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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Sailing: becoming more competent in Antigua
Writing from outside Al Porto restaurant in Jolly Harbour when I should be in bed. My Competent Crew course started with man-overboard drills, then out through rocky Goathead channel southwest of Antigua.
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Not exactly smooth sailing…
If learning to sail is like riding a bike, I’m at the scuffed-knees stage. The wind has ideas the Day Skipper theory never mentioned, so this week is all tacking and gybing. In 2026, we are still going.
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RYA Day Skipper civilized sailing
After a week racing at Antigua Sailing Week, knees bent and arms forward, I’m unsure what to make of the gentler pace on my Day Skipper course, where skipper Ian pauses everything for tea at three o’clock.
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Antigua: signs that peak season is over
Falmouth Harbour is unrecognizable 48 hours after the crowds. The tourists and boats have gone, my guesthouse owner Libby has flown to Vancouver, and Nelson’s Dockyard now has a donkey and grazing goats.
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Standing on the podium abuzz with delight
For the last race at Antigua Sailing Week we pulled out all the stops, loosening guard rails and stripping a tonne of weight, including life rafts and our own luggage. Then, incredibly, we were in the lead.
