Becoming a Sailor

Becoming a Sailor

More Than a Decade Afloat • Raising Sailors • Stories from SV Aphrodite

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Author: Lorraine Escher

Canadian writer and sailor. Honours BA in English Literature (Carleton University) and a decade as a senior technical and marketing writer at Nortel Networks and Alcatel. Since 2015 Lorraine has lived aboard the St Francis 50 catamaran SV Aphrodite, homeschooling four children while cruising the Caribbean, crossing the Pacific, and working toward a circumnavigation. Her cruising writing has appeared in SAIL Magazine, All At Sea, and Caribbean Compass.
Karen Escher, boat kid and young artist, works on illustrations for the Princess and the P's Boardgame.
October 9, 2025October 9, 2025Lorraine Escher

Karen Escher Draws: The Card Game She Illustrated on Our Boat at Age 10

Our niece, Jorja, from Calgary in front of the Bridge of the Americas, Panama.
September 26, 2025September 26, 2025Lorraine Escher

Crossing the Panama Canal Doesn’t Just Move Your Boat from One Ocean to Another — It Moves You to a Completely Different World

Diver Michael and Lorraine watch the Mantus anchor retrieval from the bow.
September 18, 2025September 18, 2025Lorraine Escher

Part 3: Diving for a Lost Anchor: A Salty Ballad from Phuket

105-lb Mantus Anchor with anchor chain
September 13, 2025September 13, 2025Lorraine Escher

Part 2: Losing our Ground Tackle: A Continuation of our Malaysian Anchor Chain Debacle

Rick Escher, sailor, skipper, husband amazing human
September 5, 2025September 5, 2025Lorraine Escher

Part 1: Re-galvanizing our anchor chain. What could possibly go wrong? Adventures at Pangkor Marina Malaysia.

Lorraine Escher on a flight to Kuala Lumpur for trigger release surgery
August 28, 2025July 3, 2026Lorraine Escher

Getting Fit After 50: The Remark That Changed My Routine

Fedex picking up our three boxes in our friend Carl's apartment in Miami.
August 27, 2025July 5, 2026Lorraine Escher

Delivering More Than Just Parcels: A FedEx Story on Today’s Silk Road

Alfred toasting edited
August 8, 2024August 8, 2024Lorraine Escher

Alfred Escher remembered

Margaret from Pentecost Island, Vanuatu, sitting outdoors with Karen and a local village boy under a large tree
February 4, 2024February 4, 2024Lorraine Escher

What We Ate Sailing Through Micronesia and Melanesia: Markets, Farming, and Fishing

Shows weevil larvae in pasta
January 13, 2024January 13, 2024Lorraine Escher

Weeviling: managing weevils on a sailboat in Micronesia

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Food For Passages New word in …

Food For Passages

This Week in Years Past

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  • 10 years ago this weekBeans! Beans! Beans! Abandoning Meat in the Dominican Republic
  • 11 years ago this weekAudio clip from our first CBC Radio interview
  • 11 years ago this weekLogistics: strategies for getting from house to boat

Worth Reading

Managing Food Allergies at Sea
Checklist for the Big Move

From the Archives

  • Boat Projects
  • Homeschooling Four Kids
  • Early Years of Cruising
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