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
-
Homeschooling on hold
We’ve consciously uncoupled from formal homeschooling for a few weeks to finish prepping the boat—though our new classroom in Southern Florida is teaching Karen and Betty plenty on its own.
-
Holiday weekend in Tampa Bay
We’re finally flying solo in Tampa Bay, no family or Skipper Mark aboard, and every anchoring still feels exhilarating. Betty marvels at my fist-pumping, while Rick has thrown himself into homeschooling.
-
Meal planning and provisioning for a family afloat: six suggestions for cruisers
Skipper Mark Burton has crossed the Atlantic eleven and a half times with no grocery store in sight. Here are his six provisioning tips for feeding a family afloat while cutting down the garbage.
-
First impressions as a liveaboard cruiser
This is not the post to convince your spouse to go cruising. One week into the liveaboard life, I’m surprised that a sailboat—an emblem of freedom—can feel so much like confinement.
-
Great Scots, 20 knots!
My sister-in-law and her teens came to anchor with us off Egmont Key, Florida. The weather had other ideas, and 20 knots gave us our first lesson sailing a catamaran in a proper chop.
