About Us

SY Nightshade's skippers!
SY Nightshade’s skippers

Hi! We’re Phillip and Luana and we live aboard our 30-something year old sailing yacht, Nightshade.

In our previous landlubber lives, Phillip was a Chief Technical Officer, working for a luxury goods company in London. He left the rat-race to pursue a more creative lifestyle, and now that we’re living aboard, he’ll be drawing on his college graphic design qualifications and freelancing remotely as a ‘digital nomad’.

Luana has worked in the film and television, web, and publishing industries. Onboard, she’ll freelance as a copy-editor and proofreader. She also runs an Etsy shop selling her handmade malas, free-spirited jewellery (currently not running at full capacity while she figures out how to post stuff safely from all over the place) and digital prints.

SY Nightshade in her current berth on the Dalmation coast in Croatia

We purchased Nightshade in late 2019, in Corfu, Greece. We had little to no sailing experience, so we did a couple of RYA courses in Southampton and Corfu (totally different experiences!). We moved aboard in November 2019 and spent almost two years doing a refit and just generally making her our home. During that time we had a lot of frustrating delays and setbacks thanks to Covid-19 (as did everyone).

Nevertheless, we managed to get most of the important boat work completed over August and September 2021, and finally, in October 2021 we left the marina in Corfu for good and headed across the southern Adriatic to Croatia, where we are currently based and enjoying a slower pace of life. Read our blogposts to catch up on our adventures, past and present.


  • Ahoy, Mateys!

    Hi! We’re Phillip and Luana and we live aboard our 30-something year old sailing yacht, Nightshade. We’re fixing her up and getting her ready to head out into the deep blue one day. In the meantime we’ll potter around the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean, learning the lines and making our floating home our version…


  • Updated October 2024 We often get asked about the process of gaining temporary residence here in Croatia. Post-Brexit, many Brits aren’t able to spend the whole of summer sailing in European waters anymore. 3 months of Schengen time is generous, but it’s not quite enough if you’ve got your own place (per se, in this…


  • Blog Tweaks

    I’ve been busy moving the blog to another server – as all you bloggers out there know, it’s a schlep but I wanted to do it now while there are only a few posts (lazy blogger 🤚). I’ve updated the info on our Contact Us page too, so check it out for links to our…


  • Topsy-turvy 2022

    Hello again! Wow it’s been a weird year, hasn’t it? I honestly have not had the spare emotional energy to get on top of updating our social media outlets. But we’re alive and kicking, and, in such tumultuous times, that’s nothing to be sneezed at. Hoping you are all well, healthy and safe, wherever you…


  • Boat Work

    While we’ve been wintering here in Croatia we’ve been thinking about the boat work we still need to do. Not a lot of action going on mostly because we’re still recuperating from the boat work we did just before we left Corfu. We also don’t have a chandlery open here which prevents us from pottering…


  • Christmas in Croatia

    Merry Christmas! We hope that everyone had a festive and fun day, especially after last year’s Christmas being so difficult for many people. This was our first Christmas onboard Nightshade – last year Phil was here on his own as I had a family emergency in Spain (so I spent Christmas as a visitor at…