Featured Content
From House to Sailboat: How a Family Road Trip Changed Us
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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Halloween in Tavernier: Trick-or-Treat Carnival in the 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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Florida Keys Sailing with Our 4 Boat Kids & a Dockside Party
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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Kids and Boredom: The Best Park Had No Playground
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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Educating Kids on a Sailboat: Finding Our Groove
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.
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Making Ice Cream on a Sailboat: Off-Grid Luxury
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.
