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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Life Raft Servicing: What’s Inside a Life Raft?
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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Catamaran Test Sail: Putting SV Aphrodite Through Her Paces
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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Boat Organization: Getting Ready for Cruising
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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Our First Boat Haul Out: Everything Is New
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.
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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.
