13 Nights
On the first night of our Atlantic Crossing my true love gave to me a LUMPY, BUMBY, ROLLY SEA. On the second night of our Atlantic Crossing my true love gave to me TWO HOURS OF DRAGGING A BUOY, and…
The Gambia
Chapter 1 Off our starboard side, there's something there, silhouetted against the sun. Slender, and wooden, it comes into view. Three dark-as-night fishermen are on board, two standing and one sitting at the outboard. They stare at us, and we…
Time for The Gambia
A year and a half ago we met a young German doctor in the Azores who told us tales about a foreign land where the children are so friendly that they paddle into the river to your sailboat just to…
Rainbow of Islands
Milky sail drive oil is bad. If it's not clear, then there's water in it. Gerty's looks like the overpriced coconut water that sits next to the sports drinks in the health food aisle. You know, the blue bottle that…
Record Number of Photos so it Must Have Been Good
Morocco to Canaries Passage Day 3 15:22 POS 32 33.30 N 9 55.46 W, TWS 10.4, SOG 5.0, AWA 178 The best wind-dance song on The Beatles Blue album is Hey Jude. The last 4 minutes or so have repeating…
Broken Boom
Some days are good. It's crisp and sunny outside, and I'm feeling smug because I know how to say whip cream in four languages. The obvious, whip cream, plus chantilly, panna, and nata. Some days are shitty, like the one…
Mission Improbable
Leaving Formentera this morning in the dark, against a lee shore, in twenty knots, was our best situation in days. All we had to do was dodge the lightning bolts. At least we could squeeze in five hours of sleep…
Everything but a Med August
A guacamole stain on my dress is distracting me from the view out the plane window. Part of me doesn’t want to wash it off. We were having a picnic with Zachary and his friends in Central Park just yesterday. …
Tunisia
Two of the three officials that boarded Gerty when we arrived in Monastir, Tunisia had ink on the tip of their index finger. We knew that their new controversial constitution was at stake on the day we arrived. “Did you…
Mostly Business
Being in Malta for the second time in less than six months, we considered it a pit stop on the way from Greece to Tunisia. A place to do chores, if you will. We purchased the bottom paint Gerty would…
Our First Passage West
First Night Watch, N36 8.5’ E21 21.0’ Soundtrack: Big Bad Voo Doo Daddy I figured out how to sit at the nav station without the risk of tumbling past the companionway and into the bathroom. I press my back into…
The Cyclades
Tonight it rained. Water dropped from the sky in droplets of varying size and frequency for fifteen minutes. The bed, the table, the settee, and the floor got wet because we forgot to close the hatches. Why? Because we forgot…