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 kids arrive on SV Aphrodite
Our four kids have finally arrived aboard Aphrodite, and skipper Mark Burton—who takes young cancer patients sailing for the Ellen MacArthur Trust—is showing us that safety comes first.
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Cracking open our life raft (with video)
We took our ten-person life raft to Yusri Jadallah’s Tampa shop for servicing, where it took real muscle and two levers to pry open the hard case it’s meant to auto-inflate from at sea. With video.
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Test sailing SV Aphrodite
We took Aphrodite for her first test sail after the refit, with Pat Reischmann and skipper Mark Burton aboard to troubleshoot while Rick and I crewed—and a small crew means far bigger responsibility.
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Organizing our boat with skipper, Mark Burton
Skipper Mark Burton arrived from the Isle of Wight to help us organize Aphrodite—a man who saved a year’s salary, moved into an RV, and left his old profession behind to sail full time.
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Sleeping on stilts during a refit
For our refit we slept aboard at the Tampa boatyard, up a 24-foot ladder, with no working toilet, shower, or taps, and a river view. Our neighbour Johnny Spector had lived like this for a year.
