Swabbing the Decks

Mother’s Day begins when I drop the wife at Oakland Airport to fly to Portland to hang with her daughter. I had imagined sailing out to Clipper Cove for a night on anchor. I thought I’d do a quick spray off undo the mooring lines and go. Once I started spraying the boat off the […]

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Spirit’s New Home

Setting sail destination unknown—

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South Beach Harbor

Somewhere in all this was the planning to sail to Avalon, to spend the summer bumming around harbor to harbor up and down the California coast.

Boat as Soul Repair

Think of a boatyard as mansplaining paradise. Here is located a sanctuary where being told how to do a thing right the first time is near divine guidance.

diagnosing art brain

I had gone by sailboat to find Moitessier along the Richmond waterfront.

sailing the soul

The clever Moitessier had let go the invisible lines I had been using to hold my imagination back, his astronavigation student had been set adrift.

Sausalito then and now

Sailing has been part of my life. My first lessons were on 14’ sloop rigged sailboats in the Alameda Estuary. It wasn’t long before a sailing friend purchased his own, a modest seaworthy boat, strong enough to cross oceans, slow enough to make a sailor think twice of doing so. In 1980 there was a […]

San Benito Island Sunset

Sunset off the Isla San Benito Islands. This group of three sit fifty miles west of the Baja Coast. Toss overboard all your small selfish comforts. A swell and chop tossed sea filters the few from the many. Three hundred miles south of San Diego is no longer a mere dance of make believe images […]

Slacker Dudes Sailing Baja

Tropical storm Raymond has arrived late this season. Raining here in Ensenada. We will hold here while seas settle down. A safe passage isn’t just luck. You want to tip the odds of an uneventful sail in your favor? Show some patience and wait for the weather to settle down. The first leg of our […]

It’s in the Bag

Packing bags. Leaving on a jet plane. Last night was spent reading Steinbeck’s account of motoring south off Point Sur. The date was March 11, 1940. It is one thousand miles from Monterey, California to the southern tip of Baja. Durban to Cape Town measures a thousand miles. New York City to Key West is […]