We’ve departed on our 700NM passage from Fiji to New Caledonia. The weather looks good so we are crossing our fingers that it will take 5-6 days. However, we all know how accurate the weather man can be, so don’t get worried if it takes up to 10 days. I have activated our SPOT, a…
Galley Notes: I really like your pawpaw, can I shake your tree?
Last month I finally received a new supply of mason jars. The dozen that I carefully carried back from Australia last year quickly got filled in the last round of preserving I did. My enthusiasm for canning was bolstered by my success so another yachtie and I decided to combine our order and split the…
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Broken Engines & Breadfruit Gnocchi
Equipment fails and things break but life doesn’t stop. There are still dental appointments and piles of stinky laundry and a sink full of dirty dishes. Amidst the chaos and frustration we still have to eat. The easy way out in times like these would be to have a hot shower and treat ourselves to…
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Some things are sent to test us.
Some people like to call it a “Shake down cruise” but I think that sounds too nicey nicey. There has been nothing “cruisey” about the last two weeks on board Kate. The term “Sea Trial” seems much more appropriate. As is the norm before a passage and after a long period on the hard we…
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Remember that time we sailed around Costa Rica?
“As we neared Costa Rica we sailed into days of violent squalls. The thunder was so loud I wondered if the rig was coming down, and caught myself ducking with my hands over my head. The pitch black night was punctuated by blinding bolts of lightning that often struck the water nearby. We watched as…
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Hard times, no more
The last few weeks have been long and exhausting. This time of year in the South Pacific always is. As the heat of summer recedes and winter brings calmer weather and favorable winds there is a rush to get projects completed, to meet deadlines, to catch weather windows. But this year our transition from being a…
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"Safety never takes a day off."
During the first few months we lived on board I would often find myself awake in the middle of the night, my mind swirling around worst-case scenarios, wondering how, or if, I would cope if something bad happened. Sometimes I was worried about the big stuff but as often it was knowing that a chipped…
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Safe and Sound… and so very Grateful
I am not sure we realize how very lucky we were this past weekend. As we boarded a plane on Tuesday to return home to Kate in Fiji it wasn’t our luggage that was weighing us down. It was a deepening low pressure system, a late season cyclone in the South Pacific, that was heavy on…
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"Land food"; the latest food craze on boats
I have been spending a fair amount of time this week in front of my laptop writing a couple articles about provisioning and cooking on board. While researching what has already been published (in the hopes that I might have something new to say, HA!) I keep stumbling across this notion of “boat food”. That…
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Hope floats
We use our dinghy a lot. It is more than just the “family car” that carries us to and from shore. It is our “off-road”exploration vehicle, our means for mobile entertainment, our backup plan and more recently our escape pod. When we bought Kate she came with a Zodiac Zoom. How long it had been…
