Meet the Crew:
Thanks for dropping in! We’re excited to know you.
After growing up in mostly landlocked places, we traded mountain views for seascapes. We bought and refitted a boat with our friends in Florida and left our land jobs behind to sail for a living. We started our careers at sea working separately on various yachts doing everything from deliveries to luxury charters. Now with 10 years of sailing experience and logging nearly 100,000 nautical miles each, we want to create an experience that shares our love of the natural world and the sea.
Established in 2020, Ocean Passages LLC was born during the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in the states. Times were bleak, but we found living on a sailboat amidst a global crisis was another reason to be grateful. We were able to distance ourselves while refitting Ultima, our 47’ sloop for bluewater passage-making. As time passed, we took crew sailing to places that allowed visitors. As people started traveling more, we did too. Since then, we’ve crossed the Atlantic twice, completing a full Atlantic circle, and have sailed roughly 50,000 nautical miles aboard Ultima.
We’re thankful for the wonderful people who have taken the time to explore with us and consider Ultima their home away from home. We’ve learned as much from them as we hope they’ve learned from us and our time at sea. You can read some of our crew’s testimonials here.
Welcome Aboard SV Ultima
All we know of Ultima before we purchased her in April 2019 is that she was built in Cape Town, South Africa by Compass Marine and shortly thereafter sailed to Fort Lauderdale via Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Bahamas.
She then spent the next 35 years on the East Coast of North America. So for a 40 year old boat she hadn’t sailed all that much.
After we bought her we completed a 9 month refit in Solomons, Maryland, replacing standing and running rigging, chainplates and bolts, painting the decks, changing out all the thru hull fittings, putting in new hatches, and reinforcing bulkheads. We then sailed South to Florida in January 2020 back to the Chesapeake in June and up to Newport, Rhode Island in July, before heading back to the Chesapeake in September and out to Bermuda and down to the USVI in October/November.
In 2021 we did a “passage to nowhere” making seafall in the middle of the Caribbean before returning to the Virgin Islands. We then sailed back to Florida and did two cruising passages, one to the Bahamas and one to the Dry Tortugas. In May we sailed back up to the Chesapeake and on to Maine in July. Once again we sailed back to the Chesapeake in September and made the classic fall passages to Bermuda and the Caribbean.
In early 2022 we made 2 passages from St. Martin to St. Lucia and back to the USVI. In May 2022 we left St. Martin and sailed up to Bermuda then across the Atlantic to the Azores. In July we sailed on to Porto in mainland Portugal then down to Lisbon. August saw us into the Mediterranean with a short stop in Gibraltar and on to Ibiza and Mallorca. In October we sailed out of the Med to Cadiz, Spain then on to the Canaries in November.
January 2023 started off with an epic passage from the Canaries down to Cape Verde. Then an amazing tradewind fueled, downwind Atlantic Crossing back to the Caribbean. In March we sailed from Grenada to St. Martin on what would be our last passage in the Eastern Caribbean for some time. We took a jaunt up to higher latitudes, sailing once again back to Bermuda and on up to Nova Scotia in May. In July with hurricane season looming we sailed back to Bermuda and the Chesapeake. We chartered a boat in the Azores in August while Ultima underwent another refit period. This time installing a hard railing from the pushpit to the gates, granny bars around the mast, reinforcing the mast step, replacing the whisker pole track and all the lights on the mast, repairing deck leaks, and installing new better hatches. To end the year we once again sailed our classic fall route to Bermuda and back to St. Martin before heading out across the Caribbean to Bonaire and on to Cartagena, Colombia.
Ultima has weathered squalls and gales, seen winds up to force 10 with six meter waves and never faltered. She tracks true and makes fast passages. Her motion at sea is among the best of boats we have sailed and she comfortably rides the waves and takes care of her crew at sea. It would be hard to ask for a better sea going vessel.
This all adds up to nearly 40,000 miles of sailing with six stops in Bermuda, two Atlantic crossings, and many incredible coastal and deep ocean passages in between. We have no plans to stop anytime soon. In 2024 we head across a new ocean for distant anchorages. We will leave Cartagena for the Panama Canal and into the Pacific. We will make our longest passage of 3000 miles out to French Polynesiavia Galapagos. While we won’t press on further from Tahiti this year we will spend time exploring all the Archipelagos of French Polynesia, the Marquesas, Tuamotus, Society, and Austral Islands.
It is certainly true that once you have a bluewater cruising boat, the world becomes a smaller place. We are able to go wherever our hearts desire and get to consistently explore new and exciting places. The best part of this journey, however, has been the people we get to share it with and the friends we have made along the way.
If you are reading this hopefully you are interested in making an Ocean Passage and we are looking forward to sharing a voyage with you!