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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Why living on a boat is different from living on land
Living on a boat beats living on land, Betty explains, because you can swim every day and get rocked to sleep like a baby. And since she’s nine, all she has to do is sit back and relax. She thinks.
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Sailing Subculture: Buying a Catamaran Came with Stereotypes
Apparently catamaran owners have a reputation for snobbery, news to us. Herbert Stuemer, skipper of the SV Northern Magic, broke it to us at his kitchen table after we announced we’d bought a St Francis 50.
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Boat Kid Perspective: Why a 9-Year-Old Wanted to Sail
I’m excited to go sailing because I love swimming, Dad’s teaching me to drive the dinghy, and I can read on the trampoline. Betty wrote this at nine. In 2026, she’s twenty and preparing to go again.
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All About Me, Betty!!!!!
Hello, I’m Betty, nine years old and in grade four. My mum wrote the rest of this blog, but this part is mine: skating, tree climbing, fort building, ice cream, and reading, in no particular order.
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Winterized sail boats on the frozen Ottawa River
A cold, sunny day in Ottawa, so I photographed the Nepean Sailing Club, docks still frozen and the boats tucked under tarps. This is the winter I grew up with, and might be saying goodbye to for good.
