This week it feels more like we live on a roller coaster than we do a sailboat, so have been the emotional peaks and troughs. We finally made some long-term sailing plans (HIGH), only to discover a broken pressure plate in the transmission (LOW). In a strange twist of fate, Jim, a fellow sailor we…
Category: Philippines
Shifting Gears
It is a strange phenomenon amongst sailors to ask about “your plans.” Constrained by the idea that your home is mobile, people expect you to have some sort of timeline, for the coming weeks, months or even years. They think there should be a new destination always on the horizon. As if making a plan…
Share this:
Galley Notes: Making Yogurt On Board (AKA. Battle of the Bacteria)
As someone who travels as part of their daily life it seems inevitable that once a year or so I suffer through a bout of food poisoning. Tuesday, on a quick trip to town to pick up laundry, it seems I also picked up some greeblies. I won’t bore you with the details but let’s…
Share this:
Pseudo-Single Handing & Cooking for One
Steve is away earning beer coupons, so we can keep doing this sailing thing. If you’ve been here for a while you know this is a kind-of-regular occurrence. By that I mean he spends 8-12 weeks of the year away working, just not necessarily on any regular or predictable schedule. This time however, it was…
Share this:
Scenes from the Philippines Rice Fields, a Photo Essay
Almost every year for the past decade I have put together a calendar of photos that reflects our life on board over the last 12 months. Usually I have more than enough images of bucolic anchorages, dramatic landscapes, exotic local scenes and a few usable pictures of us. This year when I looked back over…
Share this:
Galley Notes: Chicken Stock in the Pressure Cooker
Making chicken stock in my pressure cooker isn’t some sort of revelation, but it is a process I recently started using to reduce food waste. I had experimented with the idea back in the beginning, 2008, when I first bought the PC, or perhaps I should say when I bought my first PC. Back then…
Share this:
Connecting the Disconnect
A few months ago I had some fleeting doubts about whether the sailing life was still for me. After 10 years did I still enjoy living on a boat, sailing the world? We were stuck in the boatyard doldrums so I knew not to pay such passing worries much attention. However, when the subject popped…
Share this:
How to Repair Your Boat…Conversation
Boat owners have a habit of talking about boat repairs. Which would be fine, except that boat ownership often entails an ongoing string of breakages and repairs. Ask a question like, “How are you today?” and 90% of boat owners will tell you all about how they have been trying, probably frustratingly, to fix something….
Share this:
Hidden Haul Outs In the South Pacific
It seems appropriate that as we FINALLY leave the boatyard here in the Philippines a round-up of yards that we have used and discovered on our travels through the South Pacific is published in Cruising World Magazine. If you are looking for a place to do work, hide during cyclone season or store the boat…
Share this:
Galley Notes: Gluten Free, 3 Ingredient Banana Pancakes
Over the years we have had the opportunity to taste a large variety of bananas; stumpy starchy bananas, almost square ones, bananas that are not ripe until they turn brown, tiny sweet ones, red ones, green ones, bananas that are flecked orange in the centre. Just before we left the Philippines banana season was in full swing….
