The best bit of travelling
While on the road I had an article published in 'The Natural Parent' Magazine. One of the other contributors to this magazine was lovely enough to reach out and get in touch with us, offering us any help she could as we are new to New Zealand. We…
A warm welcome to Wishbone
James, Rocket and I had the great pleasure of meeting Jenny and Rich of Wishbone Design Studio during our recent visit to Wellington. These like-mided designers have let their parenting experiences and ethos lead their product development resulting…
Sailing Today
We're thrilled to announce that as of July 2015 Jess will have a regular monthly column in UK publication "Sailing Today" Magazine. This is in addition to the 10 other sailing, parenting and lifestyle magazines that articles of [...]
Bump in the road…
So why a roadtrip? And why now? You may well ask. Well, it's important to us to see as much as possible of New Zealand in honour of our second boat baby being born here. Plus, it's lovely to spend some quality family time together, just the three of…
Life on the open road
There are go times and there are slow times. This time last year we were prepping for crossing the South Pacific ocean, which dominated our 2014. Having safely reached New Zealand in late November we decided that to do justice to this beautiful…
A family at sea
Here's the 'mum profile' interview I did for our friends at Nature Baby. The full piece can be found on our 'Mothership' page, in the Nature Baby entry or you can go to the site [...]
Farewell to the boy next door
Being quite new to cruising has meant that we've welcomed the opportunities to make new friends whenever we can. We made friends for life in Laurie and Damon of s/v Mother Jones in Panama, and ended up buddy-boating with them for a few months and…
Out with the old, in with the new
Three and a half years at sea hasn't actually been particularly hard on us so far, I think we're looking ok. However, the same can't be said of our galley. All our pots and pans were old, second, third and fourth hand when we left and, by the time…
Life upriver
Whangarei is just a little way north of Auckland and the town basin dock lies 15 miles upriver from Whangarei Harbour mouth. This means it's a perfect spot to have your boat for a while if you're planning on any big boat projects or other work as…
In praise of domesticity
New Year has found life on board becoming all about 'boat sweet boat'. It's a natural progression after being on the go for 9 months across the Pacific that we're using cyclone season and our arrival into New Zealand to have a little down time.…
Aotearoa – land of the long white cloud
Our arrival in New Zealand saw us making landfall at Opua, the port of entry in the Bay of Islands. This was a great jumping off point for exploring these spectacular waters en route to Whangarei, where we planned to be based for a little while. The…
Smoothly does it
So, in typical sailor fashion, after meticulous planning of our Fiji to New Zealand passage, making sure we had extra crew on board and timing our departure just right in terms of weather, it ended up being really very straightforward and simply…
It still rains in paradise
It’s raining today in Fiji. Or perhaps I should say it’s raining again in Fiji. In the last few weeks we’ve been making passages through the reef systems of this beautiful island group but progress has been slow as we’ve been weather dodging, trying…
The naked truth
Perhaps it comes from being away from your home country and its associated stigmas. Or maybe there’s an element of feeling on a perpetual holiday. It might even be as simple as no longer caring what anyone thinks. Whichever way you look at it the…
The Catch – blunders, mishaps and misadventures of the learner cruiser fisherman
It’s an unspoken rule, almost a seafaring law, that those who are liveaboard, long-term, worldwide cruisers can catch the freshest, finest fish that the oceans have to offer. Any old salt can throw out a line and reel in dinner with the ease and…
3 years at sea, 1, 2, 3…
Those of you who have been reading these ramblings for some time will be aware that we do a run down of our boating statistics each year. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, here's how we made out this year and how it looks compared to [...]
Milestones
Just wanted to share our 3 latest boat milestones: A few days ago we crossed the 180th degree of longitude. That makes us exactly halfway round the world. We've also just completed our 3rd year at sea. We thought that an appropriate [...]
So long and thanks for all the fish
Goodbye, goodbye to our great friend and standout crew mate since May. Chris is leaving us to return to California. But, as a final act of triumph on board, he caught this 12.5kg mahi-mahi while we were en route to Fiji. Yup, 12.5kg. That's our…
The curse of communication
Picture the scene: you’ve just crossed an ocean and, filled with elation, you’re brimming with the urge to share that news with your friends and family back home. But for the global cruising sailor it’s not just as simple as picking up the phone to…