Why RocketGuideBlog exists (and why you can trust it)

Why RocketGuideBlog exists (and why you can trust it)

If you’re a cruising sailor, you already know the hard truth: the sea doesn’t reward wishful thinking. It rewards preparation, humility, and the kind of judgment that only comes from time—years of maintenance, weather windows, hard passages, repairs at anchor, and the daily discipline of living well afloat.

I’m Richard Chesher. I fell in love with the sea at 18, became a professional diver and SCUBA instructor, and worked as a professional underwater photographer before I ever had the resources—or the confidence—to chase bigger horizons. I bought my first sailboat in 1960, and later earned my Ph.D. in Marine Sciences at the University of Miami Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences—while living aboard a small double-ended ketch anchored right in front of the institute.

Except for a short period doing post‑graduate work at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and time as a professor at the University of Guam, I’ve spent my life living aboard and conducting marine science expeditions from my own yachts.

That matters because cruising is not just romance—it’s systems. Over the years I’ve installed and maintained diesel engines, electrical systems, plumbing, rigging, and sailing gear, and I’ve done the boatyard work myself. I also take personal responsibility for health offshore; I’m now 85 and still in excellent health, still living this lifestyle and maintaining our boat.

Setting Sail aboard the Yacht Moira 

My wife, Frederique, and I began a major chapter of our life afloat in 1976, when we went to Taiwan to take ownership of a brand-new Peterson 44 cutter. I named her Moira—after the three sisters of fate in Greek mythology, and also after a burrowing sea urchin featured in my first scientific publication. Moira became more than our yacht: she became our moving home, our laboratory, and the steady center of a life measured in passages and seasons.

Since then we’ve lived aboard and cruised widely across the Pacific: Asia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Australia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, and New Zealand—migrating with the seasons the way baleen whales do, following winds, currents, and the working rhythm of the ocean.

We also did something many cruisers dream about but few truly do: we combined voyaging with serious marine and community-based work. Our projects—coordinated with organizations and governments across the region—focused on practical ways communities can protect coral reefs and ocean fisheries while still living from the sea. (If you’re curious about that part of our work, you can read more at tellusconsultants.com.)

Rocket Cruising Guides

In 2000, I took the skills we’d built the hard way—hydrographic survey work, photography, software development, and relationships with aerial/satellite imagery sources—and began creating the Rocket Cruising Guides for Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Frederique and I have taken almost every photograph ourselves, and we’ve personally surveyed anchorages and routes so what we publish is grounded in firsthand reality. We still live aboard, we’re almost never in a marina, and we keep refining and updating what we produce.

What you'll get if you follow the RocketGuideBlog

• Experienced judgment from a life spent living and working on the ocean
• A perspective that blends sailing, seamanship, and marine science
• Lessons learned—the kind that save time, money, and stress (and sometimes much more than that)
• Stories and practical thinking from two people who still live this, every day, aboard Moira

I developed a personal way of thinking about our boat. There’s an octopus called the paper nautilus, where the female forms a delicate spiral shell as a floating home, and the pair travels with winds and currents across the blue. The Moira is our floating home—shaped by human knowledge and tradition, and kept alive by our hands and attention. In a very real sense, Frederique, Moira, and I are like the paper nautilus; one living creature sailing the oceans, a member of the pelagic species Yachtus yachtus.

If that’s the kind of experience and voice you want in your feed, welcome aboard.

If you’d like to explore our South Pacific cruising resources, visit rocketcruisingguides.com. And if you’d like to enjoy reading about our adventures and expeditions, you can find our ebook series here: mybook.to/MoiraPacificExpedition.