About

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I’m Martina and my boat is Carina of Devon. I live aboard Carina with my husband and our two daughters. This blog is about our adventures aboard our boat, our observations of life, my (and sometimes Julian’s) thoughts about culture, nature, home schooling, parenting and life in general.

In 2011, Julian and I decided to quit our jobs, sell our house in Cambridgeshire and buy a boat to live on. We found the boat later that year and moved aboard in spring 2012. In the past three years we’ve cruised in England, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

Let me tell you a little about the cast of characters who appear in this blog:

Martina That’s me. I’m 42 years old and from Ireland but since 1995 I’ve lived in Japan, the Canadian Arctic, Scotland and England. I’m a social anthropologist and human geographer, with an interest in Inuit knowledge of the sea and the relationships between humans and marine mammals. I’m now a freelance writer. You’ll find a link to my publications on the menu bar. I like to write about environmental issues, sustainability, parenting and home education. I had almost no sailing experience before moving aboard Carina so I’ve been on a steep and fascinating learning curve. I like reading, writing, hiking, cooking, and learning new things about the world around me.

Julian is my 40 year old English husband. He’s a geophysicist and glaciologist and has conducted deep field research in Greenland and Antarctica. He grew up in Warwickshire and sailed dinghies on the River Avon from the age of 5. He has been responsible for most of the repairs to Carina to make her seaworthy and habitable. He is passionate about foraging for wild food, long hikes in the hills, history, studying Spanish, baking bread and beating me at Scrabble.

Lily is our six year old ship’s naturalist. She loves reading, observing wildlife, swimming like a dolphin, Frozen and The Sound of Music. When she grows up she wants to be a writer, a dancer and a fisherwoman. Her favourite authors are Jacqueline Wilson and C.S. Lewis.

Katie is four and three quarters. She loves singing, laughing, building Lego and huggles (a hybrid hug and cuddle). Her favourite movie is Brave and she fancies herself a bit of an archer. She loves foraging and eating wild food picked from hedgerows as she wanders along. Her favourite toy is called Monster Rabbit.

Carina is 36 years old, 11 metres long and 3 metres wide. She is a Westerly Conway ketch, built in 1979. She has had two previous owners. She started life as Carina of Hamble and was owned for twenty years by two doctors. Her second owner renamed her Carina of York and he lived aboard for eleven years, sailing her from the UK to Turkey, and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. When she returned to the UK from the Caribbean in summer 2011, he put her up for sale, and we snapped her up almost immediately. She is our amazing home.

I hope my blog puts a smile on your face.

Martina