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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Successful haul-out in Tampa
We hauled Aphrodite out at RiverHawk Marine in Tampa on a SyncroLift rated for 123 tonnes—our 12.5-tonne boat barely troubled it—so we could work on the keels and add our logo and lettering.
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Motoring in Tampa Bay
I spent a day motoring across Tampa Bay with Dave Houston, a former St Francis 50 owner who could sail solo at age eleven. He drove up from the Keys to help move Aphrodite to the boatyard.
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Salvador Dali, my URL and the .cat domain
My blog now redirects to aphrodite.cat, a nod to our catamaran. The catch: the .cat domain means I’ve agreed to promote Catalan culture. So here’s my first, slightly bewildered attempt, starting with Dali.
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Medications for a year and beyond
One week before we leave for Florida, the whole family has seen doctors for check-ups and advice. With food allergies and a few pre-existing conditions aboard, stocking a year of medications took planning.
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Hotter than Hades here in Ottawa
Ottawa looks flat as a pancake but we live in a valley, and in summer it’s like being trapped in a bowl of heat. There’s a heat warning today. Aphrodite has air conditioning, but we won’t use it anchored out.
