Voyage of the Aphrodite 1984 Live Stream

[Bluechablis]

Recreating a 1984 voyage — live, 24/7: my schooner Aphrodite sails to Belize & Roatan

In 1984, my dad and I sailed a 42-foot schooner named Aphrodite from home waters down to Belize and Roatan. We built her ourselves — started with a bare hull we bought in Florida and finished her out in Lafayette, Louisiana — and then went cruising. It was the trip of a lifetime, and I've spent the last while bringing it back to life in a way I never expected: as a live, continuously-running 3D sailing simulation you can watch any time.

This isn't a recorded video. It's a real simulation of the voyage playing out in real time, and it streams live around the clock. The stream restarts on a new URL every ~11 hours, so I've made it easy — this one link always jumps straight to whatever leg is sailing right now:

► Watch the current live stream

(Bookmark that link — it always lands on whatever is live now.)

Here's what you're actually looking at, for the fellow gearheads and navigators:

REAL WEATHER
The sim pulls live weather for the boat's actual position on the planet. The sky, the wind, and the sea state you see are tied to real current conditions where Aphrodite is at that moment — so a squall on screen is a squall the ocean is really serving up.

REAL SAILING PHYSICS
She actually sails. The schooner heels and pitches, the hull rides real wave motion, the sails reef down as the wind builds, and her speed comes from the boat's own performance curves relative to the wind angle. Trim, heel, pitch, current and drift are all modeled — not animation, but a boat working with the weather.

A LIVING 3D WORLD
The islands and coastlines are draped in real satellite imagery and elevation, so Roatan and the Belize cays look like themselves. You'll see nautical charts (NOAA / OpenSeaMap) behind the compass, a full day/night cycle with a real sun, moon and stars, drifting clouds, and running lights after dark.

THE INSTRUMENTS
There's a full nav readout — speed through the water and over ground, heading, a heading-up wind rose, bearing and distance to the next waypoint, current set and drift, and the boat's sail plan — the same information we'd have been watching from the cockpit.

THE SHIP'S LOG (narration)
You can turn on narration drawn from the actual logbook we kept on the voyage — the trip told in our own words, as text or a spoken voice, leg by leg.

A FEW EXTRAS
There's an optional music soundtrack, several camera views (orbit, chase, and a first-person view from the helm), and I can even take the wheel myself and sail her by hand.

It's on 24/7, so drop in whenever — early morning and late night have the best light. I'd genuinely love to hear what you think, and I'm happy to answer any questions about the boat, the voyage, or how the sim was built.

Fair winds,
Floyd