We had the busiest day yesterday. We rented a car and drove around Barbados. I can’t wait to report back on the delights we found, but first I want to slow things down blog-wise. I want to describe what’s happening on Questie.

School half-term for a start. The girls have a week off school to sleep and relax – well, sort of. There are still things to get done. Delph uses a programme outside her normal school curriculum. A phonics-based programme for older children, found and recommended to us by the wonderful Linda Sims. This requires a constant tick-over.

Lulu has a list of maths quizzes to complete for school work and her IGCSE revision to get started. Both girls received their school reports from InterHigh on Friday. They were both reports to be proud of. We are proud of them too!

The conditioning on Quest is complete. The girls’ school work has become a huge part of our cruising life. In many ways it anchors us; both literally and figuratively. Our timetable revolves around their school timetable despite being ‘free’ to wander the world. The reality is that we have schedules on Quest that we stick to. Exciting or what. Take that, cruiser YouTube channels!

Could we be more flexible about things? Possibly. After all, InterHigh has classified both girls as ‘library learners’. This means they don’t have to attend live lessons. They can catch up using the school’s recording library. Each of their lessons is recorded and archived for them to re-watch.

Still, Lulu prefers to do her lessons live. She has a long history of waking up really early in the morning here, even after being given the choice, to do her lessons live. After Easter, the time difference is -5 hours. She’s been able to choose the way she wants to learn.. and so we respect it.

Delph, on the other hand, she likes to do her lessons as recordings. This means she can pause and take her time. She prefers it this way, even though each lesson can take longer to complete. Again, it’s tailoring to her style of learning.

We hadn’t planned for this over the years – except to provide and facilitate this learning platform for them. It’s been a learning process for us too. It’s been fascinating to watch our girls learn. Not just learn, but to understand how they learn.

Still, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t eat up into our time being away. I suppose every sailing cruiser has to find a way to make their experience justifiable. For us, we couldn’t do this without knowing we were still enabling the girls their educational choices back in the ‘real’ world.

In this sense, we haven’t really left. It definitely makes our lives harder. And we wouldn’t change it for the world.

Bring on the half-term… let the sleeping begin. Quest crew is standing (or lying) by.