A Family Cruises in Uncertain Times
“Our friends are asking us why we’d even think about coming home — and we do miss home — but this is a really great place to quarantine. We make our own power, we make our own water, we have a 90-day supply of food, and we can stay on our boat for a long time without any sort of interaction with people,” Jennifer Milum commented in June after arriving in Maine after a long journey from the USVI, including her first offshore passage.
The Milum family, whose home base is Mill Valley, California, got caught up in an improbable situation when COVID broke out seriously in March. They were in St. Thomas, looking forward to island-hopping through the Caribbean and back to the US in time for their kids to return for the fall school semester. But as opportunities to visit other islands shut like doors, their Caribbean cruising dream was stalled.
“When COVID hit and borders closed, we hunkered down and strictly quarantined on our boat,” Jennifer said. “We didn’t even go ashore to get groceries. Instead we were fortunate to find yacht provisioners to shop for us. After weighing our options, we decided to take the leap and do the offshore passage home.”
The past year has been nothing short of a whirlwind for the Milums on their first cruising adventure. While Jeff is no stranger to cruising — his parents, Brenda and George Milum, have cruised on and off for 18 years, during which time Jeff has often joined them — Jennifer and the kids had virtually no sailing experience when they left Martinique last July on their new boat. Jeff and Jennifer, who married in 2008 and spent a 12-month honeymoon backpacking around the world, had talked about cruising for years. As Jeff recalls, the year before they bought their boat, Jennifer started telling people that they were really leaving.
“That was key because then we were committed!” Jeff laughed. “But, certainly an inspiration for our trip was my parents, who at one point offered to give us their boat if we would sail around the world and have them aboard a lot, but we chose not to do that for a number of reasons.”
To continue reading about the Milums, please go to the August issue of Latitude 38.