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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DIY Offshore Medical Kit Resources
I’ve just ordered our onboard medical kit—sized for four little kids and built to treat injuries when help is 24 hours away. And yes, it includes a cherry-flavoured tongue depressor or two.
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Halloween in the Florida Keys
Isn’t Halloween the same the world over? Not in the Florida Keys, where the heat rewrites everything I knew about costumes back in Ottawa. Cleavage-bursting pirates and pumpkin earrings abound.
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Customer appreciation night in Key Largo
Anchored off tiny Rodriguez Key in warm, clear water, we dinghied to Key Largo for Halloween costumes and groceries. Our first Halloween without winter clothing felt like a small miracle.
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Tavernier docking area: best park ever
We borrowed a key and walked to a park billed as just a docking area, no playground, no charm, four padlocks on a chain-link fence. My older kids were convinced we were trespassing.
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“A is for pig” and other early homeschooling lessons
Anchored at Tavernier, Florida, we’ve committed to homeschooling kindergarten, grade two, and grade five aboard. Meet our youngest students, four-year-old twins Henry and Karen, who insists A is for pig.
