SOME people want a life of quiet stability while others yearn to take to the seas in search of adventure. The Lowe family fall into the latter category.

Marion and Colin Lowe and their teenage daughters Wendy, 15, and Rita, 14, have been living on a yacht called the Wild Bird for more than 11 years. For the first couple of years they sailed around their home base in New Zealand, but for the past seven years they've been circumnavigating the globe. This week they reached Bermuda, and the island was abuzz from the moment they sailed (literally) into town. "The Costleys are back" was the word. By Costleys, they were referring to Marion Costley who lived in Bermuda on Daisy Field Drive in Somerset as a young girl.

This week we caught up with the Lowe family as they toured the Royal Gazette Ltd. offices.

LIKE most sisters, Rita and Wendy's views on life differ considerably. The usual teenage squabbles about having to share a bedroom are significantly more complicated when the bedroom is the forward cabin in a yacht.

The argument ended in their father drawing a line down the room - which meant cutting the mattress the girls shared in half with a knife. Colin later rebuilt the space so that they each have their own bunks.

Wendy is an aspiring writer, and has had articles published in a number of magazines including the Australian New Moon magazine. (She's 15).

In one article that is awaiting publication in Yachting magazine she wrote: "Travelling for eight years on a yacht seems like a lifetime to someone my age, and it doesn't look like we'll be moving off Wild Bird in the foreseeable future. My parents wanted to move aboard when my sister Rita was five and I was six so we would accept the change in lifestyle more readily.

"If they had waited until now, I think we would have preferred to stay on land with school and friends. As a consequence of this early start to the cruising lifestyle, and growing up with it, my life seems normal. When people ask me if I like living on a yacht, I have to suppress the urge to ask them if they like living in a house."

Mr. and Mrs. Lowe are science teachers by profession.

"We did our first ocean passage with the children in 1994 to see what it would be like," said Mrs. Lowe. "Rita was five and Wendy was six. I wanted to wait until they were out of diapers. That was a six-month trip to Fiji and back. When we took them out for a trial run they were sick for the whole time. I thought, 'How can I do this to these kids'?"

Despite the long years on the ocean, the girls still sometimes suffer motion sickness and take medication for it.

"Rita gets sick because she spends all her time below deck reading," said Mr. Lowe. "You can't spend all your time above deck," counters Mrs. Lowe.

Since there aren't many teenage boys lurking on the open seas (or even other teenage girls to giggle with) there's nothing left for the girls to do but swim, help with the yachting chores and study. There isn't even a television. They had one, but it became so frustrating to watch fuzzy television programmes in foreign languages that they threw it out.

"Boredom is always an issue," says Rita. "Especially when we are doing ten-day stretches at a time."

But Wendy says otherwise: "There's always something to do - swimming, visiting new ports, helping with the boat."

"Rita is a land girl and Wendy enjoys the sea," said Mrs. Lowe. "They both help with the routine of the boat. Up until two years ago they were just passengers. Now they do night watch and make sure the sails are pointing the right way. Now we all do two-hour shifts. It is nice to come into port feeling refreshed instead of exhausted."

THE Lowes bought the boat in 1993 and moved aboard straightaway. "Colin built our first boat in his 20s," said Mrs. Lowe. "We had it for ten years. We did a lot of sailing. We really enjoyed the lifestyle. Then we decided if we were going to have a family it would be better to settle down for a little bit. We went to New Zealand and stayed and had a family. Later we looked for a boat that would suit the whole family."

They spent the first two years just sailing around New Zealand, which allowed the girls to attend school on land. Their parents took work where they could get it as substitute teachers. The girls never went to one school for more than a year. Now, they study through a New Zealand correspondence school based in Wellington. Because many New Zealand children live on isolated farms, far from schools, this correspondence school actually has more than 1,800 students. The girls love languages. Wendy is learning Spanish and French and Rita is learning Japanese.

Each year the school sends a box of work to a designated port where the Lowes will be docking. Rita and Wendy send in their work to be marked every two weeks or so.

"E-mail has made things much simpler," said Mrs. Lowe. "We connect our computer to e-mail through our ham radio set-up. We can't get the Internet, just e-mail. In the past if they had a question they had to wait months to receive an answer from the teacher. Now they can receive an answer in the morning when they wake up."

To receive mail, the Lowes either write to a yacht club in the next port, or they contact friends who live in the port.

"We receive Christmas cards at strange times of year," said Mrs. Lowe. "Sometimes we get school work sent back corrected that they did months or even a year ago."

RITA and Wendy are more well travelled than most adults. "I liked going to Israel," said Rita. "Going up the Red Sea, it was hot. We didn't have a refrigerator on board and we hadn't had anything cold in three months. In Israel there was green grass and it was really nice."

Wendy said she liked their visit to Thailand because they met other children living on boats.

"We really enjoy meeting other kids on boats," she said. "We have sleepovers and dinghy races. It's fun."

But their father said he most liked sailing in Bermuda. "It is expensive, but it is nice. The waters are nice and warm."

The Lowes, isolated on the ocean, make friends in every port.

"Rita and I once befriended two Turkish goat-herding girls and were invited into their small hut with mats to sit on and a fire at the back to boil the kettle," said Wendy. "We couldn't speak each other's language, but we all had a laugh trying to understand each other."

The family hope to finish circling the world in 2003 and settle down in New Zealand. Rita and Wendy look to this event with excitement and some trepidation.

"I think it will be neat to be back in New Zealand," said Rita. "I can go to school for the last two years. It will be an adventure to live in a house. I want my own room."

Wendy isn't so sure. She said: "I only have one friend left in New Zealand. I would like to keep travelling. I'm not sure what it will be like."

In her article, she wrote: "Even if I end up living in a house in one place, I'll never forget the places our travels have taken us. Home is wherever we are, so it's been desert, countryside, cities and sea. Although I don't know the future of Wild Bird and its crew, I know that Asia, Europe and Africa lie behind, and America lies ahead."