Passagemaking: Puerto Rico to the Bahamas

Rob recently pointed out that for a sailing blog, I write very little about actually sailing. This is a fair point, but it is true what they say—sailing is boredom punctuated by terror. Most of the time we are just staring off at the vast seas and occasionally trimming the sails. But it doesn’t take much–a rogue wave, a squall, an engine pitch change, a pod of dolphins, a fish on the line—and things get exciting fast. read more

Passagemaking: The Northern Coast of the Dominican Republic and the Mona Passage

In order to travel from Luperon to Puerto Rico, we had to cross 300 miles of some of the most grueling and unforgiving seas. It’s the thorniest part of The Thorny Path to Windward. Bruce Van Sant provides excellent instructions on how to sail these waters under prevailing conditions. However, we decided to wait for weather windows with light winds and motor sail across as quickly as we could. We broke the journey up into two long overnight passages. read more