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 […]

Love Scene

I write a novel after making a plan. The initial work includes list of scenes I want to put my list of characters into. I want them to have to go through some things on the way through the story. I knew that planning a novel about saving 2500 acres of oak woodlands was going […]

Making it Real

Laura is a Category 4 hurricane barreling through the Gulf of Mexico’s overheated waters taking aim at East Texas-West Louisiana. The timing of Laura’s arrival is a national nightmare. Predictions are for tidal surges to reach up to 30 miles inland. Driving through Oregon and Idaho Sunday and Monday I was in thick smoke from […]

Landscape Lending Library

Tomorrow would be all tap dancing, feather boas and spangled showgirls Eight weeks was in my rearview mirror. Homeward bound I ate up the last miles of two lane blacktop. Topping off my emptiness pangs, I soaked up the sweeping horizons of blue sky, white clouds, green sage and red soils. Empty high desert sated […]

Sleepless Nights

Windward and Northbound The shrill howl of the wind in the shrouds kept waking me. We were holding at Cojo Anchorage waiting for the winds to drop. Passage north through Point Conception was timed to advantage our trip north on this chance. Winds finally dipped but not until we’d hoisted anchor and strapped our safety […]

Still Earning My Stripes

Welcome to Wayfarer World Christina and Garrett are members of the Ventura Yacht Club. Garrett’s father had lived at the club since before he was married and started his family. Garrett was born, raised, and then had his own children and by fact of residency is the club’s most permanent fixture. Garrett has lived aboard […]

Two Hundred Miles Downwind

Tranquility as harbor Coffee, always hot black coffee. No cream and no sugar, no thank you. Still even with a cup of fresh brew the skipper and crew were both bone tired. Anchor was hoisted at the top of the day. Deeper water was found as we dodged the kelp taking a course south and […]

Notes from Near the Last Page

Story on the Front Burner Women of the Oak Savannah’s, my fourth novel has started and ended my day for what will soon be two years. I stand on the edge of the end of my work of seventy-five thousand carefully chosen words. Hot Spring Honeymoon, my previous novel, a sexual farce was in the […]

Passion Play

Tailgate Party for One in the Middle of Nowhere You got to have passion man. You have to feel it down to the bone. Nothing gets done up in the head. The near-enemy of passion is greed. “I don’t want a seat at the table, I want the table.” I am quoting a banker hankering […]

How’s That Change Thing Working Now?

SMOKING HOT BLAME YOU CAN BELIEVE IN Signed up for the National Park Service going rogue Facebook page this morning. I owe much of my souls most healed aspects to the unfettered, unfiltered quiet time the parks have gifted to my life. To imagine what we need to do is liquidate these national treasures is […]