Thunderbolts, lightning, very very frightening…
I remember when we sailed across the Atlantic ocean and had to get comfortable with seeing lightning out at sea. It’s a rather spooky feeling, seeing those dramatic forks and flashes and remaining calm, knowing that when the sky is clear you can…
Making friends
A smile can do a lot of things. In Nissan island, our first PNG stop, we have a canoe full of kids paddling up to the boat on our first morning there. They are grinning, gleaming white smiles from ear to ear but they have little to no words of…
Like a fish to water
Living on a boat with kids means that you’re in and out of the water a lot. It’s a welcome way of cooling off from the heat of the day in the tropics or calming down if the children have got a bit wild. It’s our backyard, our swimming pool, our…
The sun has got his hat on
“Oooh, aren’t you lovely and brown!” our families cooed in awe soon after we started our sailing adventures. Funnily enough, their admiration actually made us turn rather pink with embarrassment as, in our books, that meant that [...]
The perfect wind
Sailors, true sailors, know how to grab their moments. A mere ten knots of wind guarantees them swiftly casting off the lines or, for the truly skilled, stylishly sailing off the anchor, to go out and play in the light breeze. Strengthening winds…
The den gets a makeover
When your boat is 27 years old and you're the fourth owners it's understandable that you'd make some changes. When your time onboard has seen you transform from a carefree cruising couple to growing your crew en route and now sailing as a family…
V-berth vacations
The in-laws are coming to visit. Having friends or relatives coming to stay is always an interesting exercise. Visitors to a boat, however, have a completely different set of challenges to meet [...]
Turtle vid
I love turtles. One of the things that I most enjoy about our sailing travels is the ability to swim with animals in their natural environment. Snorkelling on reefs is one of my favourite things to do and it’s an added bit of magic when a turtle…
Going Bamboo
While we were in New Zealand we forged a new relationship with Go Bamboo, a company that's serious about keeping plastic out of our coastlines, oceans and landfills. Their first major product breakthrough was in designing a [...]
Number 33
We arrived in Aneityum, the most southerly island in Vanuatu, after an 8 day passage from New Zealand. Instantly the layers of stress and worry that so acutely mark the preparation stage for leaving a country were shed as quickly as the layers of…
Yum yum yum
When your family onboard includes a Londoner with a rare and supreme talent in the kitchen, another Londoner with a great appreciation of good food and a Californian who likes to experiment with new flavours you know that the average mealtime is not…
Expect the unexpected
The first lesson of parenting is really to expect the unexpected. Funnily enough, the exact same can be said of liveaboard sailing. One of the great challenges of sailing out from a country like New Zealand and on to remote islands like those of…
Portrait of a cruiser
Our community of boat folk has certain 'go-to' resources for sailing knowledge and advice. One of these is the website called Noonsite, the 'global site for cruising sailors'. It's a [...]
Cabin fever
I know that one of the things it’s hard to get your head around if you don’t live on a boat is how a couple or even a family could be comfortable in so little space. The living area equates to far less than a tiny studio flat and yet we all seem to…