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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Move date June 30, 2015
We’ve rented our Ottawa house for two years starting July 1st, which finally gives us a hard move date of June 30th. Where we’ll live in between is anyone’s guess. Friends, we may be on your doorstep.
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Scary things that can happen at sea
Guns? Pirates? What if the boat tips over or gets a hole in the hull? Everyone asks about what can go wrong at sea, so let’s talk honestly about the scary things that actually can.
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SV Aphrodite: The Family Catamaran with a History of Adventure
I love that our St Francis 50 was sailed by many before us. Designed by Angelo Lavranos in New Zealand and built by Duncan Lethbridge’s St Francis Marine in South Africa, Aphrodite has real history.
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Hiring a Skipper: Learning to Sail Like Captain Ron
Rick just sailed our newly bought St Francis 50 from Fort Lauderdale to Bradenton, and the parallels to the 1992 film Captain Ron are hard to miss, except our skipper Dave has forty years and real credentials.
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Planning and budgeting for sail boat refits
Fresh from Ottawa and new to sailing, we bought a St Francis 50 and lined up a refit in Bradenton. Here’s the step-by-step process we used, with Pat Reischmann keeping our budget honest.
