On our first full day on Faial Island, the Azores High put the ocean to sleep and woke up the earth. We hiked 22 kilometers, up, down, and around ten volcanoes, not because we planned to, but because the Caldeira…

Dear Future Michael, About this time last year we lay in our bed in Irvington, New York talking about what it would be like to cross an ocean in our sailboat, Gerty. “There will be more stars than sky,” you…

Our plan is to chase the sun.  As we travel north, each change in latitude will bring us a longer day on our first trans-Atlantic passage.   When Michael and I got engaged, we couldn’t wait to be married.  When we…

Estamos esperando nuestro avión en el aeropuerto de Tampa, Florida para regresar a Puerto Rico y Gerty.  Estoy pensando en la última vez que estuvimos allá.  Una noche especial, fuimos a un restaurante- La Cueva Del Mar en Puerto Del…

The acapella version of Redemption Song by Bob Marley & The Wailers, as sung by the staff at The Fig Tree Restaurant on Bequia Island played in my head throughout our passage to Culebra.  I couldn’t have asked for a…

Six weeks in the Grenadines have passed in a hot minute.  Looking back, it has to be the kiting that made the time go by so fast.  We have been courted by those oversized colorful sails in the sky.  They…

Sailing away from Union Island towards Tobago Cays in twenty plus knots of ENE wind, I am shocked that we were kiting this morning in this monstrous breeze.  Gerty is heeled over and bouncing around on the waves, so how…

The moon was just shy of full and that burnt island smell was in the air when the siren interrupted the sound of lapping water against Gerty’s hull.  It’s not often we hear a police boat anywhere, let alone in…

This lifestyle is going to take some getting used to.  You would think the major adjustment for us would have been the no house, no car, no 9 to 5 job thing.  However, it’s not that.  It was, and remains…

Racers, start your engines. No, no that’s not right. Racers line up your sailboat, which doubles as your house, with the little orange buoy floating in the water, at exactly 11:07AM. That’s your start time. Whatever you do, don’t start…

We saw it.  The famed green flash.  On a very clear evening, just before the sun sinks below the horizon, it really does happen in the Caribbean.  For us, it wasn’t too exciting because the hee hawing donkeys in Barbuda…

We saw an octopus!  He darted this way and that way.  He swam under a coral head.  Then a big greenish blob bulged out from under, followed by tentacles!  Eight legs suctioned along the reef, until woosh, it swam into…