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...

Costa Rica Surf Spots: The Complete Family Guide to Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced Breaks Costa Rica Surf Spots: The Complete Guide to Waves, Wipeouts & Why Our Kids Are Now Better Surfers Than Us In 2016, we made what we thought was a brilliant family decision: pack up and move to Costa Rica for its nature, warm climate, and family-friendly Pura Vida lifestyle. What we didn't anticipate was that our children would immediately become obsessed with surfing while my wife and I remained exactly where we started: firmly planted on our rears in the sand, nursing margaritas and documenting our failures on GoPro. Now, eight years later, our family can't imagine life without surf forecasts dictating our weekends. Somehow, between the escalating wipeouts, surprise encounters with crocodiles near our favorite break (more on that existential terror later), and the realization that my eight-year-old has better barrel rolls than I do, we've collected enough lo...

How We Infiltrated Mexico Twice from a National Park (And Why You Should Too) A Complete Guide to Crossing into Boquillas del Carmen from Big Bend — With Burros, Bureaucracy, and a Four-Year-Old in Full Firefighter Gear The border crossing that a U.S. Customs agent couldn't get through without laughing. I have now led my family across the Rio Grande into Mexico twice. Once on a spontaneous Sunday in 2019, in the middle of a minivan circumnavigation of the United States, with three boys, no plan, and a four-year-old dressed head-to-toe as a firefighter. And once in 2022, without our beloved overloaded skoolie (converted school bus), which had been diplomatically informed by the Mexican border that its presence was not required. Both times were absurd. Both times were wonderful. Both times ended at a video kiosk where a U.S. Customs officer in El Paso had to compose himself before clearing us back into America. This is the story of both crossings —...

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 4 ← Previous Chapter 3 ⚓ Next Coming Soon → Monday morning I made my way to the harbormaster’s office to announce my intentions. The gentleman at the counter greeted me with the administrative precision of one who communicated primarily through implication, and his implication that morning was clear: the Transpac race fleet was arriving from California, they would need every available slip in the marina, and Tiny Bubbles — and by extension I — was not part of any plan he had made. The Transpac, for context, is a biennial offshore race from Los Angeles to Honolulu — roughly 2,225 miles of open Pacific, sailed by everything from grand-prix racing machines to well-prepared cruising boats crewed by people with serious sailing experience — people I...