Where are we?

Follow along as we update our current location.


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Row, Row, Row your boat

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For a sailing family, we row...a lot! Most sailboats have a dingy that serves as their car to take them from their floating home to their destination on shore. We do not have a dingy, This is partly by circumstance and partly by choice. We knew when we bought Renegade, the dingy "was at the end of its useful life". We used it a couple of times when we first got here and then quickly decided that it was more trouble than it is worth. The inflatable dingy would not hold air and the engine was a total POS. (this could be a post on its own, so trust me when I say the dingy and outboard together were worthless). So we towed the dingy around for the first month or so, all the while talking about what to do with it. One day on our way back to the marina, we finally decided to dump it in the dumpster when we arrived. The day that we made that decision we were having a beautiful day of sailing, 15-20 knots on the beam and booking down the rhumb line back to port. Off in the distan
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Sinking Ships and the Generosity of a Stranger

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On our second mornings in Fiji I awoke and looked out the cabin porthole, happy to be on our boat at long last, to see the boat next to us sinking! (see photo) By the time I got on deck the Marina staff was in full action, assessing the damage, getting pumps set up, putting a diver in the water, and preparing the boat for emergency haul out. Thankfully they were on it. My heart sunk for the owners of the boat and my mind swirled about how this could have just as easily been us. A thru-hull on the boat had failed and an insufficient repair left this boat with several feet of water inside. That day we checked all of our thru-hulls on the boat. Several had completely rusted hose clamps that broke when we checked them. So, we got busy replacing all of the clamps, making sure that there were at least two at each thru-hull, and double checking them all to ensure that they were solid. Unfortunately, this was not the last sinking boat that we encountered in the Marina. Fast forward a f
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Notes from a Challenging Passage (NZ to Fiji)

In my limited experience, open water passages can be categorized into three distinct time periods, getting your sea legs, a blur of timelessness that can include any number of days, and the last and absolutely longest day known in the universe. Getting our sea legs typically involves a day of feeling green and seasick followed by a night of sleeplessness, then a day of being overwhelmingly tired. After this, we usually get a solid night of rest while Brian and I complete shifts of 3 hours on-watch and 3 hours off-watch. By the third day we are typically in a rhythm with the boat, with the sea, and with our sleep schedule. Once we have sea legs, time seems to warp into a blend of days that are hard to keep track of. If there are no significant events this time can be 4 days or 10 days, or perhaps more (I have never been at sea that long). Then on the last day when we can wake up and actually see land, time stands still. I am certain that it is the anticipation of making lan
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