golf carts. Memories we will forever treasure as our first new adventure and a great lesson that plans should never be set in stone.

From there, we set course for Mexico – our first international destination. We’d already agreed our roles and responsibilities on the boat. Chris, a software engineer by trade, is also a talented mechanic, carpenter, electrician, navigator and boat handler.

I like to call him a modern day Mr Fix-It. He can build, fix or repair almost anything. He is responsible for boat maintenance and handling, while maintaining his current and future work contracts.

I handle the formalities of checking in and out of new countries, provisioning, sharing wheel watches and home educating our daughter Lexi while keeping an eye on our son, Jake.

Looking back, that partnership between Chris and I and the constant communication between us (even if at times it sounded a little more like yelling) have been vital to the success of our adventures. Mutual respect and support for each other’s roles and responsibilities is crucial to maintaining happiness aboard.

Magical Mexico

Mexico was everything we could have dreamed of and more. Sunshine, beautiful beaches, incredible culture and cuisine. Some of our most treasured memories came from the friendships we formed with other cruising couples and families.

In total, we spent about eight months cruising the Pacific Coast of Mexico and Sea of Cortez. Often referred to as “the aquarium of the world” because of its staggering biodiversity, it really should be on every cruiser’s bucket list.

Mainland Mexico brought magical experiences and endless opportunities to immerse ourselves in the culture, like learning how chocolate is made, exploring ancient ruins, trekking through jungles and feeding iguanas on the dock.

It was our first time being humbled by living in a country where the language and culture were unfamiliar to us, and we absolutely loved it.

From Mexico, we made the three-day journey south to Costa Rica in February 2024. We left in a flotilla of five boats that we had met along the way, both power and sail, which gave us the confidence to make that long trip across the infamous Gulf of Tehuantepec – known for intense winds and big seas.

In Costa Rica, we had three glorious months with friends on M/V Serenity and M/V Summer Dreams exploring Costa Rica’s beauty, sharing rental cars to go shopping, and helping to teach our children.

It was a time of potluck dinners, lots of laughter and love – we truly did experience the Costa Rican saying “pura vida” (pure life).

Costa Rican Dream

Lexi learned to surf, a passion she will take with her forever, and we had our first visitors from back home (Washington State). It was a real eye-opener to share our new way of life with our friends and their families.

It enabled our kids to share the skills and knowledge they’d learned like how to conserve water, be mindful of rubbish and single-use products, revel in nature as opposed to iPads, and enjoy endless hours of beach and sun.

One day on a beach in Costa Rica, a local family was celebrating a birthday and graciously invited our kids to come over and share in their cake and candy.

They all came running back with the biggest smiles, saying we would NEVER have let them take candy from strangers back home. They were right, we had changed, this new life of ours had taught us all to embrace people and cultures that were unfamiliar to us.

Our visits from friends, which quickly became an annual tradition wherever we were in the world, reminded us that true friendships can flourish no matter the distance between us. That too was a huge comfort, knowing that by accepting this new life, we weren’t losing the things from home that mattered most.

After three months in Costa Rica, Chris was anxious to get cruising again – after all we had many more places to see and a long list of countries to visit.

We motored south to Panama and entered the mighty canal in May 2024.

We were full of emotions as we set out to transit it; excited, nervous, awe-struck. We welcomed our line-handler on board, a wonderful young man who would guide our crew on where and when to tie lines, and later we were joined by a canal pilot to advise Chris on how to manoeuvre in the locks.

Experiencing that first lock and the terrifying amount and speed of water being pumped into it was quite the experience. Once he was over the initial shock, I swear Chris smiled for 15 hours straight as we traversed the canal from Panama City to Colón, and he ticked off an experience that had been at the very top of his cruising bucket list.

Panama Canal

Panama brought beautiful beaches, bugs, humidity and lightning. Lots of lightning! We were tied up in Shelter Bay, when a sailboat at the end of our dock was hit by a direct strike. It blew the navigation lights right off their mast.

Boats within the strike radius reported electronic failures that kept them tied to the docks for months – blown autopilots, generator controls, engine ECUs… the list was endless and heartbreaking.

We were very fortunate that the only thing affected on our boat was the electronic chain counter of our windlass. We also developed a healthy respect and aversion to lightning.

Our next stops were the San Blas islands, an archipelago consisting of 365 islands and cays of which only 49 are inhabited – by the Guna Yala people.

These were the clearest, most pristine waters we had ever seen. Beaches and islands that looked like they were painted on a postcard. The locals would regularly paddle out to our boat in dug-out canoes to show us their molas (intricately embroidered artworks) and ask if we had provisions to trade or share.

Rice, UHT milk and sugar were all highly sought after, so we started stocking up on them in Colón before heading out to the islands. Our kids loved to share with the Guna children (fruit snacks were a huge hit) and we quickly became known within the islands, not least because we were one of the few motor boats to make it this far.

The Guna people live without electricity or modern technology of any kind, so it was an amazing experience for us and our kids to experience such a different culture.

Eventually, Panama’s intense heat and lightning had us ready to move on to the next country, Colombia in September 2024. To our surprise, it only got hotter and more humid.

Going outside meant being instantaneously soaked in sweat, and trying to get a slip in a marina during hurricane season is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

With a lot of persistence, daily calls and WhatsApp messages, we finally managed to secure an elusive spot at Club de Pesca, a short walk away from the walled city of Cartagena.

Columbia

Of all the countries that surprised us most, Colombia sits at the top. We had heard stories, mostly from the American media, of drugs, cartels, kidnapping and rampant crime.

We experienced the complete opposite; beautiful people who were incredibly kind to us and our children, delicious cuisine (life may not be considered complete without Colombian coffee and pandebono, a delicious fried bread snack filled with cheese).

We spent a wonderful month in Cartagena, exploring, learning and being in absolute awe of the culture, traditions and people. We took brief trips inland to Medellin and Bogota as it was surprisingly easy and affordable to travel within the country and experience more of the vast landscapes and regions.

Colombia also brought new challenges. The dock water wasn’t fit to drink but nor could we use our watermaker in the polluted waters surrounding Cartagena. We had to improvise by taking weekend trips out to the islands to refill our tanks in cleaner seas.

This is also where we got to experience drinking pina coladas from a floating kayak bar and snorkeling on Pablo Escobar’s sunken plane, stories that my then eight-year-old daughter loved to shock our family and friends with during our visits back to the States.

Once again, the heat and humidity of Colombia prompted us to continue on to the next stop, which was, at the time, our longest blue-water cruise away from land, to the island of Aruba.

Aruba felt like a vacation but only after we’d tackled our first stern-to mooring. Backing into a tight slip like this was one of those experiences that made us hold our breath, cross our fingers and send up a prayer.

We made it in safely and then proceeded to spend a month biking around “the happy island”, feeding flamingos, snorkeling on sunken ships and playing tourist in this holiday destination. It was also where we left the boat to fly back to the United States for every pre-teen’s dream, a Taylor Swift concert!

This Cruising Life

What we didn’t know when we left Aruba was that our cruising adventure was only just getting started. We had settled into the cruising life, no longer afraid that the next country would not have a certain drink or food that led our early boating life to a borderline extreme case of hoarding.

I think I remember loudly telling (okay, yelling) this to Chris as I unpacked a three-pack of French’s yellow mustard he’d smuggled into the shopping basket.

We had become familiar with what it looked like to be constantly moving around the world, living in a small space, learning together – and we absolutely loved it!

To be continued next month…

---

If you enjoyed this….

Motor Boat & Yachting is the world’s leading magazine for Motoryacht enthusiasts. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams, as well as tests and news of all the latest motorboats.

Plus you’ll get our quarterly Custom Yachting supplement where we share the last on offer in the superyacht world and at the luxury end of the market.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

---