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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Kindness Ashore: A Fisherman in Luperón
Walking back to our dinghy in Luperón, we trailed a fisherman pushing a homemade air compressor built from an old beer keg, covered in dust and sweat. What happened at the dock stayed with me.
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Baseball: Learning a Game and Understanding a Field of Dreams in the Dominican Republic
Beyond Luperon’s green fields and tin-roofed houses, baseball is everything. Riding pillion on a motorbike with my son Paul, then crammed into a mototaxi to Andy’s house, we set out to learn the game.
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Common Cruiser Complaints About Luperón, Dominican Republic
Luperón has changed since I first wrote this, but I’d bet it still smells of fresh tomatoes and cilantro. Here are the common cruiser complaints from our early days—and why I loved the town anyway.
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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.
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Overcoming seasickness and ditching Dramamine
Our 24-hour passage from Turks and Caicos to the Dominican Republic was the first in ten months without Dramamine—and, to my astonishment, the first without a single one of us feeling seasick.
