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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Preparing for the galley: embracing the pressure cooker
The scream was high-pitched and seemed like it would never stop, but I trusted my new pressure cooker. A sailing friend swears by them to avoid spills at sea. I’d been putting mine off for fear of an explosion.
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Late night phone calls, and a visit from my dad
Rick is in Bradenton ordering refit parts while I pack up our Ottawa house with the kids finishing school. Our evenings are late phone calls about plumbing, an ice maker, and whether we’ll fall asleep first.
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Top 10 sexiest refits we’ve made – so far
Built in 2005 as the St Francis 50 flagship, Aphrodite was overdue for some love. Here’s my entirely subjective ranking of the ten sexiest refits we’ve made to our catamaran since March 2015.
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Preparing for our tenants’ visit
A loud hum in the night air, our pressure washer at work. Matt and Darren labour in silhouette, cleaning our garage floor at dusk while our camping gear waits on the driveway. Tomorrow, our tenants arrive.
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Preparing to move: signs of progress
To keep our downsizing honest, I’m tallying what’s done and what remains. So far: five dead pine trees felled and stacked, spindly trees fed through a rented chipper, and a driveway full of branches.
