Word: couvreux
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Dates: during 1987-1987
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With two live chickens and 200 eggs, $20,000 and no prospects, the Couvreux family from Bordeaux crossed the Atlantic in a 40-ft. ketch. There was Michel (the father, the Frenchman, the architect) and Janis (the mother, the Californian, the first mate), and their little boy Sean and his baby brother Brendan, as newborn at the time as his father's dream -- everyman's dream -- to sail away...
...decision had been reached through the usual channels. A structured life is a box, if you think about it (as architects like Michel Couvreux certainly do, drafting refinements left and right). On land, you can remove as many as five of a box's six panels by shedding all structure and discipline; nothing to either side, nothing above or behind, or, more important, nothing blocking the path ahead. On water, even the sixth panel -- solid earth underfoot -- is gone. Michel, savoring these selected uncertainties, asked Janis to name their boat. She reached into her past and chose a surfing...
...soon the Couvreux family will sail away again. Through the Panama Canal and up the west coast to Alaska, they think, and eventually to Tahiti, of course, and one year or another, Michel says, "we go to France so my boys can be French too." When they are at sea, the boys take correspondence courses that are accredited in France. When anchored, Michel feels schools are important for social intercourse. "They must know there are little girls" (yes, thank heaven, he said, "leetel gulls") "and good guys and bad guys and all those things...
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