A Serialized Pacific Voyage  ·  Nomadventure.org If Honeymoons Were Like This, They Wouldn't Be a Thing — Heidi Chapter 1 ← Home ⚓ Next Chapter 2 → A note on how this story is told: Heidi documents our life with a small voice recorder held just below her chin. She has always been the one with the presence of mind to capture things as they happen — recording moments, preserving details, keeping a running archive of memories I would otherwise let slip away. This account is mine, but it exists because of her voice. The alarm on my wristwatch sounded at five o'clock, and my eyes shot open. I had been waiting all night for this moment. This is either a sign of deep personal purpose or operating off the rails, depending on how you feel about pre-dawn spearfishing. I had been doing it every morning for months — rolling out of the hammock I attached to the rear of...

A Serialized Pacific Voyage  ·  Nomadventure.org If Honeymoons Were Like This, They Wouldn't Be a Thing — Heidi Chapter 2 ← Previous Chapter 1 ⚓ Next Chapter 3 → A note on how this story is told: Heidi documents our life with a small voice recorder held just below her chin. She has always been the one with the presence of mind to capture things as they happen — recording moments, preserving details, keeping a running archive of memories I would otherwise let slip away. This account is mine, but it exists because of her voice. There is a specific kind of evening in Maui that should probably come with a liability waiver. The sun drops into the ʻAuʻau Channel in a slow, indulgent blaze. The trade winds ease off just enough to feel like forgiveness. And somewhere in that light, whatever reasonable instincts you had been using to navigate your adult...

A Serialized Pacific Voyage  ·  Nomadventure.org If Honeymoons Were Like This, They Wouldn't Be a Thing — Heidi Chapter 3 ← Previous Chapter 2 ⚓ Next Chapter 4 → I found her on a Thursday, at Keʻehi Boat Harbor, on the western edge of Honolulu near the airport — a part of town where the boats are older, the slips are cheaper, and nobody is trying to impress anyone. She was sitting in her berth with the settled resignation of something that had been waiting a very long time and had stopped expecting rescue. A Pacific Seacraft 25. The boat was designed by Henry Mohrschladt and first built in 1976 — the same year the original Rocky won the Oscar for Best Picture, which tells you something about the era. Only 157 of them were ever made. The hull was hand-laid fiberglass, modeled after the double-ended workboats of the 19th century, the kind of vessels that hauled cargo a...

Setting Sail with Kids "The sailing itch returned, and my wife and I decided it was time to raise sail again and introduce our brood to the dream." By Josh Holloway There are many romantic visions of family sailing life: sunsets, dolphins, children laughing in the rigging. There are fewer brochures featuring a toddler urinating on a carefully assembled brunch buffet. This is an oversight. Cove and Kai enjoy a swing in the rigging of Tiny Bubbles II in the waters off Maine. The Brunch Incident “Josh, shut off the water!” my wife, Heidi, yelled up to me from the galley. Huh? What water? I thought, as I turned just in time to witness our 1-year-old standing proudly in the cockpit, having repurposed himself into a fully operational fountain. The stream arced gracefully across the entire brunch buffet and, for good measure, continued through the companionway onto my wife. I reacted quickly, which is to say, not quickly enough. I scooped him ...

At Home in Water World: We Swallowed the Anchor and Landed in Eleuthera, Bahamas A sailor's guide to the most beautiful island you've never heard of — with a healthy dose of self-inflicted adventure, questionable decisions, and a manatee. There is a moment in every long-distance sailor's life when they look at their boat — really look at it — and think: what if I just... didn't? For us, that moment arrived in the Bahamas. Our sailboat, Tiny Bubbles II , was hauled out of the water and parked on dry land in Virginia like a very expensive lawn ornament. And we — the crew who had been living aboard and sailing the eastern seaboard — had done something radical. We had stopped moving and gotten jobs . On an island. In the middle of the ocean. At a place called The Island School on Cape Eleuthera. I want to be clear: this was not a failure of nerve. This was a strategic pivot. (It was also partly because someone offered us a place to live that wasn't a b...