Jessica Reilly

Posts and Dispatches from Jessica Reilly:

  • A Coast with No Water
    All I can see are breaking waves. I stand up on the lazarette and lean onto the dodger to steady the binoculars. There is supposed to be a channel clearly marked with lighted buoys, our first entrance to Nicaragua. We left Honduras early and had a favorable current pushing us south from the Gulf of...

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  • Honduras and the Hurricane
    Under full sail, we enter the only bay in the world shared by three countries. It’s first light, and a stiff breeze disperses the overnight storms. A thunderstorm guarded the mouth of the bay last night, flashing and stomping but breaking up with the sunrise wind. When I take the helm and Josh goes below...

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  • Protected: Going Home: Perspective on Climate and Culture from a Trip to the US
    There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
  • Jessica Reilly: Live from the Panama Canal
    Sailing Fellow Jessica Reilly and her husband Josh Moman will be passing through the Panama Canal this morning on their sailboat, the Oleada.  Follow her live through the canal cameras! Miraflores High Resolution Camera: https://www.pancanal.com/common/multimedia/webcams/viewer-flash/cam-miraflores-hi.html Gatun Locks Camera: https://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camera-java.html?cam=Gatun  ...

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  • The Brewing Storm: Coffee Steeped in Climate Change
    I walk into the cabin and have to suppress a gasp. My friend Jon sits on the bed, his entire body covered in lumpy, bright red hives. “My lips feel weird. They’re all swollen.” “I gave him the allergy pill already,” Shannon, his partner, is unnecessarily tidying, something I have noticed she does when she...

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  • Wings to Nowhere — Birds, Land Use, and Climate
    Luis whips his head around so quickly that a droplet of water flies out of his nose. He’s mid-sentence, walking through the heavy sand and talking about community-based management for his town, when he stops abruptly. His eyes grow wide behind his square-ish glasses, and the skin on his thin face pushes back into an...

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  • What Can a National Park Do?
    “Mexico has many good laws.” Professor Martín Soto leans back from behind a clump of papers on his desk and sighs. “It’s the enforcement that lacks.” I’m sitting in Martin’s office on the second story of the Marine Science and Limnology Institute in Mazatlán, Mexico. The building hangs on the edge of a cliff above...

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  • Update from Puerto Chiapas
    We just crossed the dreaded Gulf of Tehuantepec: the southernmost gulf in Pacific Mexico, where winds funnel out of the Caribbean, howling down across land to gobble up sailboats in the Pacific with 20-30′ waves. We grabbed our weather window and raced Prism on a double overnight to Puerto Chiapas. A great adventure and test...

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  • Update from Zihuatanejo
    We are about to depart from Zihuatanejo. We have spent the past two days exploring and reprovisioning here. The town is unlike any we have seen yet, it somehow has the humm of a busy city and the quaintness and relaxed vibe of a coastal town. The bay itself is beautiful; steep, jungle-clad hills (mostly...

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  • Finding Altata: the Slow Change for the Fishers
    “Whatever you do, don’t go to Altata.” These were the last words we heard as we cast off our dock lines in Guaymas. We were about to sail 300 miles with limited charts but plentiful warnings—with the goal of getting to this near-mythical town protected by a bar that might as well have been filled...

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