Author Archives: rick

Do I need health insurance?

This is a question that often seems strange to us Europeans who have grown up in societies with advanced social health programmes, but is a very real cause for concern for Americans who are thinking of sailing off into the … Continue reading

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Homemade fruit bars

As I already mentioned several times, the biggest problem cruisers have in the Marquesas islands is how to eat all the bananas they have aboard before they go bad. I already wrote a post with many recipes which you can … Continue reading

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Calling a Spade, a Spade

  If you have read our book you will know how we feel about spade (unsupported) rudders. We don’t like them and consider them a pretty bad idea for a voyaging boat. For those that haven’t read the book, a … Continue reading

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We are on the telly!!!

  Dear Friends. If you can stand our faces for almost one hour, than check out Ben Fogle’s tv program New Lives in the Wild on Channel 5 on August 10th at 9pm (London time). If you miss it, UK viewers … Continue reading

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Get a copy of Get Real!

‘Don’t even think of buying a boat until you have read this book’. – Tom Cunliffe (legendary sailor and author of The Complete Yachtmaster). Calypso’s recent appearance on Ben Fogle’s New Lives in the Wild introduced the idea of budget sailing to a … Continue reading

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Sailing over lemons

Before I became a wandering sea gypsy, I owned a farm in the Alpujarra Mountains in Southern Spain where I trained Andalucian horses. Shortly after I bought the place, Chris Stewart the former drummer of the rock group Genesis, published … Continue reading

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Timing the atoll passes

The islands of the Tuamotu group are coral atolls. They look like rings of coral with a calm lagoon inside them. Some of this “rings” are complete circles and therefore it is impossible to enter. Some others have one, two … Continue reading

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Spending the cyclone season in the South Pacific

I am writing a quick note because of the large number of concerned emails we are getting these days regarding Pam, the big cyclone that hit Vanuatu. We are far away and the cyclone did not affect us at all. … Continue reading

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The Numbers of The Year 2014

Recently I analized our log book and this is what I discovered about last year: Number of days of sailing: 86 This is more or less 25%, which means that we spent about a quarter of the last year on … Continue reading

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Anchoring in coral

The coral atolls are simply fantastic. Nobody can argue with that. Well, except maybe your anchor chain. While you will learn to love every fish and every view, your anchor chain will learn to hate every coral head and every … Continue reading

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