Why we sleep on the boat

A resort puts you on one island for a week. You learn its beach, its reef, and the hour the kitchen closes. A boat puts you on eleven, and that difference is the whole route.

We sleep aboard because the anchorages are the point. The shallow ones dry to a sandbar at low water and you can stand a mile from anywhere, ankle deep, with nothing in any direction.

It also means dinner is whatever came out of the water that afternoon, cooked by someone who has been fishing the channel since he was nine.

The trade-off is honest: cabins are small and there is no spa. Nobody has asked for one yet.