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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Our Offshore Medical Kit: A Complete Breakdown
Our marine medical kit is finished, and building it felt like assembling a field hospital, until a cruising doctor’s list made mine look modest. Here’s everything that made the cut for a family at sea.
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Medical insurance while cruising
We’re healthy Canadians who love our healthcare system, but cruising raised uneasy questions: how would we pay if someone lost a leg to a propeller, or faced cancer far from home? Insurance was murky.
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Laundry by hand (rain or shine)
Early lessons in handwashing laundry aboard our St Francis 50, from lost towels to cockpit drying lines, as we begin cruising with four young children.
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Grocery shopping at sea: a multi-sport event
Grocery shopping without a car turns into an Olympic multi-sport event: dinghy driving through white-caps, hauling bags, and getting sprayed in the face. My daughter Betty and I went for the gold.
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Rainy soundscape in Florida
Here’s one minute of rain drumming on our catamaran roof. Now imagine it anchored out, water swilling across the deck, and a porthole I’d left open. It flooded the twins’ room, and Karen slept right through it.
