02/18/2026
tl;dr: Drew in eastern Canada, X-Wing for sale, working on the next big project.
Hey all,
It's been about four months since I arrived back in Canada, after sailing singlehanded from New Zealand. I spent a lovely Christmas with my family, and have been mostly just doing the same ever since. My parents are getting older, and my nieces and nephew are rapidly developing into young adults, so it's been a real blessing to have the availability to spend quality time with all of them. I can't say that living in Eastern Canada is particularly exciting, and it has been quite the adjustment just to sloooooow dooooooown to the New Brunswick pace of life. It hasn't been without enjoyment though, and honestly after spending the last few years bouncing from tropical paradise to tropical paradise I'm actually still enjoying the novelties of life in a northern town; I've shoveled a lot of snow, and spent time outdoors in -25ºC. Adjacently, the amenities of life on land are still new and shiny enough to give me a lot of pleasure - hot water showers! In-house laundry! Sheer luxury.
I've been spending a lot of time at the public libraries in Saint John and Sussex, working hard on figuring out what FarOtherSide means to me and what it will mean in the future. I know that I want to continue sailing long passages to remote locations, but I also know that the way I've been doing it - ie. mostly solo - is simply no longer as big a draw for me. I have long since proven to myself (and anyone whose opinion I care about) that I'm more than capable of single-handing a small boat across oceans, meeting the challenges as they arise, testing my mettle against the open sea. There is so much joy in challenging and overcoming adversity, but for the past few years it has become clearer and clearer that I'm tired of fighting and celebrating alone. I want the camaraderie that comes from adventuring with a crew. "Joy shared is joy doubled", and all that.
So, I've been working on reinventing FarOtherSide from the ground up, rebranding and focusing on the values that I want the project to embody for the next ten years. After a lot of late nights and soul-searching, I've come up with three core pillars from which everything moving forward will stem: Community, Sustainability, and Competence. I'll talk a lot more about those sometime soon.
Sadly, I have had to admit that the boat that has carried the FarOtherSide project since day one, "my little sailboat X-Wing", is just not the right vessel to support the future of the project. She's a great little boat, but she's just not large enough to handle the sorts of larger-crew-driven expeditions that I want for FarOtherSide. She's strong and capable, and I would like to see her go to a younger couple that will take her on further adventures. X-Wing has been listed for sale with Max Shaw at Yacht Sales West; I'm more than happy to discuss her at great length with the future buyers, however please direct any sale-related questions to Max. :) Here's a link to the sale listing:
https://www.yachtworld.com/yacht/1974-islander-34-10085006/
I have to admit I'm finding myself in unfamiliar waters; I've been working hard on developing a long-term plan for the next sailing adventures, but up until now FarOtherSide has primarily just been short-form videos featuring me sailing alone far offshore. I'm honestly not sure how to best transition the project from "me" to "we", and the next really big sailing project - an east-to-west attempt at the Northwest Passage - won't be until 2027 anyway. Before that, I have to find the right boat for the job... which is proving to be more of a question of thorough and clever business and financial planning, and quite a far cry from the dusty, sweaty boatyard struggles that come with the early stages of successful small-boat adventuring. Once the perfect boat is found, can the three pillars be used to support one another? Can Community and Competency be leveraged to make the project sustainable? What would the project look like if it could achieve wild, unthinkable success?
I know that I am happiest when I get to solve challenging problems, so I can't say that I'm not enjoying the process, at least a little bit. There are still far too many unknowns to really put too much on the internet just yet, but I'll be bringing you along for the ride. I'm still exploring a tonne of directions and ideas, planning and prototyping, and I've thrown everything out and started completely from scratch already more than once.
I'm still here though. :) Stay connected, I'll post more as things solidify.
