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
-
DIY Ice Cream: Living Off-Grid but Not Exactly Roughing It
Even for Rick, buying a Lello Musso Pola ice cream maker for the boat seemed over the top. But off-grid doesn’t have to mean roughing it, and Paul’s food allergies made homemade ice cream worth every watt.
-
Technical writer turned cruiser
If you like man-versus-nature or man-versus-machine tales, you’re in the right place—written by a woman, a former technical writer with a naughty streak and no editor. Our first weeks of cruising.
-
Books are treasures forever (by Betty)
A guest post from Betty: Captain Fish, also known as Frank Nichols, dinghied over to welcome us and gave me a book called Frankie the Flying Fish. That’s how books are treasures forever.
-
We are underway: first days of cruising
After months of renting out our house, giving away our belongings, and a face-changing refit, we’re finally underway. We may look like we’re out for a day sail, but the plan is at least two years.
-
As Canadian as a catamaran?
A Canadian knows how to have sex in a canoe, said Pierre Berton. Canoeing may be Canadian, but sailing a catamaran? Not so much. Growing up in the far North, the whole thing feels gloriously alien to me.
