“The Moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” Ashley Montagu Daniel is performing a ‘Yeoman’s Job’ fixing the systems on our boat that must be in good working order to continue our journey next spring. For hours every day, he…
Category: Sailing Blog
Navigating Scotland’s Crinan Canal – Part 1
“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” C.S. Lewis We knew we were sailing on borrowed time in the Scottish Islands. When you venture up north of the Irish Sea toward the end of September, the weather is bound to be cold; storm systems can become more prevalent….
Sailing Scotland in 2020 – Part II
“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.” Lord Byron It seemed the Irish Sea was making sure we were worthy to travel through her beautiful string of Scottish Isles. Our first two weeks were fraught with howling…
Sailing Scotland in 2020
“The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths, it has its pearls too.” Vincent Van Gogh Finally. The doors to our sailing lives reopened. For 11 months, our boat sat in the harbor in Bangor, Ireland. The surrounding countries had…
Sailing Interrupted – Living in a Foreign Country During Covid – 19
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this…
The Magic of Ireland
The Prediction Two years ago, my sister-in-law and I were strolling along the streets of Portland, Maine. Dan and I had sailed Equus up the East Coast to Maine. We had the great fortune of arriving in Portland the same two weeks my family was there on vacation. Kathleen and I may have popped…
Trapped in Portugal by Covid-19
Two years into our ten-year circumnavigation, we have learned that future plans are about as solid as the shifting sand of an hourglass. We do our best to research and plot our travel based on weather, seasons, tides, and advice from more experienced sailors. We understand the best-charted plans of sailors can be…
What We Did This Winter!
It’s been months since I’ve written a blog post. We took a winter break from our sailing life and traveled to the United States to be with our family and friends over the holidays. While we love our adventures and our decision to sail around the world, our family is very important to us. We…
Time for Change
Lately, I’ve not been sleeping well. I feel rather run down and attributed it to the crazy and unpredictable lifestyle we have living on a sailboat. However, as I have been researching how food impacts your body, I have come to a realization that while our diet is fairly decent, there is a lot…
Crisscrossing the Irish Sea
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” -Lao Tzu We had no intention of laying our boat up for the winter in Northern Ireland, yet, here we are. If we have learned one important lesson about sailing around the world, it’s that you can’t really make plans. You sketch…