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A Week Later, You Miss the Sea

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When you come back to stable ground after a time away, you miss the sea. Maybe because it's all new to us, or each day out there has something different. A new high, a new low. Engine trouble, the perfect sail trim, the bow bursting through waves taller than the boat, or cutting through the shallow blues of the Caribbean. While living in the same quarters your front yard changes every day.

It's calm and clear, two feet and coral with thousands of fish below the keel. It's tall, and deep, and dark purple mixed with blue and thousands of feet underneath.

Every day you see dolphins, or tired birds that find the pulpit for a nap, sharks, tuna, squalls or sunshine.

You look forward to the early mornings, shutting down evenings with the sunset and a glass. Tending to sheets and winches while underway, watching the weather and killing time finding that extra half knot.

I would live on the sea. Not in marinas or even on the hook, but out to sea in the big stuff. We can't just yet, we have our work and our lives to manage. For now it's just something to visit, and something to miss when you step ashore, and look forward to returning to as soon as you can.

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Later Magazine: Amateurs at Sea

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Later Magazine: Amateurs at Sea

Our first sailing related article, "Amateurs at Sea" has been published in Later Mag's most recent issue.

Later is a surf and travel magazine that tops our list of favourites to read cover to cover, so we were excited to be able to contribute to this issue with a story about buying our first boat in Florida and sailing to Mexico.

The magazine is free and available at a list of locations you can find here within Canada, the States and internationally.

Thanks to our friend Eric Greene over at Later for this one! Click read more below to read the entire article.

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Sunrise at Sea in the Gulf of Mexico

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Katy put some words down about our recent trip from Florida to Mexico. Specifically about this one day that was pretty special out there. Here they are...

 
 

This photo was taken on our way to Key West, alone in the Gulf of Mexico with no land or other boats in sight. It's hard to describe how magical that morning was, but I can try.

We awoke for our 4am shift to layers upon layers of stars twinkling in the sky. The moon was nowhere in sight. I don't know if I've ever seen so many stars at once. We were so far away from even the smallest hint of light from land, with countless shooting stars zipping through the sky.

The water was like glass, smoother than any bathtub. It looked like we were in outer space with the reflection of the stars on the water, not knowing where the sky ended and the ocean began. As our boat cut through the water, phosphorescence lit up in its wake. I took a paddle and dragged it through the water for the better part of an hour stirring up more of them, mesmerized by the beauty of it all.

And then came sunrise. We saw a few dolphins playing in the distance as the stars started to disappear and the sky became brighter. Later in the crossing, a pod of about 40 spinner dolphins came to play at the bow of our boat for almost half an hour, jumping straight up out of the water, spinning and splashing back down, showing off.

As the sun rose higher in the sky we noticed we were passing several huge jellyfish as big as your head, floating in the glassy water. We ended up passing through hundreds, maybe thousands of them. We just sat on the side of the boat and watched them pass by as the sky became more colourful and the sun rose higher off the horizon.