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I was going to hold these for an epic post about our trip but time seems to have gotten away from us. In lieu of a narrative, here is a little photo essay!

Olive wanted to make an explosion. Ruby remembered that you can win mentos at the arcade. I thought, “it’s about the most expensive way to do this experiment but it makes a great story” so off we went.

We were all excited to get to Tahiti of course. The excitement was partially because it was Tahiti and partly because it was one of the few places in the South Pacific that we were pretty certain we could receive birthday presents for Tucker and Ruby. We anchored by Marina Tahina for a bit and picked up our new spinnaker and even a wifi antenna (both shipped from the US). It was exciting to have mail from the States after many months without. ...

I’ve been noticing a lot of articles, podcasts, tweets, and other coverage lately about slut shaming and rape culture. Maybe it’s that I have decidedly feminist sexual politics and my friends and news feeds tend to reflect and amplify those topics, or maybe (I can hope) it’s because our society is starting to realize that feminism and (more basically) respecting women is an issue that men have a serious stake in. When I hear on the news that people are sympathising with rapists who’s “futures have been ruined”, I assume that the part of the population that thinks that way must be incredibly small, uneducated and dim witted. When I read the dozens of brave letters from women (some in their middle years, some in high school) who have been sexually bullied, slut shamed, and raped I would love to believe that they represented 100% of the population that has been saddled with such a burden. ...

Tucker took 10,035 photos during our eight month voyage across the Pacific but what I hope I always remember cannot be captured with the camera. The excitement of checking out of Mexico and watching the shore disappear in the east The perfect sapphire blue of the ocean, hundreds of miles out, in the morning sun Looking up and seeing the Southern Cross for the first time The feeling of arrival when the latitude ticked down to zero ...

One of the things that our kids miss while cruising are typical stateside milestones like the First Day of School. Where I grew up the first day of school was the day after Labor Day, which happens on the first Monday of September. Five year olds begin kindergarten, and while Olive doesn’t turn five for another couple of weeks, she would be a kindergartener now. We were lucky enough to send our kids to the General Primary School in Matamaka Village for their first day last week! ...

I should have known that I would eat my words… We left Samoa this morning under a bright blue sun filled sky. The wind was fresh enough to move us along nicely and so we decided to go between Upolu and Savai’i (the two main Islands of Samoa) on our way to Tonga. As we rounded Upolu and started South I said to Vick “Shoot, I think we may have missed out by not going inland a bit.” It’s true, I’m sure. I can only justify so much with the tired “we had so much work to get done” line. In retrospect though we did end up loving Samoa in spite of some of it’s odd officials. We had one of the absolute best meals we have ever eaten (Vick compared it favorably to the Slanted Door, our old favorite) at Tatua Bistro in Apia. Our friends Mark and Jenny on Condessa took care of the kids for the night so we could have a downright sinfully slow meal. Great food, perfect service and personal attention from the owner (when he found out I was GF and wanted to make sure everything was prepared safely for me) made it a night to remember. ...

Cruising kids, like kids everywhere else in the world come in all sorts of flavors, have unique personalities and in any anchorage you would be lottery-winner-lucky to find two the same age. Somehow they manage to forge the most beautiful friendships out of this seeming chaos. This little gallery captures this dynamic in a way that I have never been able to put in words. Look at each one for a moment and then flip through quickly. ...

I am often asked about cruising with kids. Is it difficult? I’ve overheard people talking about us. We’re brave apparently, and it’s not because of the ocean, or the remote places we go, it’s because we took our kids. We’re also crazy, according to a gal hiking behind us recently. And we love the commotion, mess, and noise of 5 little kids running around the boat, thought the gal in the slip next to us for a week in La Cruz. Most people out here have waited until their kids are grown up and from what I gather, most people are unwilling to live this closely with their kids day in and day out. ...

I thought this might be interesting for some. These are our 24hr waypoints for the whole trip. What isn’t shown is the track (our actual path of travel) witch , more often than not, zig-zagged across the almost straight line described here. Cruisers familiar with this passage will almost certainly understand what is going on around day 10 . This is where we decided that the ITCZ crossing would be much better a few degrees west. As it turns out those demoralizing days of heading west instead of south, were well worth it. We never really saw the ITCZ. Big thanks to my buddy Krister for keeping us informed of weather and routing us expertly through this area of turmoil.

When we left Mexico we were headed to Nuku Hiva, one of the northern Marquesan islands, with an easy anchorage in a town that allowed us to clear in to French Polynesia. About a week into our passage we opened the Charlie’s Charts and our Lonely Planet guide books and decided to head for Hiva Oa, the largest southern Marquesan island. We don’t want to miss the nearby islands of Fatu Hiva and Tahuata. We are anchored now in Baie Tahuku near the town of Atuona. ...

I am playing catch up now. After so many “best ever” posts I had to think of something original or risk sounding like a broken record. Thankfully I found some free space on my hard drive tonight so I can grace you with some visual evidence of one particularly breathtaking harbor. Yelapa is a jewel of a pueblo. Tucked in among the mountains, it is only accessible by boat, or trail. There are no roads and the biggest powered vehicle is an ATV. If that isn’t enough to recommend the place, it is also community owned. Nobody in town owns any property, and you can feel it in the vibe. ...

put our kids in cars without five point harness carseats heck, we put our kids in cars without seatbelts um, we even put our kids in cars without carseats, or seatbelts, or doors (usually we ride the bus) feed our kids foods without heavily scrutinized ingredient lists did we really let them eat peppermint candy with red food color? This is a picture of all of the refrigerated food in the biggest natural foods market we have found: ...

Q: Name something you packed and so far you find you really just don’t need. A: Thankfully, we really don’t have much of this category. We have gone through some clothes, worn through some shoes, and jettisoned a down comforter, but there was a time when they were needed on this trip. There are several things that I don’t need yet (spares galore, Christmas cookie cutters, secret chocolate stash) but their time will come. Then there are things that I hope to never need, 153% genoa, the life raft, and EPIRB. And then there’s that blow up shark Olive won for being the youngest kid on the HaHa. Technically we didn’t bring that, but we didn’t ditch it either. Vive El Tiburon! ...