Alexander family of Austinmer go on three-month sailing adventure

"Before, we had common areas at home, " father Frank said, "once in a while, they came into our bedroom to hassle us or something, but we're never, as a collective family, all in one room, but there we were in one of the kids' bedrooms, all of us just hanging out.

"Wow, we're wanting to relive the boat."

At the beginning of the winter school holidays, the family of Frank, mum Kelly, Finn, 14 and Tea, 12, said goodbye to their home in the NSW Illawarra and swapped it for a floating one then moored at Pittwater, north of Sydney.

For 18 months prior, the family had been making regular trips to the 'Hakuna Matata' to practise sailing and get used to life on board, but now it was time to put it all into practice.

To make it all happen, the family surrendered their credit cards and took out a loan to finance the boat purchase, but despite having planned out a rough route, the family wasn't prepared for what they were about to experience, and how it would change their relationship.

Heading out from Pittwater, the family sailed north, stopping in Newcastle, Port Stephens, and the Gold Coast, before continuing north to reach Hamilton Island and the Whitsundays.

At times, the crew of four swapped shifts to sail for up to 36 hours straight, but found that in spite of their world compressing to just what was on board, their lives opened up in a much fuller way.

"We wanted to challenge ourselves," Kelly said. "We wanted to learn to sail and work together as a team to do it. We wanted adventure and to explore, but what surprised us was all the extra hours of silence, contemplation and the simplicity of life.

"There was a lot of time together, and to have fun, but then there was also a lot of time spent doing nothing. Painting, reading or chatting, or just being and that brings a lot of great perspective to life."

During the trip, two phones were lost to the seas, with multiple dives by Finn unable to locate one of the lost mobiles. The enforced digital diet enriched the benefits of disconnecting and being more present in the moment.

"When you're in this confined space, and you have to be thinking about conserving water and electricity, you don't just run stuff," Finn said.

Milestones were also celebrated on board, including Tea's 12th birthday, and the shift to just having those closest with you took on an additional layer of resonance.

"I loved the life onboard and, no offence to my friends, I loved being away from them for a bit, because I just wanted to get close to my family," Tea said.

Being at sea also allowed the family to acquire a different view on nature, and their place within it.

"Sometimes the night would collide with morning, so you'd watch shooting stars through the sunrise," Kelly remembered. "The sun would be coming up, there'd be a rainbow in the sky and the stars would be shooting across it."

The family lost count of how many whales they saw during the trip, but one interaction left Finn and Frank still feeling the splash of a breaching whale only metres away from the bow.

"It flung itself all the way out of the water, and was wriggling in the air," Finn recalled.

Back on land at home, the replacement phones have been bought, school and sport are back on again and the boat is up for sale for the next family to take on an adventure, but in between thinking about what the next itinerary could look like, Kelly said they've kept something more than the memories of nights spent on the helm, board games under the deck and swimming and snorkelling while at berth.

"We fell in love with each other as a family again."

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