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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Cleaning house: regaining focus
Our house sits on five wooded acres, hidden from the street, a creek rippling alongside and the driveway teasing glimpses of stone gables before the trees break open. Now we’re cleaning it out, regaining focus.
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Family Sailing Transition: Preparation and Chaos
I’m learning to sail through a Canadian winter while raising four kids solo, and this weekend brought a trip to the ER. Paul, six, split his chin on the hockey rink and earned three stitches.
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Etiquette at the marina: a reason to get knotted
I can finally tie a Bowline, a Sheet Bend, and a Figure Eight, slowly, thanks to Animated Knots by Grog. Turns out knots aren’t just functional at a marina, they’re a matter of social etiquette.
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Sailing hair: getting gritty, not girly
I’m allowing myself exactly three posts about my hair on this blog, and here’s the first: my plan to keep it from going salt-encrusted at sea, Nicole Kidman’s Hollywood hair-wash notwithstanding.
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Knot now – an ode to the unicorns amongst us
Knot Now, read the sign at the Children’s Museum, and it became my mantra while Rick sailed Barbados to Antigua and I nursed the sick at home. Not much coursework got done. But who even stops to notice?
