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What is “Skip-Gen” Travel?

Baby Boomers Are Traveling More, and Skip-Gen Travel is a Great Opportunity to Spend Quality Time with Your Grandkids!

Blackbeard’s Cruises is celebrating 40 years of liveaboard cruising.  Back in 1979 Blackbeard’s was a two-person team.  My husband, Bruce Purdy, and myself were both employed with the airlines and working to introduce our first Blackbeard’s liveaboard, the Sea Explorer to newly certified scuba divers.

The first summer season, the Sea Explorer was filled with scuba diving Scouts in their early teens.  As we added more liveaboards, we also added a daughter and son.  Our kids grew up at the dock and on our Blackbeard’s liveaboards, swimming and snorkeling in the Bahamas. 

Family travelers scuba diving from a Bahamas liveaboard

As soon as they were old enough, they became certified junior divers.  Breaks from school were always about diving as a family. As baby boomer parents, we enjoyed scuba diving vacations, ski vacations, and just good family time, whether it was a road trip or a day trip.

Over the past 40 years, we’ve had passengers come aboard as singles and return with a spouse a year or two later.  Years later, those same passengers returned with their child, or came as a family and introduced their kids to a scuba diving vacation.

Blackbeard's Cruises dive liveaboard, Bahamas dive vacation

Many of these former passengers are returning with their grandkids.  It used to be that, when school let out, the kids went to the grandparents for a week or two and the parents came on our liveaboards. 

Then I noticed, as the kids got older and became junior divers, we were seeing whole family charter requests with grandparents, parents, and kids all out for a week and enjoying scuba diving, quality family time, and much needed relaxation.

Now the parents are staying home, and the grandparents are bringing their grandkids aboard for a week of scuba diving.

There is even a name for this now, Skip-gen vacations or Gramping. Grandparents traveling alone with their grandkids. With our aging population, there are now more Grandpas and Grandmas than ever. Baby boomers are a large part of these grandpas and grandmas. 

They are also more active, fit, and have the financial means to travel.  With families living miles apart, there is no better way to create strong family ties with your grandchild than on a Skip-gen vacation to create some special memories.

Fast forward to 2021, and I am a Baby Boomer grandparent and fortunate to live close to my grandkids. My weekends are set aside for adventures with my oldest grandchild, Piper. 

Piper will be 6 next year. Swimming, beach time, dance parties, miniature golf and ice cream fill my weekends.  We are now waiting for cool weather to arrive for a visit to the zoo.

Multi-gen travel is also growing in popularity. Families are traveling with the kids, parents, and grandparents all together! It’s a great way to build these strong family ties and have a great time while you’re at it.

My Advice?

Planning a skip-gen trip with the grandkids for next summer? Start early!  Getting a date set for a summer trip can get complicated with sorting out grandkids busy summer schedule of camp, swim lessons, dance, baseball and, of course, scuba classes.

Liveaboard vacations like Cat Ppalu in the Bahamas and Cuan Law in the British Virgin Islands are the perfect trip for your first skip-gen travel experience. Snorkeling, kayaking, paddle boarding, diving, and eating some yummy food are sure to make for your best family vacation ever.

There’s room for everyone on a full charter, and you get to control the trip without lifting a finger, so book a skip-gen family vacation with us!

Take photos and write down stories to present to them when they head off to college.

And… it’s okay to spoil them a little.

Skip-Gen travel is becoming more and more popular!
Bruce & Peggy Purdy with their granddaughter, Piper


Surprise your grandchild with a “Skip-Gen” vacation!

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