Featured Content

From house to sailboat: our kids on a Lake Superior beach with the road-trip banner that led us to buy SV Aphrodite.

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.


Latest Blog Posts

  • Antigua: signs that peak season is over

    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.

  • Standing on the podium abuzz with delight

    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.

  • Antigua Sailing Week – last day!

    Antigua Sailing Week – last day!

    I’m sorry Antigua Sailing Week is ending. Our team ran the textbook arc of forming, storming, norming and performing, and around day two I was no demure observer, snapping we are in a race. I apologized later.

  • Scopolamine Side Effects at Sea: My Blurry Vision Experience

    Scopolamine Side Effects at Sea: My Blurry Vision Experience

    Scopolamine side effects left me with blurred vision while sailing. Here’s what worked instead—from pressure bracelets, ginger, Dramamine, Meclizine to Sturgeron Forte.

  • Antigua Sailing Week – a day to celebrate

    Antigua Sailing Week – a day to celebrate

    Team Spirit of Juno is clicking, and today we placed second in our class. I’m finally feeling the pull of Antigua Sailing Week, and getting competitive, among people racing multi-million dollar yachts.