Our Story

Hi! I’m Rachel. Together with my husband, Brenden, we’ve been traveling with our two kids aboard our 40-foot sailboat, Mosaic, since 2016. Our kids are Evan (14) and Kali (10). We bought our boat in the fall of 2016 and moved aboard in Portland, Oregon. We lived in a marina and still had regular jobs at that point and the kids went to school and daycare. Over the next 3 years we worked hard to change all that. 

By the spring of 2019, Brenden and I were both working remotely, and we’d started homeschooling the kids. We had done lots of work on the boat to get her ready for cruising, and we left Portland in May of 2019 to move up to the Puget Sound and live a more nomadic lifestyle. 

For the next two years, we cruised the Puget Sound and San Juan Islands for the spring, summer, and fall and then in the winter we would take a temporary slip for winter moorage and stay at a dock during the cold and wet months. The first winter, we stayed in Poulsbo and the second winter we stayed in Olympia. We weathered the craziness of the pandemic aboard our boat and counted ourselves really lucky to be able to do so. 

By the fall of 2021, we were finally ready to leave the Pacific Northwest for adventures further abroad. We sailed from the Seattle area down the entire west coast of the US and crossed into Mexico in November of 2021. We crossed to Pacific Mexico from the Baja Peninsula and continued south until March when we reached Manzanillo. There, we turned around explored our way up into the Sea of Cortez for the summer of 2022.

Spoiler alert, the Sea of Cortez in the summer is hot. Like, really hot. So, that fall we pulled the boat out of the water in Puerto Penasco at the very northern end of the Sea of Cortez and we went home to the Pacific Northwest to visit family and friends. 

We stayed a little longer than we expected to, but we were back at the boat in December of 2022 and working on some big projects. We splashed in mid-February and went back out cruising again. But, as the fates would have it, circumstances changed and we again pulled the boat out of the water in May of 2023. From there, we left for the hot summer season and spent 3 months in Colombia in South America and then another 3 months back home again in the fall of 2023. 

By November 2023, we were back at the boat once more and making additional upgrades with plans to go further afield. As with most cruisers, our plans are written in sand at low tide, and while we were planning a trip through the Panama Canal in 2024, it seems those plans are shifting. Exactly what are we doing? We’re not sure. But we’re pretty sure it’ll be a great adventure just figuring it all out as we go! I hope you’ll follow along.