In January 2017 my husband Eric Sponberg and I departed St. Augustine, FL, on our 35-foot sailboat Corroboree with the goal of sailing around the world. I have no idea whether we will make it. As with any journey, the path is never as straight as you optimistically plan. But you go anyway, in hopes of a great adventure and because you can’t ignore the tug in your heart that beckons you on.
This blog will be the story of our voyage…and much more.
Corroboree has been in Santa Marta, Colombia for three weeks now, and the single best word to describe this place is wild. First, there’s the wind. Normally strong anyway at this time of year, the eastern trades whip around the northeastern shoulder of Colombia with special intensity, attributable, I think, to the looming Sierra Nevada […]
Before we left St. Augustine, when Eric and I told people about our plan to sail around the world, one of the most frequent questions we were asked was “Are you taking a gun?” Often, it came within the first five queries: “What kind of boat do you have? What route will you follow? What […]
When Corroboree made a night arrival in Bonaire last week, we had the benefit of modern technology, a civilized harbor, and the assistance of a fellow cruiser to help us tie up to a mooring ball in the dark. We had tracked our 390-mile course from Grenada using GPS and navigation aps, and while still […]
Silversands Resort under construction, Grand Anse, Grenada Even before we left Miami, Eric and I were warned by longtime cruisers that we would find cruising in the Caribbean drastically different from what we experienced on Duprass forty years ago. For one thing, cruising yachts have exploded in both size and number. Where Duprass at 27’ […]
To say we’ve been experiencing a lot of rain lately here in Grenada would be an understatement. This past week we have, to varying degrees, been sprinkled, drizzled, showered, pelted, barraged, bucketed, deluged and inundated. We have repeatedly sponged, mopped and toweled our sopping wet cockpit in the quest to create a dry—or at least […]
We left Antigua on Monday, 25 September, with such high hopes. Since departing Miami in February, Corroboree has been treading what cruising sailors call the Thorny Path. From the Bahamas to the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico and down the Caribbean Islands, it’s roughly a 1,700-mile slog to windward, sometimes lolling in airless heat with […]
When Corroboree left St. Barts on the morning of Wednesday, 31 August, the tropical disturbance off the coast of Africa didn’t even have a name. So we were a bit confused when we tied up at our next port, Jolly Harbour, Antigua, a mere 24 hours later, and the dock attendant greeted us by asking, […]
Verdant, mountainous, dramatic. Panoramic, wind-blown, sea-swept. The Virgin Islands—Spanish, American and British—erupt from the sea like steep green pyramids, peak after peak, and the ocean loops around and between them in bright blue pathways dotted with white sails. By day the sun blazes, at night you can see the Milky Way and so many stars […]
The weather here in the Caribbean is getting scary. It’s hurricane season and we’ve had six named tropical storms so far. First came Arlene, which formed unusually early in April and fizzled out in the central Atlantic. In June, Bret struck Trinidad, Tobago and Venezuela, followed by Cindy, which developed off the Yucatan and punched […]
Did you know you can get ice from the sun? Amazing, but absolutely true. Thanks to some incredible technology, we can now make real ice cubes on Corroboree. “Well, of course you can,” I hear you say. “Just run your refrigerator, duh!” But that’s the point—we don’t have a refrigerator, and since I am extremely […]