Listening in

I'm about halfway through the draft of the first of the new stories featuring the world's best Caribbean boat bum, Ron Anejo. While I'm working on those, I wanted to make sure everyone knows that the original story is available in audio as well as ebook and print. Paul Aulridge did a fine job of bringing the story to life and if you prefer listening to reading, give it a try.

And the cover art is by Dagny.

Fall has fell -- staying fluid

September always sounds like fall... school starts (has already started in some places) and even though it still feels a lot like summer... the year is flitting away. The ninth month of twelve is already being consumed. It gives me a feeling much like knowing the next to last of some treat I've squirreled away is being eaten.

It's a good time to regroup and rethink. I like this time for doing that better than the year end. All such milestones are as artificial as our Gregorian calendar anyway and this avoids the end of year crush.

So I think about what I'm doing and, sometimes more importantly, how I'm going about trying to achieve my goals. It's an important bit of navel gazing to periodically simply ask: "Is my life going the way I want and what can I do to improve things? What can I do better?

I'm not much at scorekeeping, mind you. This isn't an exercise of seeing if I've met my goals... it's simply a look around to see if I'm on course or if some unnoticed current has set me down and taken me on a longer path. If so, maybe I can correct. Or maybe, the deviation is a good thing.

Years ago, we made our first night crossing on Float Street, going from Grenada (Mt. Hartman Bay) to Trinidad. For the entire night the prevailing wind and current tried to send us to Venezuela. At the time we had no intention of going there, so we fought it, even though it made the passage rough, our skinny boat rocking all night in the high swells.

We were making the passage to do work on the boat, and had our faces and minds set on getting there. That's an example of rigid thinking. We made it fine, and as you see below, we hauled out and did a lot of work on the boat. Too much, probably.

Float Street hauled out at Peake's in Trinidad

Later, when we sailed to Venezuela from Trinidad, we loved it there and found it a better place to haul out (at Plout's in Cumana, where all the good fishing boats go). Going there is the first place, not fighting the power of the universe, but listening to it, might have been a better way to go. But you never know ahead of time.

Back to Carriacou

When I wrote THE LEGEND OF RON ANEJO, I based the story on the fictional island of Kayakoo in the Caribbean. Well, as everyone who lives there, and most people who know me know, Kayakoo is a highly fictionalized version of Carriacou, where I spent most of two years living on a boat. I also wrote the short story THE RUM SHOP in an attempt to capture a sense of life on that lovely island.

I used Grenada itself as a location in the story DEATH BENEFITS too. Why? Because I like the place.

I haven't been back in a lot of years, far too many, but stay in touch with some people in the area. And now I'm working on some more Caribbean stories and it's on my mind.

Then, today I got an email about the movie Vanishing Sail. I don't normally mention commercial products, but this movie is about boatbuilding, Carriacou, and an amazing boatbuilder named Alwyn Enoe. We had the good fortune to work with him on our boat--he did the hard stuff. He not only did some hull patches on our old wooden boat, but replaced a deck beam with a single piece of purple heart. We went to the launch of a fishing boat he built too. It was a grand experience. Watching him work, mostly with an adz was amazing.

Captain Ed hauling out in Carriacou

I've been dying to see the movie and now that the DVD is on sale, I'm putting in my order.
Given that I'm finding my mind drifting back to that time and place and knowing it will be a while before I can return and see Alwyn again, at least I can see the video. If you love old sailboats and the islands, get a copy.

Maintaining Communications

The other day we called the people in Panama who are selling a boat we are very interested in. Very. We can't make a move until the house sells, and although there are people interested in our house, they have a series of decisions to make and things to do before that can be real, if it is. So although they are very interested in our house, they can't promise anything.

I makes a frustrating, but understandable cycle. And being poised to jump without any idea whatsoever about when we can jump, takes a toll.

So we come up with ideas. If the house were to sell, and the boat was still available, I'd fly to Panama, meet the owners and see the boat. I'd meet with lawyers there to talk about a resident visa (pensionado), which I'm already working on collecting the documents for.

It's a jigsaw puzzle without any border pieces.


For the time being about all we can do is maintain communications, both with the people with the boat, with the people interested in the house. Keep communicating and make preparations.

Unfortunately, that too is part of the adventure, just as surely as logistics are part of an expedition. Not all components of adventure are thrilling. Sometimes the effort is to stay steady as she goes and wait for the horizon to appear.

The boat we are interested in isn't a catamaran, but I'm in the mood for a picture of a boat and I happened to have this one handy.

One Step at a Time

January was a chaotic month... two days after listing our 100-year old adobe house for sale we got an offer. That meant we had one month to sell off everything that wouldn't fit in the van. Two days later the buyers backed out.

Chihuahua Hill, Silver City, NM

While that made for quite an emotional roller coaster, the truth is that we were actually relieved. The quick sale caught us off guard. Moving into our van in January wasn't going to be fun either and getting together the paperwork for going to Panama (the dog's health certificate, the van title, the FBI background check, a certified copy of our marriage license--from Hong Kong...) needed some time.

So we let out the sigh of relief, set about collecting the documents (it's a straightforward process getting documents from Hong Kong, but not simple to do long distance), fixing some things that the inspector for the people who had intended to buy the house found and looking at boats. (We are somewhat enamored of a UNION 36 for sale in Panama. If it's there when we sell the house we will definitely take a look.)

And dreaming of the sea, of course.

So the house is back on the market--for a mere $120,000 if you care. You can see it at http://www.bettersilvercity.com/idx/mls-32835-315_w_san_vicente_street_silver_city_nm_88061

We are letting the universe guide the adventure. All of the adventures. The adventure of selling the house, the adventure of traveling around in our van (up to the Seattle area to see my Mom and other family, then to Panama), and then the adventure of seeing what Panama holds in store for us.

An Unquenchable Lust for Sailing

It was fifteen years ago that we moved off our boat, HDML 1001, aka Float Street. She was a warship and a lovely, but decaying boat home. Before living on her, we lived on a junk, called Gambic, in Hong Kong. We loved boat life, but for a number of reasons that were true enough back then, when we left Float Street behind, we thought we were through with sailing. 

Float Street in Venezuela

Life changes. We (I, in particular) aren't good at routine. When we sink into routines, we feel ourselves ossify. We don't like feeling ossification as it diminishes us. I, in particular, don't thrive well in an existence of routine. I've never tolerated an office-hour life well. I've done it, and found it painful. That doesn't mean I'm good at avoiding routine, just that I suffer considerably from falling into them.

We moved back to Silver City from Cambodia about three years ago with the idea that we had finally settled on a place. We wouldn't move again. We'd travel, but not uproot ourselves. After all, we knew why we'd come back. We knew the place well. We knew both its limits and its benefits to us. And we were right. About the place. Not about settling.

But life changes. Goals change. Four days ago, over breakfast, Dagny looked at me with a somewhat puzzled expression and told me she'd ben thinking about living on a boat. We talked about the change of heart, her motivations and such, but mostly we talked about the possibilities (and difficulties) of living on a boat. During the next three days we tried to find good reasons to write that off as a bad, impractical idea. Well, boats are impractical, and we are pragmatic people. But our lives are not practical things to be managed and desire is a power of its own. As a result, the more we worked to convince ourselves what a bad idea it was, the more excited we became about doing it. We discovered that we had suppressed our love of living on a boat, but that the love for the life, the lust for the feeling of living at anchor (we were seldom in marinas) hadn't been quenched. We found ourselves physically craving it.

Over the next three days following Dagny's epiphany, we formed a strategy and an intention. In the process, the specifics of reaching our goal changed several times but the rather simple, and somewhat open-ended intention of moving from a fixed abode on shore to living full time on a boat sharpened into a workable, or at least an exciting, strategy. First, we are going to sell our house. This morning I'll call a broker or two and have them give us an estimate of what we can get for it as is. We don't intend to fix it up or do much to it. That's for the buyer to do. It's an old adobe, nearly 100 years old, and it has character. That will have to do. We will price it to sell.

We have our white Nissan van that Dagny christened Moby, and fixed up for camping. While we sell the house, she'll finish off Moby's cabinetry. When the house sells we will head off to visit family and friends, and then turn south, driving to Central America, where we will buy a boat, fix it up, move aboard and sell the van.

Simple, right?

Of course, intentions and reality often collide. The veneer of simplicity will crumble as it always does. We can't afford a fancy boat, but we have skills. We also have time, because hunting for the right boat will be part two of the adventure. Once we are on board, a new adventure begins.

This time our moving will be irreversible. For our last moves we had a property manager rent out our house, and it was there, welcoming, when we wanted to return from an adventure. Now we are cutting that tie and moving on to... something else.

So the inexorable change officially begins now. I intend to chronicle the adventures, posting as things happen, as we move from one phase to the next. Like many of the best things in life, the outcome is uncertain; like all good quests, only the intention can be controlled. It should prove interesting. 

Happy Birthday Caribbean Compass

Years ago, I think it was back around the time of Columbus, or perhaps earlier, I was a young sailor, learning the ins and outs of living on board an old wooden vessel in the Caribbean. Information of a practical sort, the kind needed by sailors who didn't have huge budgets, was scarce. We learned from books (those things on paper, kids, not ebooks) and each other, especially each others' mistakes. I was proud to be a stellar example of how to do things wrong and thus benefit my fellow sailors.

In 1995 CARIBBEAN COMPASS was launched to solve that problem, fill that need. That first year I started writing for them, turning my own misadventures into humorous and occasionally helpful information. I wrote a monthly column for them until 2001 when we moved to St. Martin. I wrote for them sporadically after that, but they survived, even thrived without me. And today they are celebrating their 20th birthday. I have a short piece in the issue along with many other people who contributed to making the publication happen. If you have any interest in the Caribbean, sailing, or life in general, check it out. Congratulations to Sally and Tom and fair winds.

New Video

I've been playing with videos to promote my books. Okay this post is kinda self serving, but making little videos is fun and there are some cool shots of strange places.

Print books

I still love printed books and I know I am not the only one who does. So I have released the short book Two Stories of Sailors and the Sea in paperback. This volume contains two short stories about quite different sailors, and their interaction with the sea.

It isn't available through bookstores, as we wanted to keep the price low and bookstores need a high enough price to discount. But you can find it for only $5.99
at Amazon and CreateSpace. Of course it is also available, more cheaply in ebook form at Amazon and Smashwords and Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Sony, iTunes, and Diesel.

I hope you enjoy the books.

Collecting and republishing the past

I got an email today from someone curious as to what I was up to. He wanted to know if I had a blog, and I sent him the link, but I realized that primarily what I have posted is observations, not updates of the ongoing effort to proved the world with new and improved art and music. So here is an update.

When we lived on an old wooden boat in the Caribbean, part of the way I earned my keep, when not doing boat work, was writing about living on a boat. I did a monthly column in the journal Caribbean Compass for at least five years, probably longer. It was caustic, and made fun of the readers, other people who wrote for people on boats, and even the very idea of life on board. It turned out to be very popular with readers, and advertisers didn't seem to hate it. At least the editor, Sally Erdle, never complained.

As I worked to edit and republish The Legend of Ron Anejo  and worked with my friends John Pocock and Tom Tsui to finish and publish Chancy,which is also about sailing, I thought of those short pieces and wondered it they still held up. Were they still funny? Would a collection be something worth republishing as a book.

But first, did they even still exist? My traveling lifestyle has been death on any old manuscripts that I might have had. Hell, the computers haven't survived, and I threw out the 5-inch floppy disks they were stored on years ago (any of you too young to know what those are can Google to find out).

I contacted Sally in Bequia and told her of my idea of publishing them as a book. She not only had the text files, but happily zipped them  and sent them to me. Dagny and I read through them, kicked out a few, and now are editing the 60,000 words that remain into a fun book. The good news is that very little turned out to be perishable. Since I seldom  address ideas more topical than what I had for breakfast, there is little to fade.

The intention is to publish the book both in ebook and in paperback formats; the ebook should be ready fairly soon, fairly being a time interval between one and three months. Being the chief editor, formatter, designer and distribution manager takes time. And this isn't the only project going on. But here is the dummy for the ebook cover.

So, if you happen to pass up the Kampot River and don't see us swimming, you now know what is going on in those strange wooden houses along river.

Publishing in print

Since I got to Cambodia I've been learning all about ebook publishing, but I always wanted to see one of my older books back in print. The original publisher went belly up, and I got the rights back, but producing paperback books has been expensive.

Learning the ropes more, I found things were changing and life was better on that front. So her is the re release of my humorous novel of the world best Caribbean boat bum.

It is available here Amazon. And it is also available in Kindle (same location) and in other ebook formats from Smashwords

New Stories

I've recently published a couple of new short stories. To be honest, one isn't exactly new. I wrote it for a small book I did a limited run of when I was living in the Caribbean. It is an account of some real, but fictionalized people in a real, and not particularly fictionalized place--a rum shop.

The other book is based in Hong Kong and tells the tale of a sailor too often trapped in the corporate world, but determined to get out onto the high seas. His story is a little chancy.

Both books are available at my

Amazon and Smashwords author pages.