SV Loka

08/12/2025

A Loka Crew First: flying our new spinnaker (evolution_sails_chesapeake)! Yesterday, we had flat calm conditions with only a few knots of wind. This meant motoring to our next destination (Warren Island State Park in Islesboro, Maine). When we came across a wide open area with no lobster pots, we decided to test run our new sail and the setup.

Despite only 2knots of wind, it was a great success! We sailed at 1.5knots! Haha. We were happy to see the sail filled out and proved out our deploying/dousing processes along the way. We can't wait to test her out in more optimal conditions as we prefer light wind conditions.

⚓️⛵️

07/29/2025

Current status: chilling in Rockland Harbor, ME and this is our backyard view. After 2 years of discussing and planning and boat projects delaying our passage, we are anchored in Maine just inside Penobscot Bay.

Super stoked to be here and be able to stay in one place for more than 48hrs😆 While that was self-inflicted, it's worth it to be here at the end of July so we have all of August to explore before we start making our way south again.

Lots of lobster and hiking are in our very near future!

05/02/2025

New blog post, and it's a fun one where we explore some of the cruiser archetypes we've observed so far. It's not an exhaustive list, and is an over-simplification (dare I stay blatant stereotyping) of the personalities. But we had some fun discussing types of cruisers we've met and what type of cruiser we've turned out to be!

https://www.svloka.com/what-kind-of-cruiser-are-you/

It was pretty fun to write this because this was also an attempt at using ChatGPT to help write blog posts more efficiently.

Writing blog posts is very time consuming (at least, the way Pinky does it), between developing the story, finding good photos, and then formatting that all for a website, there are many hours invested in the process. While writing may be a passion for many people, it's not currently a passion of ours. So we (Pinky, really) are looking into ways to leverage AI technology to streamline the blog writing process without losing the authentic voice and story of Loka and her crew.

Judge if you want, but this post took half the time to write (albeit a fairly fluffy topic), which means we'll post more often.

Quick boat update: hoping to launch soon as we wrap up final projects in the boat yard. Aiming to head up towards Maine for the summer.

03/10/2025

The (and in general) has a magical quality where you reconnect with friends you see once in a while and enjoy incredible of various . We're grateful to be here even though our boat is not. After all, home is where you are (thanks Lin Pardey!).

Had a blast wandering the of with the crew from Alley Cat today before the wind shifted and increased!

03/07/2025

Unbelievable opportunity to watch a huge spacecraft explode! While boat sitting in George Town, we got to witness, first hand, the spectacular explosion of SpaceX Starship. Sucks for the engineers that worked so hard on that launch, but holy s**t what a spectacle!

02/15/2025

In case you missed our stories, we left Loka in wintery Maryland in January, drove south down the East Coast, and flew to George Town, Exuma last week. We found our shorts weather!😍

For the next month or so, we will be living on and caring for SV Halekai while her crew goes skiing. We're thrilled to be living on a boat, hanging out on the water, and enjoying the turquoise waters. Loka projects progress slowly, and we'll get her back up and running this spring when we return.

For now, this visit is a huge affirmation of the life we've chosen. After spending the last 5 months traveling/living on land, we feel like we've come home to .

⚓️ ⚓️⛵️ 🇧🇸

01/13/2025

“Cruising is a highly differentiated existence” - Sailing Totem check out their full 2024 debrief as they cast off lines from 2+ years in Mexico and got back into cruising full time.💕🌅⛵️

Ain’t that the truth?! Landlife has been very mundane and ordinary, with very few highs and lows. While we miss being on the boat, we are also reflecting on how different our life is on the water and as nomads.

Ah, the cruising life, an extended holiday in beautiful places! Well, not exactly: it is a highly differentiated existence, one that fluctuates between extremes of uncertainty and joy, discomfort and ease, and is peppered with magical moments. 2024 held all those extremes: here are highlights.

01/09/2025

Hello everyone! We've posted a new video on YouTube where we show how we unstepped the mast in December 2024. Link below!

https://youtu.be/V1JZek7macc

We've been recovering from holidays with family and hibernating a bit with the 9" of snow in Annapolis on Monday and general blustery cold weather. It's been a time of reflection and creative exploration (including learning Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing!) as well as planning for 2025's adventures.

More updates on our winter plans soon. For now enjoy the video!

01/01/2025

2024 held a ton of adventures and growth for us. We started the year as newbie cruisers heading south down the east coast USA and then hopping to the Bahamas. We sailed (a lot) around the Bahamas for 3 months and then headed north back to the Chesapeake for boat projects. As our timeline updated, we decided to fly to Europe and wander around for 3 months. We finished the year by putting the boat on the hard for more projects (standing rigging and other items on the list), hanging out with family in Northern VA, and enjoying a month-long stay in Annapolis.

Cheers to what 2025 has in store!

11/30/2024

We've been back home (currently, Maryland) for a little over a week, and we're missing a few things we loved in Europe, namely cafes. 😆 Here's a quick recap of our route!

We're neck deep in preparations for a big boat project that we've been planning for a while. That means we're not going south just yet. In the meantime, we're spending time with friends and family.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are finding some peace this holiday season. More to come on our plans as they develop. We're continuing with the "no long term plans" approach and taking things one week/month at a time.

11/20/2024

We're back in Maryland and back on the boat! Seems like we just left and it's nice to be in our home and back on the water. Looking forward to holidays with family and boat projects!

Photo credit: our friend, Gina, who gave us a ride from the train station!💕💕💕

11/18/2024

Icymi we're back in the States, and have been tooling around Manhattan NYC for the last 5 days. We're finally getting adjusted back Eastern timezone (6hrs is quite a difference) and feeling grateful for diners, hot dogs, and NY pizza.😍

We're currently having a shawarma lunch in Herald Square (love eating outside!) in front of Macy's where the Thanksgiving day parade will be held soon! Love NYC at this time of year. 💕

More to come as we'll debrief on the grand European tour, and share next steps. We'll head home (to the boat in Maryland) to work on boat projects and get some family time in.