Buying a Boat
Our Biggest Priorities when Shopping for a Cruising Catamaran
Bigger or Faster? Choosing the Size of Your Cruising Catamaran
Fountaine Pajot
The Helia Versus the Helia Evolution
20,000nm Helia Review – An Update
6,000nm Helia Review
Route Planning
Cruising the Indian Ocean: Planning for 2019
Planning a Circumnavigation
Cruising the South Pacific
Highlights from 3 Months in the Caribbean
Sailing Tips & Tricks
Important Knots for Cruisers to Know by Heart
Best Sail Configurations for Downwind Sailing on a Cruising Catamaran
Sail Trim for a Cruising Catamaran
Sailing Stories
Sailing from Australia to Indonesia: Horn to Debut
Our second Pacific crossing
4,146 NM Sailing Across the Atlantic
Starry Horizons, a Fountaine Pajot Helia 44, was launched in October of 2014. Since then, we’ve tackled over 40,000 nautical miles and completed our world circumnavigation. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of thoughts on the performance of our boat and the things we liked and didn’t like. 20,000nm Helia Review Upon our arrival…
We spent 2016-2017 cyclone season in New Zealand. When it came time to make the decision about where to go for 2017, we couldn’t resist spending another season in the South Pacific. So, in April (pretty early) we got a window to leave Bay of Islands, New Zealand and sail to Tonga. Sailing Summary This…
We (and every other blogger/vlogger/participant in online forums) see a ton of questions about cruising costs. Answers can vary so widely, but we thought we would at least share some basics of what our first years of cruising looked like financially. Note: all amounts are in USD! Tracking I’ve been a big fan of Mint…
We pulled into the Q dock in Opua, New Zealand Saturday morning at 8 am, 167 hours (one week minus one hour) from when we left Fiji. Departing Fiji We had been hanging around Vuda Point waiting for a weather window. We’d had over a week of flat calm, so when a window opened up,…
This afternoon we arrived in the Vava’u group of Tonga. On our way, we crossed the international date line – meaning we lost a day. Which got me thinking – if we just kept doing a east to west circumnavigation over and over again, we would just keep losing days….wtf?? The passage was easy –…
June 18th marked the one year anniversary of our departure from Florida and into full time cruising. Look how far we’ve come! It’s been a year since we left Florida in June of 2015 and started our cruising life. Since then, we spent 3 weeks in the Bahamas, sailed up to Nova Scotia, Maine, Bermuda, and back down for three…
We made it! We dropped our anchor in Fatu Hiva this afternoon, and we settled in now. We left Santa Cruz, Galapagos on April 7th. That makes our passage 18.99 days long (David would be upset if I rounded up!). We averaged 6.84 knots and covered 3,142 nautical miles. Photos Watch Our Video of Sailing…
We have the anchor down in the Galapagos (and have 45 minutes of free internet!) so another successful passage is in the logbook! Now waiting for our agent to come by to help us clear into the country. Despite ripping our spinnaker, we had a great time sailing over from Panama. The winds were better…