A Serialized Pacific Voyage  ·  Nomadventure.org If Honeymoons Were Like This, They Wouldn't Be a Thing — Heidi Chapter 4 ← Previous Chapter 3 ⚓ Next Chapter 5 → 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...

A Serialized Pacific Voyage  ·  Nomadventure.org If Honeymoons Were Like This, They Wouldn't Be a Thing — Heidi Chapter 5 ← Previous Chapter 4 ⚓ Next Chapter 6 → Chapter 5: The Abyss Looked Back, and Then We Got Seasick There is a specific kind of misery that sailing people rarely admit to in polite company, which is that going to windward at night in a seaway is about as pleasant as being repeatedly hit with a cold, wet mattress. You know it's coming. You brace for it. It hits you anyway. We left Oʻahu in the early evening, holding a compass bearing designed to hit the southern tip of Lānaʻi — a landmass roughly twenty-five miles of open Pacific to the southeast. The plan was straightforward: sail through the night, round Lānaʻi's southern shore in the morning, and work our way up into the calm waters off West Maui, where we would anchor 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 ...

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, Nomadventure earns from qualifying purchases. This post contains affiliate links (#ad), meaning we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase through a link. We only recommend gear we actually use. Costa Rica Surf Guide: Best Waves for Every Skill Level (Family Tested, Parent Humbled) 14 breaks from mellow beginner beaches to the wave that locals call "the cheese grater" — plus eight years of honest, hard-won knowledge from a family that moved here in 2016 and never quite left Costa Rica. Where the waves are warm, the children are prodigies, and the parents are excellent documentarians of their own failures. 📋 What's in This Guide 1. Why Costa Rica Ruined Us for Other Surf Destinations 2. Beginner Surf Spots (Sandy Bottoms, Patient Instructors) 3. Intermediate Spots (Where Confidence Meets Humility) 4. Advanced Breaks (Approach With Respect and Insurance) 5. When to Go: Seasons ...

Costa Rica to Bocas del Toro with Kids: How to Cross the Sixaola Bridge, Island-Hop to Paradise, and Come Home Slightly Sunburned and Completely Satisfied In which we navigate a pedestrian border crossing over a river, discover that boat taxis are a perfectly acceptable school bus alternative, snorkel in a national marine park, encounter a snake of non-trivial dimensions, and conclude that Panama is best appreciated with tropical fruit, a cold beer, and sufficiently low expectations about the surrounding rubbish situation. The Bocas del Toro archipelago sits on the Caribbean coast of Panama, just across a small bridge over the Rio Sixaola from Costa Rica. In a straight line it's roughly 40 miles from Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. In actual travel time, given that you cross an international border and then board a boat, it takes around three to four hours if things go reasonably well. This is still faster than getting from one side of San José to the other on a Friday afternoon,...