Articles

I’ve been noticing a lot of articles, podcasts, tweets, and other coverage lately about slut shaming and rape culture. Maybe it’s that I have decidedly feminist sexual politics and my friends and news feeds tend to reflect and amplify those topics, or maybe (I can hope) it’s because our society is starting to realize that feminism and (more basically) respecting women is an issue that men have a serious stake in. When I hear on the news that people are sympathising with rapists who’s “futures have been ruined”, I assume that the part of the population that thinks that way must be incredibly small, uneducated and dim witted. When I read the dozens of brave letters from women (some in their middle years, some in high school) who have been sexually bullied, slut shamed, and raped I would love to believe that they represented 100% of the population that has been saddled with such a burden. ...

There are many kinds of books and as many kinds of book lovers. So please read the following from your own perspective and not through my eyes. You know that feeling when you pick up a good book, and you just can’t put it down? You know the feeling when you get to the end and desperately hope that the author writes a sequel, or another book as good as the one you just put down? I love that feeling. That’s how I want to feel about my life. ...

It’s autumn here. I know that may not seem like it deserves its own line but you know what, it does! The year here starts in Summertime and then goes to Fall. Fall comes before Spring in the southern hemisphere. You can get all intellectual about this but until you feel it, you’re not going to understand why those three words get their very own line. The weather has been getting cooler but I foolishly keep pretending that everything is “normal.” So when Ceilydh asked us if we wanted to do a little mini-cruise over Easter weekend, my mis-calibrated brain thought “it should be getting warmer every day, why not.” The day before we left the forecast was for four days of solid rain. Lucky for us we got nearly perfect weather for the whole trip and had enough sun that we could almost maintain the illusion of the season our bodies were expecting. ...

Note: I wrote this post in September while making passage from Vanuatu to Australia. I was all fired up about it until Vick read it and crinkled her nose (or something like that). I relegated it to the drafts folder and forgot about it until now. Recently a bunch of this year’s puddle jumpers have asked about this topic, and I figured “what the heck” I’ll just post it in case it helps someone. If you aren’t about to go blue water cruising, I suggest you give this one a skip. If you’re leaving tomorrow, and you don’t already have an iPad, likewise, skipperoo. But if you are using an iPad for navigation and haven’t already learned these tricks, I think it would be a really good idea to read this, digest it and then ask me to fill in detail for anything that wasn’t clear. Please do leave a comment so everyone can benefit from the process. ...

I’ve always known that there is a flow to life. Swim with it and you move quickly towards your destination. Swim against and you may get where you think you want to go, but man do you have to work for it. After a year an a half of cruising, I was well positioned to stay in the flow, but it was surprisingly difficult to maintain my conviction in the sleepy months surrounding the holidays. The city was all but dormant, there were no jobs posted, no real professional meetups, and I was starting to think of forcing, and leveraging. In other words, I was getting desperate. ...

You have seriously got to be kidding me. I love this city so much I want to dig up the homes of my family and friends and move them all here. Today we went to the Queensland State Library with the kids. We tricked them (yes, I am that devious) by telling them about the Augmented Reality treasure hunt that uses the ipad to find clues. In reality it is the best ruse ever to get kids to follow their parents on a magical tour of the coolest library I have ever been to. ...

I was fortunate to have a pretty amazing/progressive sexual education. When I was an early teen I participated in a program called AYS (About Your Sexuality) that my church put on. You can read the wikipedia article for a slightly jaded synopsis of the curriculum, but for me it provided all of the information that I needed to take it real slowly, sexually speaking. As a result while most of my guys friends were losing their virginity, I was kissing and holding hands. I got really good at it. In fact I got so good at it that I had an entire (2 week) relationship once that centered around (shall we say) erotic hand holding. Twenty something years later I find that I still get a charge from it. ...

I have been pretty relaxed about my blog posting since we arrived. I think I thought I had little to say but the photos I have taken tell another story, so I will let them…

I’ve always been a pay it forward kind of guy. I love helping my friends out and I love to build community. Every once in a while I ask for help, and every time it’s hard. I don’t fully understand why, but I do know that I am distinctly averse to receiving generosity. This past week has been a learning experience for me. It started, I think, when the lights started to flicker. We nursed our failing batteries all the way across the South Pacific but when we got to Bundaberg we just let it go. By the time we arrived in Brisbane they were near dead. Then a few nights before Christmas, when Ceildyh was over for dinner they died for good. We were eating and making merry and the whole boat went dark and silent. I switched us over to the starter battery and we finished the night with light (but no music). The next morning Evan called to let me know that he could help out with some old (but hopefully not as dead as our batteries). Then the sink fell in… ...

A double espresso is 15 grams of uniformly ground bean, 9 bars of pressure at the group head, and a 30 second pull at 92ºC (±2º). If you have ever stood by my side as I pulled a shot, you have heard this stated as fact. I suspect on some Platonic level it is fact. I also freely admit a certain amount of pride in both knowing this magical formula and being able to extract espresso that tastes great by using this formula. It’s not surprising then that I have invested a certain amount of confidence in said numbers. Today that confidence was utterly and totally shattered by the owner of Ltd Espresso. ...

Krister summed it up pretty perfectly over margaritas the other night, “This place is like a joke, it’s like they said let’s take all the money the US spends on the military and spend it on public services.” Nail, meet hammer. Brisbane has free museums, free multi-city-block-long-swimming-lagoon-with imported sand, free public transportation in and around the city center, free bikes to ride, reliable water fountains, tons of live music, and a government mandate that building owners provide public facing art installations. This place is like a joke, and I love the punchline. ...

It is time to bid farewell to the star filled night sky, to the meteor showers, to the dolphins that scared the crap out of me on night watch. I am just settling in to my last chocolate watch (the salty watch is 8-12, 3-6 is for chocolate); in a few hours the sun will come up and we will line up for the first of several channels that will bring us to our new home. ...

Tucker took 10,035 photos during our eight month voyage across the Pacific but what I hope I always remember cannot be captured with the camera. The excitement of checking out of Mexico and watching the shore disappear in the east The perfect sapphire blue of the ocean, hundreds of miles out, in the morning sun Looking up and seeing the Southern Cross for the first time The feeling of arrival when the latitude ticked down to zero ...

We’ve got a wordy type post in the making. In the meantime you can feast your eyes on some photos from Port Vila and the most spectacular Chesterfield Reef. Chesterfield was a safety option for us on our passage to Australia. I was pretty sure that we wouldn’t stop there but as we got close fate forced our hand. Am I ever glad it did. Chesterfield deserved a week but we had only a few days to enjoy it. We made good use of the time, fixing boat problems, snorkeling, beach combing, and hanging out with our friends on Britannia. Our time was up too soon and we headed out into some nasty weather to make it to Australia before the rally ended. Next time around we will definitely make more time for this sweet spot!

During one of our last days of our Pacific crossing Tucker and I sat in the cockpit remembering out loud each and every stop since we’ve been out cruising. Convivia sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on October 1, 2011 and took a few weeks sailing down the coast of California. We spent five months in Mexico and in the spring of 2012 we began crossing the Pacific. We left Banderas Bay, Mexico on March 19th, 2012 and arrived in Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia on November 16, 2012. Since we left North America we spent 60 overnights at sea (I didn’t count the days or parts of days for those passages) and had 23 additional day sails. We zig-zagged north and south moving from colder to warmer and back until making landfall last Friday in Australia. ...