A new boat and bigger dreams

Leaving Colorado last December to sail around the world was the dream, figuring out what I would need to know along the way was the plan. I drove to Florida, bought the first boat I looked at, and sold the car. Three months of sailing around showed me what kind of boat I would need... After getting knocked around in a gale and several short squalls in that last tropical storm off the coast of South Carolina, wearing out crew and soaking every last personal item at least once, it was time to start looking. I sailed into St. Augustine and threw down the pick. Right next to me was a beautifull 1964 Pearson Vanguard, full keel blue water cruiser. I rowed over to take pictures and met the owner as he was brushing his teeth. The next day we traded titles and rafted up to move off of and into our new boats.

If you set out to live your dream the world will conspire to make it happen. We are surrounded by resources that will lead us in which ever direction we are compelled to follow. Everyday I meet someone who helps me along the way. The adventures with Barely Twisted are now to be lived by Michael Perry the competent restorer of the former S/V Nicole Marie, who has seen the world twice round. She will be properly re-introduced to the elements as the S/V Ultima Noche. Sea willing, she will set off once again on another cultural geography tour around the globe.

This week was spent finding teak and making this table and bed board surfaced with a chart of the Puget Sound where I learned how to sail, and Morning Glory styled the Wind Vane paddle (that steers the boat with the wind) with an Aboriginal style dolphin.

The plans are growing with this new boat: A roving hostel, humanitarian research and aid platform, sea farm and sustainable living experience all-in -one. The brightest minds and spirits are quitting their jobs and filling the bunks. Morning Glory Farr and Derek Turner are cutting loose and making her their home as well. We will be making a film, writing, and facilitating an international dialogue as we go.

Keep in touch, as we will be exploring different ways of life, sharing our lessons and bringing aid to those who we encounter. If you see a humanitarian cause that you want to help, let us know and through our non-profit organization 100% of your pledge will go directly to that cause.

Time to clock out

The Aleutians will remain in the back of my mind as the most beautifull place in the world on a sunny windless day. A sunny day and one easily forgives this region for its wild temper. A halfmarathon on Unalaska Island, the lunar eclipse, wild flowers, the best drinking water on the planet, lava explosions from an erupting volcano, living out of a homestead, countless bears and other wildlife, getting handcuffed to the bartender, wild blueberries, catching salmon by hand in shallow streams, the biggest halibut and pay check I ever hopped to see all in all made for a complete alaskan summer.

Its been nine months since I have spent any significant time on land. While my eyes filled with wonder, my legs and social skills have atrophied beyond repair. Dreams of running in open feilds fill my nights in between thoughts of pretty girls.

Its time to shave and dig in with Amelia at the DENVER Voice. I will be an unemployed technically homeless volunteer working for the Denver homeless newspaper for all of September.

Then its off to Barely Twisted, with who knows yet, to the southern hemisphere.

Big Fish

We caught a huge Halibut. It took three guys, each with a gaff and all our might to pull it over the rail. It was four hundred and forty pounds and sold for sixteen hundred bucks. What an exciting moment it was. We have been hidding out from the weather for a few days and in the mean time enjoying the natural surroundings.

Every expense is paid for with a bit of your time

Money is not profane. If a tree is sacred and a baby is sacred and if even a baby shit is sacred- if everything is sacred- money certainly must be as well. It is part of the stuff of life.
Money is among our most sacred things because it is actually a representation of life force itself. The key to understanding this is to take a step back and ask: what is money really? How do I get it? How do I use it? A particularly insightful question to ask is, “How much do I make?” Your answer will most likely be something like “I a make ten dollars an hour” or “ I make $45,000 per year.” And what that answer would clearly show is that you exchange time its self for money- the time remaining in your life. While it would be going to far to say that money actually is a life force, it certainly represents it and is a primary means by which we exchange our life’s energy with that of other people. It is often how we exchange our life’s energy for the energy of the earth its self. How can money not be a key spiritual aspect of our lives.
When we receive money from our jobs-from exchanging our precious and finite time and energy for it- we don’t hoard it. We use some money for out survival needs and some for special treats. Maybe we save some or invest in a business or in education. When we spend money, we give it to other people in exchange for their precious time and energy to serve us. We pay people to bake us bread, build us homes, teach us, pave our roads, design our web sites, and make us chocolate bars.
When we incur debt, we literally owe parts of our lives: time that we have not yet lived that must be given up to repay that debt. “Wage slave” takes on a whole new meaning. What is paying for a home, or a car loan, or a student loan, or a credit card but literally indentured servitude? How much of hating our job is due to knowing in our bones that we are selves unable to escape our masters.
How Much Money (time, that is) does it take you to live the lifestyle you are living? Many expenses don’t serve us, like that light bulb that is still turned on in the next room where no on is. Right now. How much less would it take to live if you cut out most of the waste? How would it take to meet your needs if you wanted to spend every possible moment working on the truly important things in your life?
We all know how “voting with dollars” affects the environment and society. When we purchase gasoline, we contribute to air pollution. When we purchase a hamburger, we are eating higher on the food chain than is sustainable. But what about how “voting with dollars” affects our own lives? When we spend money on something that is good for us, that helps us grow, and that contributes to our community, we are affirming life. We are focusing our lives energy on adding to our lives and growth. What about when we waste our money? It does not add to our lives to spend money on electricity for a light bulb nobody is using. In fact, it hurts us twice: once when we spent our time working for the money that we wasted, and again with the negative social and environmental consequences that come from energy over consumption. Every expense we incur is paid for by a bit of our lives. Time lost at work, commuting, and job training is time that we never get back, time we cannot devote to what really matters.
Imagine that a rich relative left you an inheritance. There is enough money that you never have to work again if you keep your expenses low by sharing an apartment with roommates, using the bus instead of owning a car, cooking your meals at home and so on. What would you do with your time? Would you work at all? Learn to play the piano? Crisscross the country attending antiwar demonstrations? Be a full time parent? Where do your passions lie? Why aren’t you following those passions right now? Why aren’t you living that life? Is your path in life more important than living a lifestyle that obscures it? Can you make some changes to your lifestyle to rebuild your life around your passions? Will you?

Utne, “A different real on life”. July –aug 2003 no.118

Your Money is Your Life. By Psy
From Reclaiming quarterly a political mag from the witch community.

PSY PO box 14404, San Francisco ca 94114

Leaving Stonewall Homestead.

End of an era…

Our time fishing the grounds near the stonewall homestead have ended abruptly with a wave of good fish reports from the north. Thanks to today’s latest technology each boat in our group is equipped with satellite email, so as our five members are spread out amongst the grounds our captains resemble teenage text messengers on their cell phones. No need for secret radio channels any longer. We pulled our net out of the water and have begun the forty hour transition to the Bering Sea Salmon runs.

The hills around us are teeming with bears. One began to pester a nearby village so the locals shot it and cast it out to sea. The next high tide brought it right up on the beach where Keith and I found it. For a Grizzly it was medium sized at seven feet tall. It must have been a thousand pounds with for arms bigger than my thigh. Its wrists were the size of my thigh. Up until finding a bear and getting close enough to smell and feel its fur and gauge its mass I had entertained the idea of fending one off with a fisherman’s knife or out maneuvering one. Hmmm… not going to happen. We tried to cut its arm with a buck knife and were unable to get through the fur and no where near its thick tough hide. Its claws were nearly three inches long with paws like a squash paddle. If it wanted you it could have you.

I just finished Ishmael, a timely book about humans and their relationship to the universe. It is set with a caged Gorilla mentoring a young journalist. The book presents our creation myths in a new light and derives great lessons that inspire an ancient way of interacting with the world. It was timely for me because I am surrounded by a frontier that man has not conquered, and the elements rule your life.
We also capture a lot of our food and energy from our own efforts and local sources out here. The first few years out here I thought this place was beautiful but barren. Now I feel like I am surrounded by food and energy.

Togiak Herring

The Togiak season was filled with great weather, and plenty of easy fishing. In out spare time we hiked to hot springs, combed beaches for Walrus Ivory, glass balls, barbecued on the beach and made bonfires.

We decided to fish the season with one engine and came out as the top producing boat. Over all it was a blast and we came out with more money and adventures than we expected.

From here I am heading to False Pass to Long Line Halibut for three months. It should be a great summer.

Break down at Sea

If you fail the first time then try again? We set out from False Pass, the end of the Alaskan Peninsula, to cross the Bering Sea heading North to Togiak. The Sea was flat and greasy. It was to be a thirty seven hour leg. Fog rolled in, and then snow. The cold buys us time, but our weather window was slim so we pressed to get across the notorious stretch of ocean before any weather arrived. With a crew of three we held six hour wheel watches. Just after a complete rotation on a dreamy crossing with the Captain back at the wheel a new and strange sound rattled the hull. Bill slowed the engines to an idle. Tom jumped out of his bunk and out on deck to check the bow and our anchor winch and the bow. Snow and ice had built one the rails and deck and when I reached the bow slipping along the way in my sneakers with one eye opened and half awake I see Tom bear feat in the snow standing in his pajamas. Fog and calm flat sea surrounded us. The moon was full, but everything was luminous and eerie. The Anchor was there. We must have hit a small ice berg and it worked its way along the hull. We clambered around the deck and into the various holds looking for damage and the cause of the sound. We returned to the cabin with nothing to report on the strange noise.
A familiar sound continued. The three of us stood there in the cabin and below our feet the sound of water flowing settled in on us. We tore out the floor boards to view two spouts of water on both sides of the engine room below us. Our reactions were slow. We were taking on water, our bilge pumps were not working and none of our water alarms were going off. We were out now deep in the bowels of the Bering Sea. We were sinking. Bill jumped into the flooding engine room as did Tom. I asked if I should Pan Pan our GPS position on the radio just in case. Bill thought we should hold off.

Bill called out for some cloth to stuff in the holes. I tore a pair of sweatpants into bits and scrambled for all the dish rags. Tom established a circuit with a bilge pump and began the fight against the incoming water. I stuck my hand in one hole and Bill stuffed rags with one hand in another hole and held his finger in the third hole. The water was ice and our fingers and legs were instantly numbed. Our hands ached and lost their dexterity. The panic began to wear off as did the sleepiness. The reality of the moment began to set in. We were not in a great spot for a break down, but the problem was known to us now. We had holes in our boat, disabled bilge pumps and a broken propeller shaft. What caused it we will never know.

The propeller shaft had pulled out of its tunnel leaving us with a two inch hole that swallowed half a pair of sweat pants and a dish rag. Like magic Bill produced a bolt that fit miraculously into another hole that my finger had occupied. The third hole took a synthetic cork and some 5200 glue. None of these holes stopped leaking but their violent personalities were tamed into non threatening drizzles.

We were one third of the way across the sea and we turned around for the closest shore. We were pretty spooked and with our one remaining engine we lightly traveled back to land.
We sheared our prop shaft and the stuffing box spun free and wildly caught a near by run of wires and proceeded to wrap them around the shaft coupler on the engine. That run of wires lead to the engine room lights and the bilge pumps. When it pulled tight on the wires, the lights were disabled and the bilge pumps were ripped out of there locations and drawn into the shaft. Once the bilge pumps were wound in tight to the shaft their hoses followed and the entire water extraction system was disabled into a tight ball on the shaft. The hoses pulled on other engine cooling hoses and a thru-hold was sheared off at its base. Holes were created, pumps and lighting were disabled all in one shot.
Our confidence was breached. So much trust and blind faith is built in electronics and alert systems. We could hear water coming in, but we did not check our engine room because the bilge pumps and alarms were not activated.
We all have a greater awareness of boats now and a appreciation for the layer that separates us from danger. We also have a cool ass job and live exciting lives. Discovery channel has never caught the look on a skippers face when his boat is sinking and the sea is vast cold and coming to get him. I saw it from two inches away. I don’t know what’s better, having spare hands to take pictures, or to have one fist jammed in a hole of gushing water and a finger in another one. I guess it wouldn’t have been as real if there was time and or though of a camera.

We are now tied to a pilling at an old rotting fish cannery. Our spirits are low because we are bored now it seems like we are no where and we can’t go anywhere.

Ragged Islands to the Isle Great Inagua

Pictures speak for themselves and long winded updates never get read so here are some pics of the South Eastern Bahamas and our experiences.

The beautiful Ragged Islands served us well with calm coves to anchor and the fruits of the path less traveled. We landed on this completely deserted Island and these are our Boats. From Left to Right, Moxi, Barely Twisted, and Double Bruyn.

Our daily feed is becoming less of what we have purchased and more and more of what we are able to catch. Jon and I went fishing with spears on the reefs, I got two and Jon got one. :) This Dolphin fish Laura and I just caught on the line was the most beautifull color in the water. It took both of us to get it into the boat.

The company that we have made has been most of the last weeks adventure

Hundreds would pay thousands eh?

We are now heading for the Dominican Republic where we hope to get local vegitables and some culture.