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Chapter 1: Raw Fish — The Key to One Woman’s Heart

A note on how this story is told: Heidi documents our life with a small voice recorder held just below her chin. She has always been the one with the presence of mind to capture things as they happen — recording moments, preserving details, keeping a running archive of memories I would otherwise let slip away. This account is mine, told from memory, shaped by time, and only mildly improved in my favor. But it exists because of her voice. Where I have erred on the side of self-flattery, Heidi will correct me. She always does. The alarm on my wristwatch sounded at five o'clock, and my eyes shot open. I had been waiting all night for this moment. This is either a sign of deep personal purpose or a cry for help, depending on how you feel about pre-dawn spearfishing. I had been doing it every morning for months — rolling out of the hammock I slept in near the beach, grabbing my fins, mask, pole spear, dive light, and float line, and slipping into the dark Maui wate...
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Chapter 4: The Coast Guard Knows Our Boat’s Name Now

Previously: We found Tiny Bubbles at Keʻehi Boat Harbor and bought her for eight thousand dollars, discovering in the process that she was home to a thriving termite civilization. We scraped two years of oysters off the hull, attempted to sail to Maui, and were defeated by the Kaiwi Channel and a Luna Bar. Heidi flew back to her classroom. I stayed. Monday morning the harbormaster at Ala Wai appeared at the dock before I'd had coffee. He was a man of administrative precision 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 p...
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Chapter 3: Eight Thousand Dollars of Fiberglass, Termites, and Optimism

Previously: Two teachers on a Maui beach agreed to sail to the South Pacific, mostly out of ignorance as to what that entails. A German man named Klaus sold the first boat to someone else while I was walking to the bank. Rooftops were slept on. A boat with no keel was declined. I found her on a Thursday, at Keʻehi Boat Harbor, on the western edge of Honolulu near the airport — a part of town where the boats are older, the slips are cheaper, and nobody is trying to impress anyone. She was sitting in her berth with the settled resignation of something that had been waiting a very long time and had stopped expecting rescue. A Pacific Seacraft 25. The boat was designed by Henry Mohrschladt and first built in 1976 — the same year the original Rocky won the Oscar for Best Picture, which tells you something about the era. Only 157 of them were ever made. The hull was hand-laid fiberglass, modeled after the double-ended workboats of the 19th century, the kind of vesse...
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Chapter 2: In Which a Sunset Ruins My Reasonable Life Plans

A note on how this story is told: Heidi documents our life with a small voice recorder held just below her chin. She has always been the one with the presence of mind to capture things as they happen — recording moments, preserving details, keeping a running archive of memories I would otherwise let slip away. This account is mine, told from memory, shaped by time, and only mildly improved in my favor. But it exists because of her voice. Where I've erred on the side of self-flattery, Heidi will correct me. She always does. There is a specific kind of evening in Maui that should probably come with a liability waiver. The sun drops into the ʻAuʻau Channel in a slow, indulgent blaze. The trade winds ease off just enough to feel like forgiveness. The water turns the color of a promise you absolutely intend to keep. And somewhere in that light, whatever reasonable instincts you had been using to navigate your adult life simply... stop working. I had been living ...
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Eat Right Backpacker!

If you've spent any time on trail forums, you've seen the diet: Pop-Tarts for breakfast, Snickers at every mile marker, ramen at camp. It technically keeps you moving — but it also wrecks your gut, crashes your energy, and leaves your joints running on empty by the time you hit the Sierra. There's a better way. Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. All recommendations are based on genuine trail experience and research. The Pacific Crest Trail demands somewhere between 3,500 and 6,000 calories per day depending on your pace, elevation gain, and pack weight. Most hikers target 1.5 to 2 lbs of food per day , which means every ounce needs to earn its place. The candy bar crowd isn't wrong about calories — where they go wrong is ignoring protein for muscle repair, fat quality for sustained energy, and micronutrients that keep you healthy over a months-lo...
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School in Costa Rica

Can Kids Go to School in Costa Rica? Real Experience From a Family of Five Short answer: yes — and your kids will probably adapt faster than you do. When we decided to enroll our three sons in Costa Rican public school, I had approximately one thousand questions and exactly zero certainty. None of them spoke Spanish. We had no local connections. The enrollment paperwork was in a language we were still fumbling through with Google Translate and embarrassing optimism. What followed was one of the most unexpectedly smooth experiences of our entire family relocation — and one of the best things we have ever done for our kids. Why We Chose Public School Over International School The easy answer would have been an international or bilingual private school. There are several in Costa Rica, they're accustomed to expat families, and they conduct classes in English. Problem solved. But that felt like moving to Costa Rica and then building a bubble around ourselves. The whole...
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Costa Rica to Nicaragua

Crossing the Costa Rica–Nicaragua Border With Kids: What It's Really Like Short answer: plan for anywhere from two hours to most of the day, bring USD in small bills, and let your kids soak it in — because this is not a boring border crossing. We've crossed the Peñas Blancas border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua multiple times, in both directions, on foot, with three boys in tow. It is chaotic, occasionally overwhelming, and genuinely one of the more memorable experiences of our time living in Central America. Our kids loved it. That probably tells you something about our family — and something about what kind of trip this is. Why You Need to Cross at All Most tourist visas for Costa Rica allow stays of up to 180 days, but the fine print matters. Depending on your nationality and how immigration officers are interpreting policy on any given week, you may be required to exit the country periodically to reset your status. The Nicaragua border run — crossing into Nicar...
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