Our favourite sailing videos on YouTube

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Watching the world go by in Oahu

I think it’s time to confess to our newish, secret addiction. Since Toby entered our lives just over a year ago, our movie-watching habit has gone from “oh, another rainy evening, let’s just cuddle up under the blankets with your laptop” (bear in mind that it rains ALL the time in Vancouver) to “wow, I got through almost thirty minutes of that before Toby woke up, that’s a total miracle, but unfortunately I can’t remember what happened because I’m so tired that my brain doesn’t work anymore”. I can’t remember when I last watched a full movie in one go, and watching them in twenty minute chunks just isn’t the same. Even watching episodes of series became tricky. So we’ve pretty much given up for now.

But Doug, on his many long walks to get the little lad to sleep, has listened to numerous podcasts. One of those is The Sailing Podcast (another good one to check out is Sail Loot) and one episode featured an interview with Riley and Elayna from Sailing La Vagabonde, who talked about their videos. Continue reading “Our favourite sailing videos on YouTube”

Fog, whale and wine: an afternoon sail around English Bay, Vancouver

20150929_152717Some days you just have to drop everything and go sailing. Our friend Kate has a groovy little Riviera Star 24 in a marina in False Creek and has offered to take us out for a sail on numerous occasions, but the timing has never worked out. This week it did! Twice! First Doug and Toby went out with her on a beautiful sunny day and, despite a few engine issues (uhoh, maybe it’s contagious!), had a lovely time for Toby’s first ever sail.
Continue reading “Fog, whale and wine: an afternoon sail around English Bay, Vancouver”

Baby on board!

Two years ago on Raivavae we would never have predicted we'd be in Hawaii, still, with a baby!
Two years ago on Raivavae we would never have predicted the boat would still be in Hawaii – and we’d be visiting with a baby!

Toby finally met the boat! We wanted to introduce him to his English and American family first, so it took us 7.5 months to get him there, but now that we’ve tried family life aboard we don’t want to stop. It was just a short trip this time, but it’s keeping us motivated for longer term plans. From the first moments he seemed mesmerized and totally at home and having him there with us made it feel even more like home to us. Continue reading “Baby on board!”

It’s a wild life… sort of…

IMG_20140701_191350So a whole summer has passed and we haven’t managed to sail Illusion at all. Oh dear. This is turning into a very slow journey from New Zealand to Vancouver, but life comes at you with all its unexpectedness and hey ho, you do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.

What we could do: Continue reading “It’s a wild life… sort of…”