Featured Content
Why We Want to Sail
We traded a conventional life in Ottawa for the dream of raising our children aboard a sailboat — even though I had never sailed.
About Our Boat
SV Aphrodite is a St. Francis 50 catamaran — Hull #1 of an award-winning bluewater design. See her specs, equipment, and offshore features.
Long Reads: Galapagos
Volcanoes, sharks, penguins, sea lions, offshore fishing fleets, and a message in a bottle — the Galapagos is one of the most interesting and diverse places we have visited during…
Long Reads Grenada
A muddy hike, memory-making at Grenada Carnival, drama on a public bus, sailing passages from Trinidad to Grenada and Grenada to Haiti, and what happened when COVID-19 arrived in a…
Why the Caribbean has virtually no tides
Why Caribbean tides are tiny — and why Panama’s beaches can vanish at high tide.
Luperón Long Reads — Boat Kids Go Local
Joining a local school taught entirely in Spanish, learning baseball, making friends, and discovering how quickly the Luperon cruising community can rally when help is needed.
Luperón Long Reads — Designing and Building a Mooring for Our 50-foot Catamaran
A technical long read about how we built a three-point hurricane mooring.
Luperón Long Reads — Waiting Out Hurricane Season
A gritty, funny, and affectionate look at Luperón, Dominican Republic — from stray dogs and bureaucratic red tape to unexpected kindness, cruiser culture, and lunch with Bruce Van Sant.
Bahamas Long Reads — Exumas Stories
Isolated anchorages, tidal creeks, swimming pigs, dock drama, cruiser life, and an encounter with a wild dolphin.
Southern Bahamas Long Reads — Beyond the Exumas
New to sailing, our family navigates shallow reef cuts, spots nurse sharks and wild flamingos, and visits remote island communities in the southern Bahamas.
Latest Blog Posts
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Give me Voodoo: fear and fascination as a cruiser in Haiti (with bonus dream sequence)
Voodoo fascinated and unsettled me in equal measure. From my white, Canadian, catamaran-dwelling perspective in Ile a Vache, Haiti, here’s my story, with a cameo from our friend Vildo.
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800 nautical miles from Grenada to Haiti
It was a peaceful Tuesday coffee until Rick read out Chris Parker’s forecast: gusting over gale force. Two words that stopped me cold before 800 nautical miles from Grenada to Haiti.
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Leaving Trinidad for Grenada with Svetlana
“Where is Rick?” Lockers open, gear on deck, the catamaran drifting toward the water, and only weeping six-year-old Henry aboard—he never got to say goodbye to Keegan. So began our exit from Trinidad.
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Christmas dinner with the Preddie family, Trinidad 2017
After weeks in the boatyard, I regretted never once being inside a Trinidadian home. Then a curious question to my taxi driver led our family to Christmas dinner with the Preddies.
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Taking stock of our boat spares
Taking inventory of our spares on a hot December day in Trinidad, surrounded by labeled boxes, Rick joked it’s like we own a store. My mind drifted to a mall in 1989. Cruising is a lifestyle, not a vacation.
